SAAFE

As with any other type of self-employment, it is up to you how you run your business. There are lots of different escorts out there using different methods to bring in business and working different hours to suit their own lifestyle. Some are mothers of school age children who work from 10am-2pm in term times, some have full time jobs and work in the evenings and weekends, some do it full-time 7 days a week and so on.

With escorting, it is relatively easy to work hours to suit due to the nature of the demand for services. However, while you are establishing yourself it may well pay to be as flexible as you can. If you are good and build a solid reputation, then in time you will probably be able to dictate working patterns more easily.

There are different ways of taking bookings too. Some girls advertise their phone number on their websites and some don’t. The ones that do quite often do not answer withheld numbers for various reasons (more on this in the testimonials below). Others only take email bookings which can mean they reply when it is convenient for them to do so, rather than being at the beck and call of their phone. Some, however, like to get a feel for the client over the phone so they won’t take a booking unless they have spoken to the client. It’s all down to individual circumstance and choice - that’s the great thing about being an independent.

You don’t even have to have a website or photos on the web to be a successful internet escort. There are so many different variations on the way girls do business and it is hoped that some of the options below will give you some food for thought about your own set-up.

Working from home via Internet and newspaper ads

Louise

“I worked for a year from just newspaper ads only, nearly all my bookings that I took via the paper were half hour bookings which were really good fun and it kept me very busy, I went in the paper every week without fail and only didn’t go in when I was on holiday.

I also got some reviews on a well known punting website and then started to get longer bookings as well (I must admit I was scared of taking longer bookings as half hour booking were all I knew). After a year of working from the papers only I decided to get a website and venture onto the www, I got myself a webmaster and asked him to add my reviews onto my website, joined some directories and it all took off again so now I have a mix of newspaper bookings (majority half hour) and longer bookings from my website.

My days are varied as internet bookings tend to book in advance and I get my same day half hour bookings, it keeps me busy my days are taken up with both half and hour+ bookings but I apply the no withheld numbers or text rule seriously as you can get a lot of timewasters but you can also get some fantastic regular clients as well. If you do decide to advertise in the paper, be prepared for a lot of questions, questions; like what do you look like? etc as they cant see you. I choose not to show my website address on my paper advert as I live in a fairly small town.

I think I have the best of both worlds and very varied days.”

Email-only bookings

Melanie

“I’ve been an escort for nearly 4 years now and in that time I’ve learned quite a bit about the business. It was my decision to become an escort. It was never based only on the financial side of things either. The whole idea of being paid for sex was a turn on for me. Fortunately, I have an understanding partner who gave me his blessing.

I spent the first part of my career as an ‘Agency Escort’ the internet wasn’t really an option back then but I’m glad I cut my teeth with them. I wasn’t sure if I was cut out to be an escort (it’s one thing enjoying sex but another to have sex with someone you don’t even fancy for money) so with no outlay, someone advertising me, giving advice and me not wanting to advertise a telephone number I looked up the agencies in my Yellow Pages. I met a few of the people running the agencies before I decided whom I would go with. You can tell a lot about an agency on a first meeting. The phrase ’the good, the bad and the ugly’ springs to mind!

The downside to an agency is you have to pay a fee every time you take a booking but it can stand you in good stead, because once you become an independent escort you just put what your agency fee would have been, to one side and this will pay your tax.

Once I left the agency I decided to become an independent. I had a site linked to another site (this meant I had to go through another party in order to make amendments to my site. It usually took weeks to get anything changed). Thankfully, there are a lot more reliable webmasters out there now. The site went down several months after. The owner was abroad and it was very difficult to contact him. After 3 months without a site I didn’t want to wait any longer and didn’t want to publish a number in the newspaper. I then decided I had to set up my own site. I did this in August 2003 and I’ve never looked back.

I’m still an email only escort. I feel this allows me to get to know the client before I ever meet them. The fact they are taking time out to write to you, as opposed to dialling a number tends to weed out the timewasters. It’s much easier for me to type a sarcastic email than going red faced and telling someone to ‘piss off’ whilst standing at the checkout in Sainsbury’s.

All in all I’d say I’ve been very happy as an escort.”

No website

Celine

“I don’t have a website and I’ve never advertised either. When I first started as an indie I was just about to register an advert on Punternet.com, then I saw the message board! I had a good read of the threads (it was a bit better in those days) and made a few posts myself. After about a week I received an email from a guy who’d noticed my posts on the board and wanted to know more about me and enquire about a booking. I received a similar email from another guy. I booked a hotel room and saw them both in the same day. The first guy posted a good field report of our meeting. As soon as that FR hit the board, the ‘phone started to ring!

It was a bit jammy really, perhaps ‘right time, right place’ and all that. Anyway, one good FR lead to another and I’ve never needed to advertise since. To be fair, I only work part-time, as I have a full-time job and so it may not generate the volume of enquiries required if you were a full-time escort. However, it keeps me ticking over nicely. Some of the guys do tend to gossip amongst themselves about whom they’ve seen and what they thought of the lady and it’s these personal recommendations which are enormously powerful as a marketing tool!

I also think networking with other ladies is incredibly important. I don’t mean arse-licking or hitching a free ride either! If you’re on friendly terms with other ladies you can benefit from their experiences and they might even recommend you to others. Don’t abuse this though - help each other out and you will both reap the rewards of your shared experiences and contacts. It’s just enough to maintain a general presence on the scene so people don’t forget who you are. I’m bisexual and like duoing with other girls and I also enjoy the party scene, which has helped enormously with increasing my exposure to many guys in one go, most of whom I probably wouldn’t have met otherwise. I have some pictures of myself on my friends’ websites to promote our duo’s, but that’s also helpful to link to when guys ask me what I look like. Your friend’s site is therefore promoted too.

Because I’ve registered on both Puntingzone and Punternet, my email and work mobile number are displayed there. I don’t answer withheld numbers and the enquiries are roughly equally split between the two. Your emails and telephone manner can also sell yourself. If you’re friendly and chatty, the guys get a better idea of what your personality is like. I’m a bit of a nutter so I tend to go for a bit of humour and banter. This seems to select the type of guy I know I’d get on well with! Don’t let them take the piss though ;o) and limit your chat accordingly.”

Working in a Women’s Collective

A collective is one where a group of WG’s work independently in conjunction with other WG’s. In a collective, all members pay a share of the rent and contribute to the outgoing costs i.e. advertising, supplies etc.

The Pros:

Your working hours can be flexible.

You have the security of working with other women.

You are not accountable to a ‘manager’.

You are free to market yourself as an independent.

You have ultimate control over your working practice and what you wish to charge.

The money is very good.

The Cons:

It is sometimes hard to find a group of WG’s who know each other well enough to gel in a collective.

Ultimately one person has to agree to hold the lease. This could lead to a power imbalance.

The women who holds the lease would will be the one on the line should the police become interested.

Chasing ‘subs’ can be a problem if you choose the wrong working partners.

Phone bookings and withheld numbers

Brandy

When starting out, you will have no idea at the beginning of your career just how many people there are out there willing to waste your time on the phone. All for the sake of titillation. Which, to some extent is understandable but it doesn’t make you money, just wastes your time.

“Timewasters” are those who normally call from withheld numbers. They ask about your services (sometimes go into explicit details) but they have no intention of booking you. These are normally men, but it has been known for women to do the same thing. I can only assume that it’s for the same reason as their male counter-parts. Sexual titillation.

I learnt this lesson very early on in my career. Before I found the Internet I used to advertise at the back of the local newspapers. I was inundated with calls, most of them from a withheld no. As green as I was I answered every phone call. Out of the three months I advertised out of local newspapers, I received only a handful of bookings from serious customers. When I found the Internet things got a little better but not much. I didn’t yet have a website so I would just advertise in escort directories with a few pictures. But you still had your share of timewasters who would get off on those pictures and wanted to add a voice to their fantasies.

Granted you will have genuine callers who call from their place of work or business that automatically withholds their number. But if a caller is serious about making an appointment, he will leave a message on your voicemail stating the reason why the number is withheld and that he will call back from a non-withheld number. This does happen. You will also get clients that you have made a prior arrangement with to meet at a hotel, which he calls you from, but which also comes up withheld. But the same applies; if it is a genuine customer he will leave a message on your voicemail letting you know who it is and probably asking you to call back.

But the longer you’re in this business, the quicker you get to learn that a huge proportion of people calling from a withheld no. have no intention of booking you. Whilst I have no problems taking phone bookings I myself refuse to answer a call from a withheld number, but some escorts still choose to do so. Some will answer enquiries regarding their services, but will tell potential clients that they need to call from a non-withheld number to make a firm booking, otherwise it will not be honoured by the escort. Which is fair enough. But in my two years experience as an escort, I, not once had one booking that was made from a withheld no when I used to answer them. A lot of escorts, in order to combat the timewaster and his antics, will not even advertise a phone number on their website. They insist initial contact be done through email, and a phone number only given out just before the appointment is due to take place just to reconfirm appt details. More and more ladies are turning to this method of initial communication because of these timewasters. Which may seem a little harsh but it’s with good reason. And they find it works for them.

Right now though there seems to be another type of timewaster via the telephone. Lately there seems to be a sudden increase in guys phoning from a telephone box to make a booking. You can tell this because of the normal day-to-day noises you can hear going on in the background. I get the impression that gentlemen are realising that more and more escorts aren’t answering withheld numbers, and so are trying to find another way around it. I personally would strongly suggest not accepting bookings from guys calling from phone boxes. Someone who isn’t willing to use their own mobile or landline phone to make a booking should be avoided. With the advent of cheap mobile phones (or even sim-cards if it’s a matter of discretion) there is little excuse nowadays not to have a proper contactable phone no. At the very least it would be difficult to cancel a booking at short notice if the client is unreachable.

To reiterate, different ladies work different ways. Ladies (such as myself) will take phone calls from genuine enquiries from non-withheld numbers. For me you get a ‘feel’ of a customer before you meet. So it’s always nice to chat on the phone. You learn as you go along to keep the conversation short and sweet, yet firm and polite. You will have ladies who will take enquiries from a withheld no., but insist on a landline or mobile number to make a booking. Lastly you will have ladies who insist on initial contact via email only. Ultimately it all depends on what each individual escort is comfortable with. The choice is yours to make in the end.

Working in a Parlour

Massage Parlours are places where there are often many girls working. The building may be kitted out with massage tables instead of beds in order to appease the local council, although this is not so common any more. Massage parlours are also sometimes called saunas and this is especially the case in Scotland. As a rule the police will leave a massage parlour alone and will only (usually) perform a raid where it is suspected that other unlawful activities are taking place i.e. drug dealing. I worked in Oxford, Swindon, Reading, Chippenham, Cardiff and once in Ilford. The money that can be earned in a day depends on the parlour and the area of the country.

The benefits of parlours are:

You can talk to and gain advice and support from other girls
It’s safer than lone working as there are always people to help should there be trouble
You don’t have to worry about advertising and marketing yourself
You don’t have to worry about building up a client base or regulars
You don’t have to travel to bookings
You can move easily from parlour to parlour and find work anywhere
You don’t have to answer the phone and mess about with time-wasting calls
You can work hours to suit
You don’t have to worry about finding a place to rent or worry about complaints from the neighbours etc etc
You can make money very quickly
And… most importantly (for me anyway) you can keep your private life and your work life entirely separate. You only have to set aside one or two days a week for work. The rest of the time prostitution does not intrude on your day-to-day existence.

The downfalls of parlours are:

Many parlours take 1/2 of your earnings, at the very least they take one third
You have no employment protection and you can be fired at will
It can be a very tiring way to work as often you may have sex with over 10 men a day
Many parlours are run by very unsavoury characters who may hang around
Prices are often fixed and you can be fired for ‘overcharging’. You may feel that £120 is not enough for an hours hard-core domination – tough!
You may be expected to take part in a line-up for customers in which you are compared to other women. Many women find this upsetting.
Few parlours are non-smoking
You may find that shifts have been overbooked and there are more girls working than you expected
Some parlours do not have a private girls living room and you may be expected to interact with clients who have had a service and wish to sit around and chat. Personally I find it very difficult to be ‘on’ all the time and find these sorts of places very tiring. You may feel differently.

On top of this there are a number of very very bad parlours in the country. I would seriously advise any girls against working in these sorts of places:

Parlours where they take half your money AND expect you to tip the maid AND expect you to pay towards advertising
Parlours where there is a maid employed but you are expected to answer the phone and do the cleaning and laundry (and no doubt tip her at the end of the shift to add insult to injury!!)
Parlours where they expect you to pay a bond of hundreds of pounds that is (apparently) given back to you if you prove yourself reliable. Don’t fall for it!
Parlours where interviews take place where a parlour owner has sex with the girl
Parlours where drugs are used/sold on the premises
Parlours where you are forced to have sex with people you’d rather not
Parlours where you are pressurised into having sex with people you’d rather not
Parlours where you are pressurised into providing services that you are unhappy about i.e. OWO, A-levels
Parlours where you are not allowed a break
Parlours where they ask for ID (NEVER give your personal details out)
Places where you are expected to give your own tips to the house
Parlours where you are pressurised to show your face on the internet
Parlours where there are no fire escapes
Parlours which do not take into account your own personal safety i.e. drunk and aggressive men are let into the building
Parlours which are unclean or structurally unsafe

Something else to consider when working at home is the type of client you attract, I live in a quite crescent where most residents have grown up children and are professionals or own there own business and drive reasonable new cars and there are never children playing in the street, so guys in baseball caps pulling up in a old fiesta with out a silencer and a boom box vibrating the car down the road would draw attention. On the other side of that coin several clients have mentioned that if I was working from certain parts of my town they would not see me simply because they like to know their cars will still have wheels on let alone still be there when they come out."

Working in, and then running, a parlour

Sunni T

People often ask me why I decided to work in a parlour rather than working as an indie escort. People usually ask me this because they have a preconceived image of parlours and private flats which includes the following misconceptions:

All parlours are squalid slums that have no washing facilities.
All parlours are owned by nasty wicked exploiters of women who pressurise the staff into working in unsafe ways and take 50% or more of whatever the girl earns.
Women who work under these conditions have low self-esteem or no intelligence or they wouldn’t be exploited and abused in this way.

Well, yes, it’s got to be said that there are some parlours that do fit into that criteria. I can’t deny it and I’m personally grateful that when I decided to become a prostitute I picked an ad in the paper for a parlour run by a very good business woman who had worked herself and who not only made a great deal of money for herself but helped her girls do the same without exploiting them. If anything it was the other way round. She actually helped many girls with problems at her own expense, and without expecting any repayment. But I digress…

Back in 97 there was no big escorting community on line. I had no experience in the sex trade and wasn’t aware of any girls working independently. The only way I knew of working was either the streets [too dangerous and cold] or in a sauna/parlour. So I called one of the ads in the local paper and set up an interview and the rest is history as they say.

I stayed with the same woman for 9 months. She had 4 different places to work and I rotated round all of them doing a day in each once a week. I earned more money that I ever dreamt of. This was after I’d paid the house split of 50% plus a tip for the maid, and any essentials I needed such as condoms and clothes to work with. And had no worries about paying the bills for a flat to work from, getting a maid, arranging bookings, getting closed down. What I did have was a very steady stream of punters who know where I was and when I would be there and how much they needed to bring for a good time. I was a very happy bunny.

After a while my boss and I had a little disagreement and we parted company. I needed to continue working to support my family. So I worked round other places in the area. Most of which were in a disgusting state (dirty bedding, rotten bathroom etc etc) or the owners were into drugs (personal no go area for me) or they simply appeared to have no idea of how to run a place like a business. Which all effected how much I could earn. My attitude then is the same as it is today. If you’re going to make the sacrifices involved in doing this job then at least make sure it’s worthwhile. Make the most you can in a way that doesn’t mean you lose your self-respect. So there’s no point in me spending 12 hours a day in a run down hovel where punters won’t want to lay on the bed.

I realised that my standards as to working premises might be a tad higher than the area was used to. So I ended up doing a couple weeks in a flat that belonged to woman who was at least clean. If not very business minded. But I solved that problem by placing my own ads and the work came in. It didn’t last long. We had a row over the maid who was an evil cow and stirred up trouble whenever she could. So I left and took a couple of weeks out before finding somewhere else to work from. Which was a good thing as the woman who owned the flat called me and offered me the tenancy for her flat, she was running at a loss and decided to get out of the biz.

At first I intended to work it myself with no other girls involved. But after a while girls started to approach me asking for work. It was known to be a busy flat and I was known as a fair person in the biz so word got round and some girls took a chance and got in touch. As I was working five or six days a week at the time to keep the hours regular (important for business) I decided that I could do with some time off to spend with my kids. Obviously while someone else was using the flat I couldn’t earn my money. So a split was taken to cover the expenses of running the place and to hopefully replace my lost earnings. Which is how I started to run a parlour.

I made sure that I treated the girls as fairly as possible. The house supplies everything they need to work. No unsafe or high-risk services are provided by any girls. An outreach team calls in regularly to give the girls the chance to speak with them about any worries. And everyone is encouraged to offer services they feel happy to offer. No pressure is ever put on anyone to do more than they want to do. And I make sure I never ask anyone to do anything I wouldn’t do myself. And there are regular bonuses for the girls so they benefit from working hard. Not me. Most of the profits left over from our running expenses are put back into the house. New bedding, redecorating, uniforms, etc which all make it an attractive place to punters. Thereby increasing trade for the girls. I’m very proud that I still have one of the first girls to ever work with me as a member of staff. She doesn’t work anywhere else. Most of the girls have been with me for over a year. The average stay for girls in parlours is a month or two. I must be doing something right I think!

Despite popular myth I’m not getting rich by running a parlour. I don’t want if I’m honest. I do want to show the rest of the trade that you can run a successful place and keep busy when you don’t try to force the girls to do all services. Which seems to have gotten across already as several places near by have also now stopped offering any ‘without’ [i.e. unprotected] services. And that you don’t need to be an ogre and scare the girls into respecting you, and that they actually work better if you don’t take the iron fist approach. I know I won’t change the world. It would be madness to try to but I do think I might change one or two peoples’ perceptions of prostitution and how to treat the girls in the vice scene. Which will be good enough for me I think."

Plus Points to Parlour Work

No responsibility for the premises. So no need to find rent, ads fees, utility costs etc. Or any need to maintain the premises or replace any essentials. No risk of arrest and being charged with running a brothel or controlling prostitute for gain. While it’s illegal to own a parlour or run a parlour, it isn’t illegal to work in one, regardless of how many girls are there. The maximum sentence for running a parlour is 7 years at the time of writing. No hassle from people who object to the premises being used as a brothel. No hassle from competitors who want to close you down. No worries about finding reliable staff, whether it’s maids or girls. No fear of being exposed in the press as a sleazy madam who exploits innocent young girls. You can be pretty sure that you’ll earn good money if you put the effort into what you do. Many clients favour parlours over any other kind of WG. They have choice, no need to reveal their ID and can walk up or away when they want to. So the trade is usually pretty steady. You can walk away at the end of your shift without a backwards glance. No one knows who you are or where to find you if you don’t want them too. And in most cases that is a very good thing. You get to benefit from the experiences of other girls, which is invaluable. You’ll learn more from a day listening to someone’s working stories, than you will from a month in the room. They cut out all the boring regular stuff and just give you the good bits you need to know. There is safety in numbers. Most parlours now use a CCTV system on the entrance I would advise girls NOT to work in a place where they don’t have one in place. It’s a sign of the owner not taking your safety seriously. If they don’t take the most important thing i.e. your welfare seriously they won’t really be bothered about your well being as a whole and probably be unpleasant to work for.

Bad Points of Parlour Work

You will have no vetting over who you see as a client. It isn’t realistic to pick and choose from whom ever walks into the door. You’d make next to nothing if your standards were anything over than less than picky to be blunt.

No decent parlour will insist that you see anyone you really object to, or feel at risk from in some way. But they won’t tolerate a girl refusing a perfectly average client because of the colour of his skin or his age.

You have to be reliable. It’s no good working one day one week and then another the next or not bothering to go in because you had a good day in another place the day before. You won’t get many regs if they don’t know when they can see you. And you’ll lose your shift if you let down the owner to many times.

You may be pressured to offer services you don’t want to offer. Be firm; tell them you aren’t going to provide anything you don’t want to. If they object or try to argue walk away and find another parlour. There is ALWAYS another parlour you can work from.

You’re very accessible to clients, which means that you are also accessible to any one who might be a bit emotionally unstable. You’ll be surprised how many men there are with Madonna/Whore syndrome and who seem to think WG’s are there for them to work out their frustrations fears with.

For every decent WG you work with there will be a bitchy one who is jealous if you do better than her. They can be nasty and conniving.

You have to accept the house rules. All parlours have them. Generally because it makes the work easier for everyone and avoids any disputes among the girls. And to ensure girls are working safely.

For example it’s frowned upon for a girl to meet a client away from the premises, because usually it ends up with the girl getting into a difficult situation she can’t resolve by herself. Punters will tell you that they want to see you away from work so you keep all the money. That is very rarely the reason, it’s usually because they want something for nothing or are getting to involved emotionally. Trust me I’ve been there and it wasn’t pretty. I’ve never seen a girl who thinks it was a good thing to do with hindsight.

You’ll be expected to work to a price list. Again this is to avoid arguments among girls and bitchiness.

If you can’t accept that it costs money to open and run a place, and that it can be quite a bit of money if the place is run well (our flat needs to make in excess of £150 per day to cover our essential overheads for example) and that the spilt you give the house is how these costs are covered, then you probably aren’t suited to working in a parlour. The money you hand over isn’t going into the pocket of the owner. It’s making the flat a nice place to work with regular business so you can make a decent living for yourself. Some people can’t seem to understand this and feel that they are being exploited and the money is all profit for the owner. If that is how you see it then work another way. You won’t be happy in a parlour and a parlour won’t be happy with you.

Some owners just won’t entertain listening to a girl when she has a problem with whom she is sharing a shift with or finds the maid hard to work with. If you find that is the case again look elsewhere. Anyone who doesn’t want to make your day as easy as possible for you to cope with isn’t putting your welfare first and isn’t worth working for.

Ways of working