Under continued political pressure, Backpage, a popular advertising site, has disabled their adult services section, much as Craigslist did some years ago. Maggie McNeil will be writing about it in tomorrow’s column with her trademark exhuberance and is going to publish an exhaustive list of advertising alternatives. Her readership is far broader than mine and so I will leave the exhaustive listing to her and focus this post on the most important thing: me.
Backpage has a bad reputation in Seattle. The popular (read: loud) opinion on discussion forums I read is that the providers are subpar at best and the clients are irritatingly shallow. However, having spoken to above average ladies who use it, I understand it is not only useful but with careful presentation can reach great clients. It’s an international platform that offers no-nonsense advertising for low initial cost. A lot of people used it to find clients online, thus staying safely behind closed doors. Some good friends of mine and many more acquaintances and sisters will see a sharp drop in their income surely within the month but probably sooner unless they can find alternative effective advertising venues.
And so we met.
Sol Finer, Sola Love, Savanna Sly, Maggie McNeil and representatives from CoSWAC and the Gender Justice League met with a group of around thirty providers to discuss short and long term options. There are incredibly long lists at the following places:
http://thecauldronnyc.com/backpage-alternatives/
But the big question is: which ones are any good and, for those of us here in Seattle, where are all the ladies going?
The first alternative that comes to people’s minds is TNA. Some love it, some hate it, but it is an alternative, it’s hugely active, and it’s free to join. I am registered and marginally active on Eros, P411, Slixa, The Hobby Hunter, and TER. You can also follow your favorites on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook; some ladies update availability and other such fun things. My most effective tool is my newsletter, thank you those who’ve subscribed. I’m going to go down this list and talk a little bit about each option, how providers can use them, and how clients can most effectively use them.
Cost:
Free for a basic provider membership, 50/month for a premium membership. The difference is whether or not you can have a signature and how often you can advertise. I’m not sure whether/how much clients have to pay for membership but premium status allows you to, for example, post comments of advertisements and in the Ladies’ Lounge. It’s not necessary.
Difficulty:
Providers need to submit a picture of their face with the date and their username visible to the moderators for verification. They can voluntarily submit a photo of their photo ID with all information except the DOB and face shopped out in order to become ‘TNA verified’. The process isn’t too time consuming and there are photo blur apps available for smartphones so you don’t need a computer.
Region:
TNA covers pretty much the entire West Coast as well as a few major cities across the country. It’s most active in Washington and california.
Vibe:
TNA is well known as the wild west of message boards. There are vehement opinions and drama galore but if you generally avoid the message boards and only advertise the clients will find you.
How to:
As a provider, this board allows you to build a brand. You can chime in on any of the many topics that pop up. If you find you like the conversations and can easily jump in, no problem. If you find them too aggressive, do this: comment only on topics you find genuinely interesting, read only the first page of comments, craft a careful reply to the original point, and only pay attention to respectful replies (they happen on occasion). You’re creating a paper trail of your opinions on things like social time, lingerie, favorite activities, interests, and more importantly how you conduct yourself. Clients will post reviews unless you specifically ask them not to. It is helpful to reply to the reviews with a personal comment as soon as you can, while you still remember the interaction, to serve as a record for future providers who may see this client. I, personally, will only comment if I know the client quite well and have no reservations about recommending them. Otherwise I use reviews and vouches as a potential reference list and will try to email for more information.
As a client, if you would like to interact on the message boards it can be fun sometimes but the easiest way to use TNA is simply to browse the ads. When you see something that catches your eye, you can use the advertiser’s profile to view their post history, reviews, profile, and contact information. There is a handy ‘to do list’ function that saves profiles to a list for easy access later. It’s useful because the search function and memory are both unreliable but do note that the provider gets a private message notifying them of your action.
Cost:
Starts at just over $100/month but goes up quickly when you add categories. I had some success with it several years ago but haven’t used it in quite a while. When I did use it I got two or three inquiries per week.
Difficulty:
You may have to submit a photo of your ID for age verification if the reviewer thinks you look under 25; they take no risks with underage workers. Also, be very very very careful with your wording. They will censor anything but the vaguest of euphemisms. Browse other ads to get a sense of what is allowed, be vague, leave the more explicit talk for your private website or better yet, for pillow talk after your session.
Region:
International, and you can advertise when you’re visiting as well. They take requests, too, if you can get enough people together to all ask for the same city they will add it to their listings.
Vibe:
It’s only advertising, no reviews, no discussions, but it looks very sleek and classy. I personally recognize a few dozen of my colleagues and friends; EROS has the highest concentration of former TRB advertisers here in Seattle.
How to:
Providers simply create an ad, pay via bitcoin, money order, or credit card (no prepaid cards anymore), and post. You can set it to auto-update even so you just set it and forget it. It requires no maintenance and is probably the simplest advertising venue, if expensive right up front.
Clients simply browse and follow the instructions in her ad, the end.
Cost: free to join, it costs credits to actually advertise but I’ve never advertised on P411 before, simply maintained a profile. Logging in every week or so bumps your profile higher on the list and makes you more visible or you can stick your profile to the top by paying up to 100/month via bitcoin, credit card, cash, or money order.
Difficulty:
You have to submit three photos: one of your ID, one of you holding your ID, and one of you holding a paper with your name, the date, and your application number on it. Again, they only need your photo and DOB so blur out the rest of the information on your ID.
Region:
International
Vibe:
P411 is mostly a verification site. Members have varying levels of verification and can ‘OK’ each other. I use the OK list to choose reliable references and will email them for personal references. DO THIS! I have seen clients on P411 with multiple OKs from reputable providers, friends of mine even, for whom I would very much like to give actual references for. It also doesn’t tell you how old the OKs are and people change so it’s always a good idea to follow up.
For clients, this can be a good way to streamline the review process. The site asks for some level of verification from you, I believe you have the option to submit employment information to get verified by this third party service so you might not have to disclose that information to your providers, it depends on their personal policies. In any case, it’s one place to browse for providers in the area you’re looking for, although their information might be out of date.
Cost:
Free to have a profile but all advertisements cost credits and no one sees your profile until you have an ad. Credits are 1:1 USD and the most basic ad is 2 credits per day.
Difficulty:
Easy as pie. Fill out the profile, pay for the ad, you’re done
Region: International
Vibe:
Similar to EROS
How to:
Similar to EROS; no client/provider interaction, only advertising. It’s acutally a very slick website but I’ve heard from others that it’s slow. It’s run by a former sex worker, however, so we’d like to patronize it if possible.
Cost:
A bit less than 200/year but you can do it in smaller incrememnts. Paid for by money order.
Difficulty:
It wasn’t difficult for me in the month or so after TRB went down but it’s a small board run by one woman so the backlog seems to be slowing registration to a crawl. That being said, setting up your profile isn’t difficult and, while it’s not perfectly intuitive, once you get the hang of it it’s easy to navigate.
Region:
Primarily Portland. It’s a slow board but they have established a Seattle section and if we can gather steam it could turn into a viable option.
Vibe:
Super nice. Reviews and forums are available but everyone is terribly respectful and encouraging to each other. It reminds me of the way TRB used to be.
How to:
There’s a chat function which is kinda fun as well as the various forums. If you’re looking for a high energy place, this is not it. I can’t even think of strategies to stand out from the crowd; there is no crowd. If you’re already a member or can become one in the near future, it’s more a place to go and chill than a place to rake in clients. Clients, it’s nice place to interact with relaxed providers in a setting of cameraderie but unless you’re headed to Portland or Vncouver, very few Seattle ladies are currently advertising there.
Cost:
Free for providers and clients to have a basic membership, paid for premium. I’ve never paid for it so I don’t know payment options or price. Providers can see VIP details of their own reviews though they may have to spend some time working with the mods to attatch the right reviews to the right profile. Clients can get premium membership by posting a review of a new lady but not by posting a second review of the same lady.
Difficulty:
No verification needed, only you might need to contact the moderators if you’re just signing up in order to connect your reviews and profile with your account. You cannot set up your own profile, the first client to review you fills out all the details, meaning if you’d like to explore this option, choose a client you like and trust to set you situation up for you.
Region:
International
Vibe:
TER is run by clients, for clients. Providers can post in the discussion forums but they’re not sorted very well so you’ll be interacting with people you may never meet. The review structure is the most contentious part. Providers who don’t offer the full range of services including unprotected oral sex, PIV sex, kissing, etc cannot be rated higher than 7/10, meaning the most mind blowing, earth shattering, life changing erotic bodyrub you’ve ever had won’t be ranked as high as a mediocre blowjob. Also, clients are rewarded for new reviews of new girls so it encourages many short interactions instead of long term relationships which goes against the grain for many.
How to:
Providers who are not yet on TER: it’s out there and it can work for you. Create your profile, share it on your website or in your email footer, and keep an eye on it. This is the only site where reviews can be your friend so you need to be proactive. Encourage one new client per month to write a review; it bumps you to the top of search results and will often generate a new client or two. If you are one who doesn’t like reviews, make it clear beforehand because they are difficult to remove.
Clients can help providers here by writing respectful, moderate reviews of ladies you know. You can write more than one review of the same lady. I suggest one new review per year since dynamics can change over the year. I also suggest emailing your provider the text of your review prior to submitting it to make sure it doesn’t upset her or reveal something she’d rather keep between you two. As far as using it yourself, the search function is reasonably useful and while the Seattle advertising section is slow, it picked up after TRB went down and may do so again in the next few weeks.
And as a footnote: Providers have been advised to advertise in the ‘professional services: massage’ and ‘personals’ sections of backpage. If you liked the immediacy of backpage, you can look there for familiar faces. I personally am going to move towards SLIXA for several reasons: it’s reasonably priced, the website looks good, and it’s owned by a former sex worker. I’ll be directing my fellow providers there and to the personals sections of backpage.
I’d write more but it’s quite late and I’m tired. Please feel free to leave comments below with your thoughts on the events and alternatives. I’m going to publish now and proofread Saturday, sorry for any mistakes.
One last thing: Our community rallied immediately. We are so fortunate to be in a place where crises like this bring us together instead of fracturing an already vulnerable community. I’m hoping we can ride this wave and move forward.