Tag Archives: writing

Internet, Marketing, Money Management, Sex Work

Work Smarter – The Marketing Edition

Marketing is probably the most time consuming aspect of success in the adult industry. Actually, I should correct that statement to encompass all industries, not just the adult industry. Because there is no one sure fire way to be successful at marketing, it involves a lot of trial and error. Sometimes you’ll find that one venue of marketing works amazingly, but then six months later maybe it’s a completely different venue. This royal pain in the ass also happens to be your best friend in the path towards success. Be careful though, it sometimes feels like an uphill battle. In stilettos. Since marketing is an ongoing trial and error process, your first instinct may be to advertise one month on one website and then the next month switch to another website. This can definitely have its ups, but an ad needs to be seen at least 3 times for the audience to make a decision on the product or service. Assuming someone goes to a website once a week, your ad would have to be guaranteed to show up each time they visit that website for them to remember you. That seems like it would be easy, until you factor in that you are not the only advertiser on a website. Most websites use banners that either change every 5-7 seconds or that change each time you click to a new page within the website. Give your ad on the site a 3 month trial period. If you haven’t gotten at least a 10-20% return on your investment, it is definitely time to look elsewhere.

When you’re paying for advertising, be smart about where you spend your money. A fellow producer friend of mine decided to invest by advertising on a popular fetish based tube site, which seems like a great idea except he advertised on a niche fetish tube site and his site doesn’t cater to that specific niche! Of course he was really disappointed by the results since he didn’t get a return on his investment, but he made the mistake of not investing intelligently! Make educated decisions on where and how you spend your advertising budget (do your research!!) so that you don’t end up making the same mistake.

If instead of paying for advertising, you’re doing your own advertisement, consider where and how you’ll be doing it. Are you sticking primarily to forums and interaction with potential customers to drive traffic your way? Maybe you’re running a blog or twitter? Consider this for a moment: what is your hourly rate for a cam show or session? Are your efforts at marketing bringing you that rate for each hour devoted to the cause? If you’re spending 3 hours a day tweeting, and your hourly session rate is $250, that’s $750 worth of work. Did you make that money up? Did you book a session during those 3 hours directly off twitter? No matter how you are advertising, you need to expect a return on your investment, which means not only did you make back the time and money spent, but your earnings go above and beyond that.

If you are advertising by your own means rather than a third party site, use tools that are readily available such as Google Analytics, keywords/search terms, social media sites, and forums (where you are allowed to market yourself. Check the forums TOS before posting ads!). Remember that time is money, and if you’re spending all of your time posting ads and trying to drive up traffic there needs to be a return. Perhaps you spend 10 minutes writing a blog post, be sure to add keywords to make finding you easier. Or maybe you’re tweeting, spend 30 minutes scheduling your tweets to post at popular tweeting hours. See if people you know are willing to do a banner exchange to help drive traffic to each others’ sites or blogs.

There is a lot that can be done to advertise on the internet, and taking advantage of all the avenues is one of the best thing you can do. Whether you decide to pay for advertising or do it yourself, make sure that you’re smart about it. Don’t present yourself or your brand in a bad light, choose the right venues for advertising, and make sure that your ad or banner catches the eye and is memorable!

Follow Sydney Screams on Twitter @sydneyscreams4u

Sydney Screams: Fetish Model, Clip Producer, Adult Actress, Radio Talk Show Host

Community, Sex Work

You Are Not A Special Fucking Snowflake

You are not the first person to do this. You are part of a long line of hookers and performers who have been in this industry and changing this industry since the beginning of history. You are not unique. You are not special. You’re not the first or the only. Chances are good, especially if you’re reading this, that you’re not the best, the worst, the smartest, or the dumbest either. You are not a special fucking snowflake. The sex industry can be extremely isolating. It can feel like you’re the only person in the world who is writing ads, filming smut, or fucking strangers for money. Without a community, it can feel like you’re all on your own. But you’re not. You are running a small business – not reinventing the industry. Don’t turn your entire twitter or blog into a navel gazing self-celebration. Don’t assume that your life and your work are compelling on their own. Don’t fuck over other girls. Don’t assume you can act however you damn well please without consequences. Don’t assume that you know everything. And for fucks sake, don’t get complacent.

This industry is constantly changing, with new technology, new challenges, new opportunities, and new people every single day. And it goes on with or without you. I don’t care who you are, how hot you are, how talented you are, or how even how hard you’ve worked. This industry does not revolve around you.

Don’t worry, there’s a pep talk in here. Because this takes a lot of pressure off of you. You don’t have to be the expert on everything. You get to explore and learn new things. And you get to put aside the adolescent angst that tells you no one understands you. Seriously, give it up. When you don’t think of yourself as the sparkliest, prettiest, hottest shit in the world, you can be yourself and succeed in your own game. You know what else happens? You get to tap into a community of expertise, support, and friendship.

But you have to set aside your ego. And you have to set aside your insecurities. And in case you were wondering, it is in fact blatantly obvious how intertwined the two are. Let them go. Replace them with healthy, sustainable, and flexible self-esteem. It’s better for you, better for business, and better for the whole community.

I can tell you from personal experience that connecting with other sex workers changed my life, both personally and professionally. Everything I post here were lessons I learned the hard way. And all of it was completely avoidable. When I connected with a community of sex workers it changed my attitude, my work practices, my personal life, and my day-to-day life all for the better. I talk a lot about community because it has made my life so much better in so many ways. And I want to give that back. That’s why I’m writing here.

At Fairy Whore Mother we have years of experience between us. But we also have a sense of humility and openness. We learn from each other and from others – both within and outside of the industry. And that’s how we keep going, keep innovating, and keep building. You aren’t the first. You aren’t the last. And you aren’t the only sparkling star on the market. That should be a good thing.

Lauren Kiley: Webcam Girl, Fetish Performer, Fetish Clip Producer, Former Escort, Activist, Dirty Girl Next Door.

Escorting, Marketing, Sex Work

How To Protect Your Brand

I’m here to deliver some bad news: if you’re an independent escort who writes her own web copy, there’s a good chance someone else is going to steal it. The higher your visibility, i.e. the more you advertise, the better odds are of this happening, and of happening more than once. (I’ve even had wannabe straight gigolos steal my content!) Short of going completely UTR and hoping no thieves find you, what options do you have to deal with plagiarism?

Make your mark, don’t steal it

First, give yourself permission to protect your work. I hate confrontation, so even though nothing makes me angrier than being ripped off, I dread that reply email from the person I’m calling out. Steel your nerves by reminding yourself that you’re a professional, you created something original—and valuable—in the service of promoting your business, and someone else stole it for their own gain. This is not okay and it’s not harmless regardless of how green or ditzy the girl (or guy) who stole from you may be. You can get moral support from friends before taking action if you’re feeling a little unsure, and if they’re fellow working girls, they’d probably appreciate a heads up anyway about who among us isn’t as ethical as she should be. (I also derive a lot of encouragement from this comprehensive Amanda Brooks post capturing all the agony of having to deal with content thieves.) http://www.texasgoldengirl.com/afterhours/escort-plagarism/#more-954

Second, give the thief an easy way out. It pains me to admit it, but this is definitely a situation where you’ll get better results by swallowing your righteous anger and trying to sound sweet regardless of how furious you feel. Few people respond with grace when they’re caught doing something so obviously wrong, so whatever you do, don’t expect an apology or admission of guilt. Clench your teeth and type out something along the lines of “Dear Tiffanie, your pictures are simply adorable and you seem like a great girl but I noticed that you’ve inadvertently repeated some of the text I wrote for my own site. Can you please have your webmaster take down the following sections?” It’s a really good idea to let your first draft sit for at least a day so you can try to smooth out any lingering bitterness that’s come through.

Go ahead and let the culprit blame the copying on a web designer or a well-meaning client or a boyfriend, or her own crazy memory that allows her to mistake entire sentences of other people’s writing for her own. She’ll save face and you get what you want—hopefully.

Some friends of mine have offered to help the offender write her own text, or flat out ghost write it for her for free, which is something I would never be able to bring myself to do. However, I respect that approach for its generosity and you may have some luck with it. One of my friends explained this approach by saying, “I knew she’d never take me up on it,” but I’m not so sure about that. Definitely don’t offer this if you aren’t willing to follow through or she’ll probably feel justified in defaulting back to using yours.

Third, make it harder for people to steal from you. If you don’t care for visibly watermarking your images, you can use a digital watermark. Have your website designer code your pages so that it’s not possible to highlight and copy text. Thieves are by definition lazy, so this will have an impact right away, though on sites like Eros and Cityvibe they will still be able to lift your words.

Fourth, stay alert. Use services like Copyscape (http://copyscape.com) or set up google alerts on some of your more distinctive phrases. DMCA is really the best place to register with because it holds the most sway with hosts, and has the best luck of getting a site taken offline or modified when your entreaties to the escort herself (or himself) have gone unrewarded. (You can learn a little more about DMCA here, http://brainz.org/dmca-takedown-101/ You can also google pieces of your text now and then—lots of girls do this—and see what turns up. As you develop a place in the community, other escorts will let you know when they see your work on someone else’s page. Respond to it! Go back and read the first rule if you start feeling fatigued by all the policing you have to do.

Fifth, recognize when it’s time for no more Ms. Nice Escort. I use a copyright consultant to keep an eye on all of my content because I believe it needs to be done but I don’t want to have to do it myself. Instead of emailing someone directly now, I usually just ask him to send a DMCA notice to their host. This costs extra money but it’s worth it to me. I don’t have any more patience or energy to spare on arguing with someone who’s stolen from me, so I just go straight to the big guns whenever possible.

Sixth, recognize when it’s time to let it go. Some offenders will have been lucky enough to set up shop with a belligerent or lackadaisical host who won’t respond to your notices, or she may have tweaked your own paragraphs just enough to claim that it’s all a big coincidence (even if you and I and everyone else with a brain can see differently.) People who take short cuts are not destined for much success. Rest easy in the fact that they won’t be able to deliver in person what your scintillating, personalized prose promised.

Or, depending on what exactly they’ve stolen, you might take a different view entirely. A few lines I wrote about welcoming clients with disability have been stolen verbatim so many times over the years that it’s practically become standard industry practice to include it on a site or ad. And that’s okay. Those little bits related to protocol aren’t what distinguishes your personality, anyway.

Keep in mind through all of this that no matter how frustrated you may be by the plagiarism, you’ve got an ace up your sleeve that the plagiarists don’t. You can always write more unique, beguiling passages that attract the type of clients you want. If you’ve done it once, you’ve got the intelligence and creativity to do it again. Odds are, your copycats will continue to be unoriginal and opportunistic, rounding up the back of the pack while looking to people like you to try to understand what creates success. They’re simply not real threats. Of the two of you, you’re the one with the upper hand.

Avery Moore: High-End Escort, Traveling Companion