How Companions Can Transition into Online Sex Work
Originally published on this blog, 03-26-2020
Note: The first draft was written before the COVID-19 scare in the United States, but especially during March/April 2020, this information may be even more useful for sex workers who now need to turn to online sex work to make a living.
Platforms mentioned:
I constantly feel the need to give other sex workers unsolicited business advice. This is often the case when I notice that others have a single income stream, and of what I’ve observed, it seems like escorts are more likely than other types of sex workers to depend solely on one source of revenue. This is my attempt to give general advice to single-income escorts without potentially being condescending to individuals. Don’t think that I’m attempting to dissuade anyone from escorting. Whether you’re trying to transition out of escorting for any number of reasons, or you merely want to add other means of income to your business, I highly recommend finding which forms of online sex work appeal to you.
Because I’ve been a sex worker since 2011 with many means of revenue, I still cannot fathom how people can adequately get by and plan for the future with a single income. This is the mindset people have in the vanilla world: get a high-paying, full-time job that has benefits, and build up your savings plus retirement. It’s not necessarily a bad mindset, but what happens if a recession hits and you get laid off or you unexpectedly get fired? The hope for most people is that they will have enough savings to hold them over until they find their next job. Regardless of how much savings a person has, I’ve seen how stressful it is for these people to try to find another job before the metaphorical bomb stops ticking. If you’re salaried or work hour-to-hour, you can more-or-less create a budget to determine how much you want to spend per week/month/year, including how much you want to put into savings. With independent sex work, including escorting, the majority of us can’t plan so far ahead, especially concerning economic downturns, making us more vulnerable than our vanilla counterparts.
With online sex work, we are able to have multiple streams of income in two major ways: 1) maybe you just sell clips, but you sell them on many different clip sites, including Modelhub, ManyVids, and Clips4Sale; 2) you engage in different types of online sex work – like maintaining an OnlyFans subscription or selling erotic MP3s – and if your MP3s aren’t selling well during the winter holidays, you can still depend on your OnlyFans income. The second option is what I personally do, and what I recommend.
Find which kind of online work you like, or at the very least can stand, doing.
I’ve done many forms of sex work, and I can tell you that a lot don’t appeal to me, or aren’t fulfulling in the long-term. I never actually enjoyed public camming, stopped when I found that literally all of my streams were being recorded and distributed without my permission, and now only cam when I want to direct people to my other platforms. Having an OnlyFans profile, on the other hand, is much more pleasing for me. Instead of not knowing how productive my two hours will be on cam, I can use those two hours to take many pictures and videos to schedule to my OnlyFans. That’s what works for me.
There are two types of income you can pursue with online sex work: active and passive. Active income is work like camming, where you don’t make money unless you’re actively working. Passive income is where you either outsource the active work, or as I do in my case, use automation where possible so that I don’t have to continuously work everyday to maintain what often is tedious work. For example, if you schedule your content on subscription or clip sites, that can become passive income. If need be, you should be able to leave the platform you’re using for revenue alone for weeks or even months at a time without any negative consequences, such as customers getting angry that they’re not receiving the content/services they paid for, and still be making money from it. If you’re busy with escorting and can’t devote much time to other forms of work, I suggest focusing on building passive income.
Passive income options:
- Subscription sites
- Clip sales
- Tube videos
Active income options:
- Sexting
- Camming
- Custom videos
These above lists don’t include every form of online sex work. There are probably areas of online sex work that I don’t even know exist. Whether passive or active work, look up what you think will work in your business and be something you don’t hate, preferably something you genuinely enjoy doing. Also, depending how you go about what I listed, they can switch to the other category. If you don’t bother to schedule your OnlyFans content, that will become active income. If you find a way to outsource sexting (having someone else answer the messages you receive), that can become passive income.
Once you have figured out which other lines of work you want to pursue, think about how you could incorporate it into your escorting. Tryst allows providers to include website links, including Twitter and OnlyFans. Maybe create business cards with your camming information on them to give to clients. What I do is send my Pornhub model page to timewasters so that I feel like it wasn’t a complete waste of time; tube videos don’t bring in much money, but still, it manages to make me feel like I was somewhat productive during bothersome interactions. You don’t have to mix your escorting and online sex work businesses, but doing so could help you build more income both ways.
Hopefully, this has given you some things to think about, but I also need to give a word of warning. If you’re an escort, you should know by now that in most places, police will find a reason to arrest you. At the very least, this means that most online sex work sites won’t allow you to advertise in-person meet-ups, especially in the age of FOSTA/SESTA. No matter how unfair a site’s rules are, don’t risk your means of making a living by violating their TOS.
For more information on making money through specific adult platforms, check out this document, a resource I’ve made, which is in continuous need of updates.
