How to Get Started as a Male Sexworker

*Disclaimer

I've been a male sexworker since the early 2000s and I have knowledge which is worth sharing but I'm not infallible.

The following is just some ideas based on my own experience, research and opinions.

Please consider the possibility that anything I tell you here could be incorrect. It's worth using multiple reputable sources and fact checking any information that matters to you. Make your own critical assessment of how reliable each information source is, not just for sexwork related information. For everything.

I should also check my privilege in this disclaimer. I'm a white, cis male (he/him), sexworker with no addictions, debts or needy family members. What works for me won't necessarily be right for you. Not everyone has the luxury of operating their sexwork with their own safety and well-being as a priority over all other considerations. I don't mean to shame survival sexworkers, or anyone else, via my recommendations.

This FAQ is a work in progress. I'll keep editing and updating it, please tell me if you'd like me to change or add anything.

** Note

I use the words "sexworker" and "escort" fairly interchangeably. I recommend you use "escort" to advertise your services. That is the word clients are most likely to search for. The rest of the time, I prefer to use "sexworker". The term sexworker includes in person providers who meet clients for sex. It also includes anyone who's work involves sex in some way who wants to use the term to describe themselves eg pornstars, erotic content creators, pro doms, pro subs, other fetish professionals, webcam performers, phone sex workers, findoms and strippers.

My experience has mostly been as an in person provider and I make video clips to sell, provide fetish sessions, domination, text chat, custom videos and webcam sessions.

Is there any market for male sexworkers?

Yes, if you're ok with male clients. If you're straight and not ok with male clients, then no.

Women clients do exist but they'll tend to choose the most professional looking male sexworker they can find. Someone with his own website, paid ads on plenty of reputable directories, frequently updated social media with a lot of followers, professionally taken and retouched pics, a long history of good reviews and a friends page with duo partners who also list him on their friends pages.

If you don't see male clients, you'll never fit the description above so it's unlikely you'll ever meet a woman client.

Even after you've been seeing male clients for years and you establish a web presence like the one I described above, you'll still only see a few women clients per year. Nowhere near enough to earn a living. There just aren't that many women clients out there.

Anywhere you can make an ad cheap or for free, you'll find thousands of "straight male escort" ads with a mirror selfie and/or a close-up shot of their cock, and a few lines of crude often misspelled and grammatically incorrect Borat style lines of text where that one ad is that guys entire web presence. I'd estimate that approximately none of those guys ever get one single paying client.

However, if you are gay, or bi or gay for pay and willing to work very hard all day every day on promoting yourself, then it's entirely possible to be successful as a male sexworker.

Why be a male sexworker?

Few jobs afford the same level of freedom it's possible to attain as a sexworker.

Maybe you work in a 9-5 office job for some soulless corporation that views you as a cog in the machine. Your boss doesn't know, or care to know, anything about you other than your ability to show up and work hard to make rich people richer so you can earn barely enough to survive.

The idea of getting paid more per hour than you'd earn in a week at minimum wage is very appealing.

As an independent male sexworker, you have no boss, you answer to nobody. You set your rates and decide which services you offer and which services you don't offer.

If you are successful, you will have plenty of regular clients who you are always happy to hear from. Because you know what to expect from them, you've built a rapport, gotten to know what they like and the sessions with them are easy and fun.

Ideally, you will have an extensive network of duo partners. Duos being sessions where one client books two sexworkers for a threesome.

The dream situation is one where you're earning enough from regulars and duos to cover all your expenses. Anything extra you earn from new clients is a bonus. Savings towards your goals or to treat yourself and enjoy holidays.

When you reach that point where your minimum cost of living is covered just from regulars and duos, that's when you have the luxury of being able to say no to any job for any reason.

You don't want to be in a position where you have to say yes to the next client who contacts you no matter how difficult you suspect they'll be because you have bills to pay and you don't know when the next genuine client will come along.

Being a survival sexworker is one of the most difficult and dangerous jobs there is. If you're desperate for money due to addiction, debts, poverty, needy or exploitative family or partners or you're being coerced in some way to do sexwork for someone else's profit, it can be hell.

But if you have no addictions, no debts, nobody depending on you or using you for money and you're independent, then it can be one of the best jobs imaginable.

What skills and attributes make a good male sexworker?

Erections. Primarily. Erections. Can you get hard quickly and easily under almost any circumstances? Can you stay hard for as long as necessary? Will you be able to ejaculate at short notice when the client wants you to cum? If the answer is yes, congratulations, you are already better qualified to be a male sexworker than the majority of men who are advertising.

It's not as easy as you might think. You might be able to get hard, stay hard and cum no problems when you have sex with a partner you chose to have sex with for fun. That doesn't mean you'll be able to perform with any, and every, client you meet when the session is all about entertaining someone as a professional.

Often what's happening in the session is a really big deal to the client. It might be something they've been fantasising about for years or even decades. Then finally they have this opportunity to do it for real. If you experience situations like that as pressure, the pressure can kill your libido.

That's part of the reason why I say sexwork and any kind of desperation are an awful combination.

There's pressure to perform inherent in the job. But if you're not desperate for the money you can experience that pressure to perform as a challenge. You can take motivation and energy from it. Take pride in your ability to perform reliably. Use that pride as a positive force to lift you up, as it were.

The debilitating pressures are those resulting from factors other than the desires of the client you're with. Pressure to earn money for the sake of your own addictions, debts, dependents etc. That kind of pressure can make it impossible to perform.

The mindset that makes it easy to perform is one where you're relaxed, happy, confident in your ability to create the perfect session for your client and taking pride in your work.

It helps if you experience your part in the leading role in the scene you're making for your client as an ego boost. Embrace your narcissism a little. This is not the time for being modest. Project all your big dick energy. Be the alpha! Even if you're a bottom, be a power bottom. A bossy bottom. Being in control and professional is how you keep yourself safe and healthy.

Other than that, you're going to find that a lot of your clients are very nervous. They're in an unfamiliar situation where they have high expectations of you, and of themselves. Clients have no way of knowing whether they, or you, will live up to the way they imagined the perfect session to be.

Often they've built the idea of meeting a male sexworker up to be something quite monumental. They set themselves up to be very frustrated or disappointed if it doesn't go as planned.

You can do a lot to help them feel at ease if you seem relaxed, cheerful, friendly, professional and experienced. An easy going demeanour that seems to come from confidence that you're the best at what you do will dispel the fears of even the most terrified and inexperienced client.

How to fail as a male sexworker

Take drugs. That will do it. If you're addicted to drugs and in a situation where you're always broke and desperate for money to pay for your next fix, the combination of the effects of drug addiction and the risks you'll take and the situations you'll end up in due to desperation causing you to prioritise getting cash for drugs over your own health, safety, security and well-being, will ruin you.

Apart from drugs, simply not working hard enough on promoting yourself is the second best way to fail.

Legality

Step one is to find out what the laws are relating to sexwork in the country where you're located. This wiki is a good place to start.

There's a lot more info on legality by country on the NSWP website.

I doubt you'll find a single sexworker anywhere on the planet who thinks it's a good idea for sexwork to be illegal.

It's not legalisation we want but decriminalisation.

Legalisation is the introduction of laws that aim to impose state regulation and control sex work and sex workers. Most often, such regulation is unfair and overly restrictive when compared to the regulation of other types of work.

A better approach is decriminalisation ie the removal or absence of laws that outlaw and oppress sexworkers.

Taxes

I highly recommend that you register as a sole trader and pay tax on your income. You don't have to say the money is from sexwork. In fact, it's probably best you don't. Just choose an occupation that will allow you to claim some of your major outgoings as business expenses. Something fairly vague works well. For example "consultant."

If you tell the tax man, or anyone official eg the bank, that you're a sexworker, you are very likely to face discrimination.

The subject of paying tax as a sexworker often comes up on /r/sexworkers and there's a lot of good information in the comments of some of these posts.

Health

Research the risks to your health and decide which precautions you are going to take. I'm not a doctor and I'm not the best person to advise you. But when you do read about the STI's you could catch and speak to health advisors at a sexual health clinic, you're going to be persuaded in the strongest possible terms to use condoms.

Please do use reliable sources of information to educate yourself about risks to your health. Do not blindly follow the advice of other sexworkers or clients. Or anyone else who is not a qualified health care professional.

Even if clients offer a copy of a clear STI test. These infections all have window periods. Taking PREP might reduce the risk of HIV but it does nothing to protect you from any other STI.

You will be asked for bareback. A lot. Saying no is the best thing you can do to protect your health.

If you ask experienced sexworkers how they respond to requests for bareback, you'll hear a lot of them say "I immediately block their number. I refuse to see anyone who asks for bareback. Even if they agree to use condoms, I still don't want to meet a client who makes a habit of seeking out sexual partners who will agree to bareback. This is in case the condom breaks or they remove it or I catch something from skin to skin contact with them even with a condom."

Sex worker organizations

This list of sex worker organizations on Wikipedia is a good place to start. It's arranged by country. Make sure any organisation you contact is pro decriminalisation. If they mention anywhere that they want a Nordic model or Swedish model of "legalisation", stay away. Make sure they're not rescue industry. Some groups are all about fundraising and political power and just use fake narratives depicting all sexworkers as trafficked sex slaves to generate revenue. If they are in any way religious eg operated by a pastor, or missionaries or some kind of evangelists, avoid. The good ones will make it immediately clear on their website that they want full decriminalisation and respect the rights of consensual sexworkers to make their own choices.

To show your face or not

Some percentage of clients will only see sexworkers who show their faces in ads. So blurring or cropping or altering your pics in some way to conceal your face will mean that you don't get those clients but it is absolutely possible to make a lot of money without showing your face in your ads. Whether you do or don't is your decision to make. Argument for = you'll get more clients. Argument against = once your face pics are on the internet, they could stay there forever and prove impossible to remove. Facial recognition and reverse image search technology is already highly advanced. In future who knows what this technology will be like.

Whether or not to tell family, friends and partners that you're a sexworker

You are the person best qualified to predict how the people closest to you might react if you choose to tell them you're a sexworker.

If you're sure they're going to be accepting and supportive, it might be the right decision for you to be open about your work.

Reading other people's experiences, you're likely to hear mostly stories where confiding in loved ones, or being outed, was a disaster.

It can be a disaster but if it's not and all goes well, you're probably not going to announce this to the world. If it all goes wrong, that's when you'll want  to talk to other sexworkers for understanding and support. So there are a lot of stories out there that paint a very negative picture of the outcomes you might face.

Make your own personal independent sexworker website

My number one recommendation is to make your own website ASAP.

If clients can see that you have your own website, they are much more likely to regard you as a genuine sexworker. Not a scammer trying to steal deposits. Clients who have looked at your site before contacting you are much more likely to be genuine too.

The more work that you put into your website, and the higher you are able to get your site in search results on search engines, the less you will need to rely on directories. Eventually you'll be getting enough clients from your own website and you can delete all your directory ads.

Social media

Twitter and instagram are worth doing just so you can display the icons linking to your social media on your personal website. You'll also want to link back to your personal website via a linktree or similar from your social media.

If clients can see that you have your own personal website and you're active on social media, have a lot of followers and they can verify that your site and social media belong to the same person by checking that the links to and from all match up, then that is the best evidence available that you're genuine.

You probably won't get many, if any clients booking you purely as a result of finding you on social media. But the fact that you have social media helps to build the impression that you're real and likely to be good at your job.

The twitter and instagram search bars usually don't work when clients attempt to use them to find a sexworker. You can try searching twitter for "male escort London" and then clicking the "people" tab, but you won't see many results since twitter has shadowbanned nearly everyone using the word "escort" in their profile so we don't appear in their search results.

Your account will probably get shadowbanned no matter how careful you are. Even if you use no hashtags, display no nudity and never like or retweet anything with nudity, you'll still get shadowbanned. You are less likely to get banned outright if you put a link to linktree or something like that and put the link to your website on your linktree.

If you are shadowbanned, when you follow or retweet etc, nobody gets notifications and your posts don't appear in their feed. You're effectively invisible.

Try searching for your own username while logged in. All your posts will appear in the search results. Then copy the url of the page with the search results, log out or go into an incognito window, then paste that url and check again. If all the results disappeared, you're shadowbanned.

The best way I found to fix this is use a browser plugin that deletes all your tweets and retweets, remove any links or hashtags or sexual words from your bio, remove any sexy pics from your profile pic or background pic, then abandon your twitter and don't touch it for a few weeks. When you login a few weeks later, post something new and check again as above and you should find you're no longer shadowbanned.

Instagram and twitter are wildly inconsistent in enforcing their rules. You'll see accounts that have been active for years happily breaking their rules. Other accounts get banned for far less blatant rule breaking with no warning or explanation.

It seems like common sense to me to reciprocate every interaction on twitter. If someone follows me, I follow them back. If they retweet something of mine, I retweet something of theirs etc. But it's only a very tiny minority of twitter users who do this.

I found the best way to maximise this effect is to only follow and give retweets to people who very recently interacted with another sexworker twitter account in a similar niche to my own. If someone just retweeted someone a few minutes ago who posts content a lot like what I post and I follow them or retweet something of theirs, they're much more likely to notice and respond by following me back or retweeting something of mine.

If I do the same with someone who hasn't done anything on twitter in the last day or more, chances are they only go on twitter once every few days, post something new and then leave again without bothering to check their notifications or reciprocate any of the free promotion other people have given them.

Don't register for your sexworker twitter, or any other account you use for work, using your personal phone number or personal email. Set up a work email and buy a work phone. And never log in to your work twitter on your personal phone. If you must log in to it on a computer you also use for personal things, use a different browser eg chrome for personal, firefox for work. Have the work browser in incognito mode with a VPN and install plenty of privacy plugins on the browser.

If you do use sexworker social media on your personal phone or personal social media on your sexworker phone, these apps will happily spy on your contact list and recommend your work persona as a friend to your mum or tag your real name in people you may know for your clients.

My biggest regret as an escort is that I used to use directories. If I could turn back time, I'd make my own website on day one and only use directories if I could do so without verifying with face pics, without sending ID, and without using my debit card. I'd only use directories if I could manage to pay anonymously eg with crypto or someone else's card and not verify or use fake ID and fake face pics to verify. I don't trust directories. They all seem to be run by lazy, stupid people and it's just a matter of time before more of them get hacked or raided and more of our identities are exposed eg rentboy, eros, backpage, craigslist, ashley maddison etc.

Directories can't be trusted to take even the simplest precautions like deleting, or at least encrypting, the personal details they get from us for verification.

Anything you can do to keep your identity away from directories is golden. Social media is part of that. Your own site is the most important thing.

Directory ads

If a client sees a sexworker listed on a directory who they like, they will usually copy and paste their mobile number into a search engine and do a reverse image search for their pictures to make sure they have other directory ads, social media and ideally, their own personal website.

If they can't find any other trace anywhere on the internet and that one directory ad seems to be that male sexworker's entire web presence, the client will assume they're looking at a fake ad put up by a scammer to try to steal deposits.

This practice has become more and more prevalent in recent years. As a result directories are trusted less and less by clients with each passing year.

As the genuine clients increasingly abandon the directories in favour of only meeting sexworkers who have their own personal websites, the ratio of genuine clients to timewasters using the directories has gotten worse and worse.

Now almost all the remaining directories are virtual wastelands where a lot of the ads are fake. If you are genuine and do post an ad, at least 90% of people who contact you via that ad will be timewasters.

This situation is not going to improve. Directories are history. Personal websites are the future.

Sexworkers hate sending their ID to verify with directories. Many high profile directories such as backpage, eros and rentboy have been raided by homeland security in the USA in recent years. They kept details of advertisers un-encrypted in plain text on their servers which were then seized.

Quite rightly, many sexworkers do not trust directories with their ID any more.

My advice is to avoid giving your ID to directories if at all possible. Pay using crypto if you must have paid ads on directories. Build your own personal site and work hard all day every day promoting your own website so you can delete all your directory ads asap.

Agencies

Any agency that says it's for "straight male escorts" is a scam. Scammers will demand upfront fees from you to list you on their site. As opposed to the industry standard for a genuine agency which is to list you for free and collect commission after you've been paid in cash by a client. Here's 43 pages over 14 years of posts on the subject.

If the agency advertises female sexworkers primarily and has a section for male sexworkers too, it might be genuine.

When someone contacts you saying they represent an agency, assume that they are lying. Don't proceed until you've verified that they do in fact represent that agency. Eg ask for the website and then contact the agency on the number listed on the site and ask them to confirm that the person who contacted you is genuine. If they make some excuse why they don't have a website, it's a scam.

If you find an agency and you're thinking of applying, search for the name of the agency on reddit. Failing that, contact an established independent sexworker from that location. Eg someone who has their own website and social media with a lot of followers who's been around for many years. Ask them if they have heard of the agency and would they recommend it.

A legit agency makes their money from commissions. Usually 30% of the fee. So they would arrange the date, you meet the client, the client pays you cash. Then you pay the agency their commission afterwards.

If they try to get you to agree to anything that doesn't resemble the above. Eg they expect you to pay them their commission before the date occurs. Or they tell you the client pays the agency and then the agency pays you after the session, it's a scam.

The lower the average rates on an agency site compared to the average rate for that location for an independent the more likely it is that some kind of coercion or exploitation is involved if not outright trafficking.

If they want you to pay any registration fee or a monthly fee or any kind of payment at all, including payment for their photographer, it's a scam.

They might want you to use a photo set on your listing that you don't use elsewhere. But there should be the option to choose your own photographer.

In the UK, and as far as I know everywhere else, agencies wanting you to be exclusive to them would be the exception. Most agencies are happy for you to also advertise independently and with other agencies but will obviously not want you to give your direct number to clients they send you.

If they want to interview you, meet them somewhere public like a bar or café. Don't go anywhere in private. A legit agency won't ask you to get naked or do any kind of "audition" before they'll list you.

Duo partners

A key to success as a male sexworker is having plenty of duo partners who regularly contact you and invite you to come and do duo sessions with them and their regulars and their new clients. Sessions with a duo partner who you have a good working relationship with are the best. You'll know how to bring out the best in them and they will do the same for you. You'll work together to make the session as enjoyable as possible for the client. Your combined efforts will be greater than the sum of what you're capable of as individuals. A good duo is a work of art. Something to take pride in. And a lot of fun.

Finding other sexworkers willing to offer duos with you can be difficult at first when you don't have much of a web presence but once you have your own website and social media with plenty of followers etc, sexworkers who you interact with on social media will be more likely to see you as genuine and if you approach them in a friendly, polite, professional manner, some will agree to do duos with you.

When you do get invited to a duo, it's essential that you show up on time. If you are running late, at least get in contact before the agreed time. Let them know you're running late. If the agreed time passes and you're not there and they haven't heard from you, that will be the last time you'll ever get an invitation from that duo partner.

Be sober when you arrive and stay sober for the duration. Make sure you come across as polite, friendly and professional in person. Make it clear that you understand that the session is about entertaining the client. Not about entertaining yourself. Do not expect the client or your duo partner to do what you tell them to do in order to get you excited.

Your job is to follow your duo partner's lead.

Try to discuss before the session what the client wants and what's expected of you. Make sure your duo partner knows about any limits or boundaries you have and find out about theirs.

Most importantly, your erection is almost certainly going to be required. Get hard quickly and easily and stay hard. When the client wants you to cum, be ready and able to cum.

If you can manage all this, that duo partner will invite you back next time one of their clients asks for a guy to join. They'll  recommend you to other sexworkers as a duo partner too.

Ask to take a pic together and post it on social media, tagging each other, commenting, retweeting etc.

Ask your duo partners permission to write a blog post about the duo, use their pic and put a link to their site.

Put their pic with a link on your friends page on your site. If they do the same for you, that's golden. Those friends page links are some of the best advertising there is.  Great for SEO, for making you seem like a genuine, trustworthy and professional sexworker and for getting more duos.

Interviews

Doing interviews in exchange for dofollow links to your personal website is great for SEO. All the newspaper and magazine websites have an email address where you can contact them and offer to do interviews.

Be wary of tabloid publications and interviewers who specialise in sensationalist topics.

The media loves to portray our industry as dirty, dangerous, shocking etc. They want to make our work seem as extreme as possible for shock value to get people to click, read and share.

There's some excellent advice on how to handle interviews on MelRose Michaels' blog by Mike Stabile.

I only accept interviews via email and I make sure I have in writing in the initial email trail any assurances I want from them.

A list of questions sent by email makes it much easier to compose responses you're happy with. I don't agree to recorded interviews. Beware of these as the interviewer might try to manipulate you to give answers that cast a negative light on yourself and on sexwork.

I negotiate with them what I want (a dofollow link to my website included in the published version of the interview on their site). I always warn them that I don't want them to try to make my work sound illicit, dangerous or shameful.

I state that I don't want any mention of criminality unless it's to say that my work is legal where I am in UK and should be decriminalised everywhere. Otherwise they're often inclined to try to imply that I'm operating in some shady, legal grey area of almost illegal, trafficking adjacent dodginess. That sort of thing is more exciting to their readers.

Watch out for questions like "tell me about the most dangerous situation you've ever been in" or "how would your parents feel if they knew you were doing this?" These kind of shitty, tabloid questions are designed to convey that your work is shameful and terrifying. Shut them down. Take the opportunity to say "I'm proud of what I do" and "I'm in no danger. My work is perfectly safe" and then explain why. Or refuse to answer those questions.

Blogging

Regularly posting on your blog page on your personal website will improve your search ranking. Try to write quality content that real people will enjoy reading. Use the keywords that people will type into a search engine to find you.

I specialise in couples, cuckolding, forced bi and duos. So most of my blog posts are about these topics. I make sure I use the word "escort" and the word "london" in a lot of my blog posts. Those are the kind of search queries I want to work on SEO for. Eg "london cuckolding escort" "escort for couples in london" "london duos male escort" etc. But if you just stuff those keywords into some random paragraphs that are just a jumble of words, it won't help your SEO.

Search engine algorithms are very sophisticated. They value content that people stay on the page and read beginning to end. So prioritise quality over quantity of blog posts. But try to publish something at least once per week if you can.

Clients

One of the most frequently asked questions on /r/sexworkers is "I'm * insert thing the client is insecure about here eg old, ugly, overweight, inexperienced, disabled * will sexworkers dislike meeting me / refuse to see me / because of that?". The answer is always a resounding "no". We don't care about any of those things. We just want our clients to be clean, respectful, safe, polite, punctual, pay our rate without trying to haggle, not try to push our boundaries or in any way try to get us to provide services our ads clearly say we don't offer, and most importantly have a good time.

Services

One of the best things about being a successful independent male sexworker is that you get to decide exactly how you do your job. Nobody can tell you which services to provide. It's up to you.

If you don't want to kiss clients, just say in your ads and on your site that you don't kiss.

If you love threesomes, specialise in duos and couples bookings and list those as services you offer.

You might miss out on some jobs if the client especially wants a service which you don't offer. But in the long run this work is much more sustainable and more profitable if you only offer services you're happy to provide.

If you're in a country where sexwork is illegal, it's common to omit any reference to what services you offer in your ads or on your website as these details may be incriminating if you're arrested.

Another approach is to clearly list exactly which services you offer and state which services you don't offer on your ads and website. Then screen your clients carefully enough that you're confident you'll never end up in a room with a police officer.

Scarlett Alliance lists some acronyms, abbreviations and jargon terms for services you might not have heard of.

Burn-out

If you have services you're uncomfortable with and dread providing but you try to tolerate those sessions, you'll find that you get a to a point where you're anticipating bad sessions and feeling irritable in your interactions with all clients, even the good ones.

This state of being is often referred to by sexworkers as "burn-out". It's no fun to feel this way. It's also no fun for clients to be with you when you're this way so you can easily lose your regulars, stop gaining new regulars and deter new, genuine, good clients from meeting you at all if they sense that you're in this state when they contact you.

Self care

Self care is very important to avoid burn-out. The best self care is to take services you're uncomfortable with off the list of services you offer.

Here's 17 pages of sexworkers discussing what makes them experience burn-out, what self care practices they use to prevent this from happening and how to self care if burn-out does happen.

For example:

Take time off. I put my work phone on silent and out of reach at bedtime. I don't look at it until I've had my first coffee in the morning.

Decide how many days off you want per week. I make sure there are at least 2 days per week when I don't see any clients. I don't mind which days or whether those days are consecutive. Some sexworkers prefer set days. Some prefer consecutive or non consecutive days. Weekends or weekdays. It's up to you what works best for you but trying to work 7 days a week with your work phone on 24/7, will lead to burn-out.

Think about the bookings/clients you enjoy seeing the most, who drain energy the least, and tweak advertising and/or pricing to attract more of those.

Stay healthy. Whatever you need to do to keep healthy, make that a top priority. eg going to the gym, yoga, meditation, running, cycling, swimming, fitness classes, walking in the park, cooking and eating a healthy, balanced diet.

Keep work surroundings as pleasant as possible. Room decoration, bed linen, lighting, music etc at your incall location all have a huge impact on the client's experience and on yours. If on tour, a nice modern hotel which is well decorated and equipped, has a comfortable bed, and preferably a gym.

If a client is rude, unhygienic or indiscreet, block them.

If a regular client, or new client is a terrible match for you in terms of personality or desires, tell them they're better of seeing someone else. eg if they love kissing, getting drunk, want unprotected sex and would love to make videos with faces showing but you don't kiss, don't like to drink, don't offer bareback and have a strict policy of never showing your face in photos or videos, then rather than just tolerate a client who constantly tries to push you boundaries, you're both better off if he sees a different escort who does offer those services.

Take holidays. You'll know when you need to take a break. If you find yourself with no patience or tolerance left for the timewasters to the extent that you're in a bad mood and anticipating negative interactions with everyone who contacts you. Then if someone does cancel or doesn't show up and you feel relieved. You need a holiday. A few days or a week away somewhere beautiful and sunny is the cure for burn-out. If the holiday is sexy in some way, it makes for good blog posts and talking points too.

Talk to other sexworkers. A good session of complaining about the bad clients and timewasters. Laughing about the funny ones. Celebrating the good ones. Talking to people who understand. It helps. A lot.

Talk to non sexworkers. Spending time with civilian friends and family and not talking about or thinking about work at all for a while is also good for the soul.

Have hobbies. I play chess. When I play, I'm completely focused on my game. It's like meditation. Exercise gives me a dopamine and serotonin boost from physical exertion. Chess gives me a different feeling. Mentally exhausted but in a good way. Find something that does that for you.

Active/Top

In order to top you'll need to be able to get hard and stay hard. Ideally you'll need to be able to cum when a client wants you to cum. I find a quarter, or even one eighth of a viagra an hour or half an hour before a job makes all of the above happen easily. The more pressure you're under, the less likely you are to be able to stay hard. So if you are not in a desperate situation financially, you have no addictions, debts, needy relatives etc and so you can either accept any given job, or not, then you'll probably find you can top. If you're addicted to drugs and desperate for the money, you probably won't be able to top.

Passive/Bottom

Bottoming isn't for everyone but if you are going to bottom, I highly recommend douching before. You might want to read this guide to anal douching. Basically just water in via an anal douche or shower hose. Then push the water out into the toilet or down the shower drain. Rinse and repeat as necessary until the water comes out clean. Water will open you up enough and you'll be more relaxed knowing you're not going to shit all over your client. Just use plenty of lube and start slow.

Pro Dom

If you decide you'd like to promote yourself as a Pro Dom, please do a lot of research and preparation before you start to meet submissive clients who want professional BDSM services from you.

There's a lot that can go wrong if you're unprepared.

It's too huge a topic to go into detail here.

I recommend you make an account on fetlife and frequently check the events listings. Go to as many fetish events as you can and try to meet experienced kinksters and build a network of friends who are into fetish.

If you want to offer bondage, you absolutely need to go to some workshops where an experienced rigger teaches you "the ropes" and supervises your ties.

You can learn some ropework from watching videos and copying what you see but if you misunderstand or miss out some basic precaution, you could end up seriously injuring someone or worse.

The same goes for impact play. Even more so for edge play like needles or erotic asphyxiation. Under no circumstances should you be figuring these things out by trial and error. You need an expert to teach you.

If that means paying someone to teach you, pay them.

Ideally, if you can find a Pro Domme who can use your assistance, you can learn a lot from seeing how an experienced professional approaches sessions with paying submissive clients. If you can't find any Pro Dommes who want to involve you in sessions as a paid duo partner, consider offering your services for free. eg for filming content. The time you spend with them is the best possible education you can get.

Pro Sub

Some of my sexworker friends and duo partners are Pro Subs. I greatly respect what they do.

I can switch for fun with someone I trust but can't imagine ever being sub with a client under any circumstances. Everyone's different though. The Pro Subs I know are perfectly happy and are extremely capable, confident and experienced. They do what they do with a great deal of care and attention to their own safety. To the point that they feel the risks are within their own acceptable limits.

If you're in a country where sex work is legal or decriminalised, at least you can discuss in detail with your clients before the session starts exactly what will and won't happen within that session so that they're 100% clear about your limits, boundaries, safe words etc and tell them that any deviation whatsoever without consent from what's been agreed will be treated as assault and the session will end that instant with your security barging in and you getting on the phone to the police.

Talking with Pro Dommes and Pro Subs in your area would be a good place to start. Ideally arrange some duos with someone experienced who you trust.

Rates

You might want to charge ten times higher than the average rate for your area and only see one client per month. Or you might want to charge one tenth of the average rate and see a dozen guys per day. But step one is to at least figure out what the average rate for your area is. I recommend you start by finding popular directories. Then try to refine a search of that directory so you see results matching other male sexworkers who appear similar to how you plan to promote yourself. Look at as many ads as possible, from a number of different directories, that are as similar as possible to your own intended sexworker persona, and figure out what the average rate is from there.

One thing I would recommend is that you decide on rates you are happy with. List those rates on your ad and don't allow anyone to haggle.

There is an alternate approach which is to not list rates at all. Then negotiate with each guy who contacts you to try and set an appointment at a rate they are willing to pay. Even if this does generate more business, I think this is a good way to quickly burn out. Having people haggle with you is very unpleasant. The kind of guys who want to haggle are likely to be disrespectful in other ways. I would never operate my business this way and highly recommend listing your rates and sticking to them.

Pictures

There's a huge price range of professional photoshoots out there. You can get quite a cheap shoot eg from one of the coupon sites or apps. Then get them retouched via a crowdsourcing site like fiverr. Or pay thousands for a top photographer and rent a 5 star hotel suite for the shoot location. And everything in between.

Ring lights are also popular and not expensive. It's a tripod with a clip that will hold any phone and comes with a ring shaped light. It can cast an adjustable light on you. They usually come with a Bluetooth remote that you can pair with your phone so you can take multiple pics in different poses without running backwards and forwards to press the camera button on a timer. If you look at other people's pics for ideas for poses and get some good poses and angles with good lighting and the camera held steady on the tripod you can get some decent pics that way especially with the top of the range new phones.

There are a lot of "photographers" who will contact you offering cheap, or free, photoshoots. Especially if they can see that you're new. I don't know anyone who's accepted one of these offers. I'm guessing if you did accept a free shoot from some guy with a camera calling himself a photographer, you'd most likely get a few poor shots taken from someone who has no idea what they're doing and something other than photography on their mind.

Videos

Making video clips and selling them pay per view is a great side income. Especially if you know people who are willing to appear in videos with you. Eg other content creators who want to make shared content. Ie they will also sell the video clips you make together.

I'm not on Onlyfans because I don't trust them with my identity or my money. I don't want to support a company that profits from sexwork whilst being openly anti sexwork.

If onlyfans finds out you meet clients in person, they will ban you and steal any money they owe you. They've made millions taking their cut from sales of content created by sexworkers. All whilst making no secret of the fact that they'd prefer to ban all adult content from their platform. Hypocrites.

Best alternative would be to build your own personal website, sell your own content and keep all the profits for yourself.

It's very difficult to find a payment portal that will allow you to accept credit card payments via your own site but not impossible. Or you can always get people to pay in crypto or via bank transfer to a business account or via one of the payment apps.

I'm still selling my video clips via adultwork but I dream of the day I can get a payment portal set up on my site and delete my adultwork account.

Adultwork has a terrible reputation for always going out of their way to make life difficult for every sexworker using their ugly 1990s looking, super user-unfriendly, horrible to navigate, site. They love to assume we're all guilty of breaking their rules until proven innocent. AW has a habit of suspending accounts for no reason. Then they demand all sorts of ridiculous verification to reinstate your listing.

Recent (2023) rumours state that adultwork is selling our identities to USA border control.

Stay off adultwork if you can possibly avoid it.

Incalls

I recommend you get the best possible incall location you can afford. Central location, spacious, clean, uncluttered, recently painted and decorated with good quality furniture will all make a big difference to how high a rate you can charge. A good incall is critical in how easily you can attract new clients. It will also help you gain regulars and keep regulars coming back frequently.

If you're renting, you don't want your landlord to know you're a sexworker. Even in countries where sexwork is decriminalised, landlords will usually have something in your rental contract to say they can kick you out if they find out you're doing incalls,

You don't want it to be obvious to your neighbours that you're a sexworker or give neighbours any cause to complain about you.

In London most buildings are former Victorian townhouses converted into multiple flats (apartments) with a shared main entrance.

Getting clients from the front doorstep into your incall flat as quickly and discreetly as possible is essential.

Make them agree to an exact time and then give them your building address. Don't give them your flat number. Ask that they send a txt or whatsapp message when they're outside. Then go to the front door.

I don't like to say my flat number for a variety of reasons. 1, they could be planning to rob me. This has never happened to me but I always take a look out the window before I open the door. Just to make sure it's one clienty looking person, or a couple if I'm expecting a couple. Not multiple robbery looking people. It does happen unfortunately. Criminals know we have cash. In countries where our work is illegal they think we're less likely to call the police when we're a victim of real crime.

2. They could save my full address including my flat number on their phone. Then someone else could get hold of the information. Eg their wife searching their phone for evidence of an affair. Or certain apps share entire contact lists including saved addresses. I don't want anyone unexpectedly showing up ringing my buzzer for any reason.

3. My buzzer is loud. I don't want to broadcast the arrival of every client to my entire building.

I also don't want them to call me because if a neighbour on the first floor has their window open, they could easily hear whatever my client says on the phone.

"I'M HERE FOR MY INCALL. CAN'T WAIT TO SUCK YOUR COCK" is something I don't want overheard.

If you do buzz clients into your building, give them very clear instructions how to find your flat. Otherwise they will blunder around lost in your building which is super obvious.

Even more obvious is if they arrive and you're not ready and don't notice that the client is trying to call or message you. That's when they're most likely to bump into a neighbour. They might not be able to answer simple questions. Eg "who are you and why are you hanging around on my doorstep?"

So do have your ringtone and message tone switched on. Keep your phone close to you at the agreed time for every booking.

A lot of London flats are not very soundproof. Try to avoid getting an incall location with only 1 cm thick plasterboard between you and your neighbour. If they can hear a lot of sex noises, they will complain to your landlord.

Basement flats are good. Especially if they have their own entrance not shared with the rest of the building. A lot of brick and concrete between you and any neighbours is optimal for soundproofing.

Outcalls

I recommend you only accept outcalls to hotels if you can get the client to tell your their full name and room number. Then call the hotel reception and ask to be put through to Mr X in Room Y. That way you can verify that they are really staying where they say they are staying.

Otherwise you will get idiots playing the hilarious prank of sending you to fake hotel bookings just to waste your time.

Once you've confirmed the name and room number, you can give these details to a trusted third party. A partner, friend or another sexworker. You might also ask them to contact you or wait for your contact by an agreed time to confirm that you're safe, the client has paid, everything is ok. This is called a security buddy system and this precaution could save you from a very bad situation one day. Let your security buddy know what you want them to do if you sound the alarm or if they can't contact you. Eg send the police.

For outcalls to private residences within a reasonable distance to travel by taxi, I make all new clients book and pre-pay for a taxi to pick me up from my address and take me to theirs. eg an uber. That way they've effectively paid a deposit using a card connecting me to their real name. Someone planning to waste my time, or worse, would not agree to send me an uber.

If It's anywhere further away that I need to take a train to or for fly me to you bookings, I make them pay 50% deposit plus travel costs by bank transfer to my business account. I use the Tide app so they only see my business name, not my real name.

Timewasters

Someone who contacts sexworkers pretending they're interested in booking an appointment who in fact has no intention of ever showing up to said appointment.

They want you to entertain them for free on the phone or by exchanging messages or pictures. If someone contacts you and they get straight to the point about where and when they want to meet and they don't try to chat or ask for pictures, they're more likely to be genuine.

If they don't mention a day, time or location and seem reluctant to discuss these details but excited about asking you for explicit details about yourself or your services, they're probably just wanking. In which case I recommend offering the option to pay for a chat session. Eg "which day and what time would you like to see me? Do you want an incall or an outcall?". Then if they respond without providing responses to any or all of the above, say  "if you just want to chat please send $x and I'll chat to you for x minutes." Then hopefully they'll book an appointment or pay for a chat session but if they keep trying to chat for free just block their number.

Screening

How you screen clients is your decision. The extent to which screening is normal for sexworkers and expected by clients varies a lot from country to country.

In USA it is normal to ask clients to provide ID, multiple references from other sexworkers they've met before, to pay deposits and to check the clients contact details against multiple blacklists.

In the UK, not so much. We don't have to worry about police trying to arrest us so we're not screening to avoid police sting operations. Also, we're not as much of a target for criminals because they know we can, and will, call the police if we're robbed or assaulted or in any way a victim of crime.

It is still a good idea to screen to some extent wherever you are. I highly recommend you find out as much as you can about the different screening methods. Decide how you will screen and then stick to that. Don't let clients talk you into meeting them if they won't follow your screening requirements.

I don't want to give too much detail about screening here. It's best not to publish this information in case dangerous clients use these details to try to circumvent our security. If you want to know more, contact me. If I can verify that you're a sexworker, I'll answer any questions you may have about screening.

Technical and Cyber Security resources for Sex Workers

This list has some excellent resources. Do your own research before adopting any of the recommendations as some may be out of date eg they still have switter on there which unfortunately doesn't exist any more.

Other Resources for Sex Workers

The sexworkers subreddit is open to all and an excellent resource. Sexworkersonly subreddit is private. Message the moderators to verify. Once your approved, you'll be able to post and comment on there knowing that no non sex workers can read or reply. Malesexworkersonly subreddit is also private.  

SAAFE is a forum for sex workers mainly based in the UK.

Good Escort is another forum for male sex workers. Also mainly for UK.

Tryst published a handy list of resources for sex workers.