Category Archives: Marketing

Fan Clubs, Whats The Skinny

Fan clubs for sex workers are all the rage. Personal interaction with fans for cash is dominating the sex worker platform space. When you think of fan clubs most people think of Only Fans. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, that site is a pit. It’s shady as hell and is always on the brink of shutting down or has some drama following it around. There are even rumors its under federal investigation. It’s also the most popular fan club site and has the most press. I personally had an Only Fans for a while, I shut it down a few years back for being shady.  Lots of sex workers make money on that site so really the choice is up to you. I think there re better options.

I recently opened a Loyal Fans. I’m pretty impressed so far. There are a LOT of features and different way to monetize your content. From paid DMs, to a video store, to being able to send locked picture, video or voice messages. The feedback from clients is they like it and its easy to use from their end. I did a walk though with the Site manager on all the features and how best to use them and it was comprehensive and informative. Their referral program is great and is a lifetime bonus. If you want to check it out use my link to sign up as a creator and make sure to scheduled a walk though if you do.

Full disclosure: I do get a referral bonus but that comes out of the companies pocket.

I’m listing the others that i know people use but I do not have personal experience with them.  AVN Stars already called it quits and that really put a lot of people on the back foot who had invested time and effort. It had the AVN name but clearly that wasn’t enough to keep them in business with a flourishing fan club option for sex workers. Make sure whatever fan club you decide on you research them thoroughly. Find out who the owners are (not always easy), are they based in the USA, how are they handling content moderation (this is huge), whats the referral program, are they professional, do they treat sex workers with respect or are they just looking to make a quick buck off us? All these things matter cuz putting effort into making a fan club grow is a LOT of work and time and you don’t want to waste yours. I know I don’t.

  • Loyal Fans
  • Just For Fans
  • AVNStars (already took a dive)
  • FanCentro
  • Only Fans
  • Fansly

Only Fans Drama In The Media:

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/25/tech/onlyfans-suspends-ban/index.html

https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/onlyfans-planned-porn-ban-suspended-user-outcry-79636961

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-19/onlyfans-to-block-sexually-explicit-videos-starting-in-octoberhttps://techcrunch.com/2021/08/25/onlyfans-suspends-decision-to-ban-explicit-content/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2021/06/16/the-shady-secret-history-of-onlyfans-billionaire-owner/?sh=c6165b05c17f

Backpage Seized By Feds

Backpage was seized by the feds, this is different from when Backpage themselves  took down the erotic services section (ads migrated to the personals section). This time the site was seized by the FBI. For several days the indictment was sealed but it finally was made public and as predicted by many sex workers and their advocates, it contains NO charges related to human trafficking and once again targets the owners of Backpage with facilitating prostitution, money laundering, etc. This is pretty much what happened last time and these charges were thrown out by a judge. I would expect that this will happen again but you never know cuz it looks like the feds are playing judge roulette and are hoping that one of their harassment adventures will stick with a friendly judge.

You can read the indictment here: https://drive.google.com/viewerng/viewer?url=http://archive.azcentral.com/persistent/icimages/news/backpage%2520indictment.compressed.pdf

None of that of course is comforting to any sex workers who relied on Backpage for their livelihood which are often the most venerable among us. Just because Backpage disappeared doesn’t mean you can’t make a living. You will have to be clever and re-think your marketing strategies. Lots of things are changing right now and because of SESTA and FOSTA they are changing quickly and daily. No one really knows whats going to change next and how people are going to react. Its a good time to take some steps to protect yourself, your business and your livelihood.

Australian Sex Workers a new site advertising site when up to help fill the void of the disappearing Backpage http://crockor.com.au/

4 Things to try when your ad venue disappears: https://fairywhoremother.com/4-things-you-can-do-when-your-advertising-venue-disappears/

Consider hosting off shore in case American hosting companies decide to no longer host sex worker sites: https://redumbrella.ch/

A Mastodon Instance popped up AKA a twitter like sex work social media that it might be worth joining if only to next work with other Sex Workers so you can stay current on new options and info. I’m not sure its gonna be a great place to find clients but its worth having a profile up and to see what it evolves into.

https://switter.at/web/getting-started

You can follow me there under my name #JennyDeMIlo

Switter has  added a “listings” feature  to ry to fill the void of the Backpage seizure where you can post availability: https://listings.switter.at/

It’s a tough time and with SESTA set to be signed today its gonna be a dark day for a lot of sex workers. Be kind to them.

Jenny DeMilo: Dominatrix, Hypno-Domme and former GFE Escort

Escort safety in the age of SESTA – From Escort-Ads Dot Com

Escort-Ads.com is not a US based escort ad site and they had some solid advice on ways to stay safe. The most compelling on their list is Host your personal website on a server in a country where prostitution is legal. This  is very good advice. Though SESTA takes aim at advertising sites where sites can be held responsible for their users behavior, no one really knows how US Hosting sites will react and what preemptive measures they will take with hosting escort websites.  You might find your site has once day been disappeared.

My suggestion is to put up a second site hosting in a country where prostitution is legal and forward your current site to  the new one.

Here is the link to the Escord-Ads post about ways to stay safe. Also there is some very good information about ICANN and what the US has jurisdiction on.

https://www.escort-ads.com/news/sesta-update-list-solutions

Yes, this will cost some money but honestly its not cost prohibitive and its important to do even if its just for your own peace of mind. No one knows whats going to happen. City-Vibe, Reddit, Craigslist Personals  have all made changes and the law isn’t even signed yet.

Be proactive! Be safe!

 

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Shadow Banning On Twitter

The term is tossed around a lot in sex work circles. I’m shadow banned! RT me because I’m Shadow banned! Help I’m Shadow banned Twitter hates sex workers! This explainer should help you if you feel you might be shadow banned on Twitter.

What is shadow banning on Twitter?

When you suddenly discover that your tweets are not reaching anyone other then your direct followers, you don’t come up in searches and your twitter feed cant be found in general. It’s still there but its as if your account has somehow been limited. You may have been shadow banned. There are shadow ban checkers but they are unreliable. If you think you have been banned you might have been. This is not a sex worker phenomenon many people get shadow banned. Beauty bloggers and You-tubers are hit especially hard. So that’s a strange mix right? Sex workers, beauty bloggers? But there is a method to this madness, there’s a reason those kinds of accounts get shadow banned more then others and don’t worry its possible to get yourself un-banned.

How did you get shadow banned

The easy answer is you look like spam to Twitter.  Twitter is a small company. They a staffed really low. Its not like the old days when you could get @Jack to email you back (yes, that used to happen) Tons of things are automated now and one of these things is a spam algorithm. So that’s the first thing you need to know. The second is how Twitter is accountable to its shareholders. Twitter is publicly held they are also very unprofitable and rely on a lot of VC investment. Twitter’s metric for profitability is “user accounts”. So the more Twitter user accounts, the better twitter looks when measuring this very important metric. This is also one of the reasons that Twitter wont do anything about Russian Bots but that’s another story. To delete those accounts would drastically reduce the number of user accounts. Same thing with accounts that trip their spam filter. Twitter doesn’t want to delete spam because they need that user account but they also don’t want spam to take over its platform and essentially ruin for lack of a better term user experiences.

Enter the spam filter that can get you shadow banned, its because you look like spam. You tweet like a spammer not a real live human. This happens to sex workers a lot because lets face, it were heavy promoters. Just like beauty bloggers and you tubers. See now there’s that connection i was talking about. Twitter isn’t targeting you because you’re a sex worker, they think you are spam. I get how that’s an easy conclusion to jump to since social media is often made inaccessible to sex workers but Twitter is actually one of the few social media platforms that doesn’t discriminate against us. I know color me shocked.

Steps to take to get un-shadow banned

You can get un-banned but it takes a commitment to changing how you tweet. You need to tweet like a human being and not a promotion machine. Some simple steps…

  1.  Keep your promotion tweets to approximately  20% of your feed.
  2.  Use auto tweets sparingly. (especially since they are promo tweets)
  3.  Don’t over hashtag. One or two targeted hash tags work better then 100 anyways
  4. Be careful who you retweet. If you are RTing  banned people or known spam accounts you could in turn get banned yourself.
  5.  RT with commentary some of the time when you RT people, add to the conversation
  6.  Interact with people on Twitter be a “good twitter citizen” engage
  7.  Not every tweet needs a link and a hastag. Again, think human being

If you take these steps and change how you tweet in 72 hours you will see your feed be searchable and your tweets will be able to be  located. Now you have to keep this new tweeting style up, of you don’t you will just get banned again and have to start all over and its possible tripping the filer a lot could get you a permanent shadow ban or extend your time to get un-banned. No one wants that.

Jenny DeMilo: Dominatrix, Hypno-Domme and former GFE Escort
Follow Jenny DeMilo on Twitter

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Increase sales, know your customer

In order to serve your customer the content they want, you have to know who that customer is. Dude who likes porn is not enough. All dudes like porn, what you want to know is, who is this person who’s buying my content. Why do you want to know? So you can better serve them what they want and in return you can increase your sales!

Create a customer profile. You need to know who’s buying your content.

Odds are you can go with male but how old is this man, is he married or single, is he submissive or dominant, what kinks or fetishes does he have. The more you know about him the more targeted your marketing to him can be. The more targeted your marketing, the more you will sell. It’s the number one mistake a see all kinds of business make is not knowing who their customer is.

Example: Escort advertising sites. They get this wrong on the daily. An escort advertising sites customer is the escort who pays for the ads on the site. Many sites get this wrong and do things that infuriate escorts (their customers) and direct the marketing/features to the person surfing the site. That person is not the advertising sites customer. That person is the ESCORTS customer.  This creates frustration for the customer (the escort) and in turn can cause loss of loyalty to a site, retention of business and the deterioration all around good will. It’s a problem.

So knowing who your customer is, is important. Knowing this customer profile or profiles will help you target your marketing to get your message out to the right person(s), and also help you to take away any barriers the potential customer might have to making the leap from observer to making an actual purchase. After all, what you want is more purchases. You want to serve the customer you have better because keeping a customer is easier and less costly then getting a new one. So customer loyalty should be something you think about and consider in your marketing strategy.

Building a customer profile is not always easy and you you will likely be fine tuning it for a while but its worth the effort you put into it. You can do polls, surveys, watch your analytics  like a hawk, how are people finding you in searches, what sells the most what wains on the shelf only to sell a handful over a long period of time. All this will help you make up this valuable customer profile.

Then craft your sales message to that person and viola you’re on your way to working smarter not harder and increasing your sales.

Jenny DeMilo: Dominatrix, Hypno-Domme and former GFE Escort
Follow Jenny DeMilo on Twitter