One of the most debated topics among sex workers is “Can you be a sex worker and have multiple identities? Is it ethical and right?”

My answer isn’t yes or no; I believe that having multiple identities is a sex worker’s personal choice. What’s right for one woman, is wrong for another. The better question to ask is “Why would a sex worker have/want multiple identities?” And furthermore, I think it’s important to ask, “How does a sex worker prevent them from conflicting with one another?”

As any well designed escort website, having multiple identities has to be a thought out and there has to be a reason to having more than one persona.

What are the Reasons Why Women Have Multiple Personas?

Usually, a woman who offers more than one service find that her services offered don’t mix well together went put on one website. If a she is a sensual massage provider, and she wants to offer escort services, she may have decided to create a new person with an entirely different website was the best way to differentiate massage and companion services. Why would this even be necessary? Most likely, she doesn’t want her massage clientèle to think that they could see her for companionship at her sensual services rates.

Another reason could be that she has personal issues with escorting and feels that in order to make the work worthwhile, she wants to command a much higher rate with multiple hour minimums. Thus, her regular incall sensual services aren’t compatible with her companion services, and multiple identities helps maintain the distinction between her businesses.

So then, if a provider has two different personas and websites, does she ever cross the personas?

The majority of women don’t mix their services. There are a few that choose to reveal their other identity with established, long-term clients. But once a woman begins to blur the lines between her personas with her clients, she will encounter boundary issues.

Scenarios When Multiple Personas Are Okay

• Multiple Hour Escort & Dominatrix
• Multiple Hour Escort & Sensual Services Provider
• Adult Entertainer (Pornstar/Actress) & Escort Persona

Scenarios Where Multiple Personas Aren’t Okay

• Several Escort personalities with various price ranges ($250, $400, $1000)
• Several Sensual personas
• Several Domme persona
• Any combination of personas that cause drama and fight with one another on forums
• When a woman is well-known her area and is easily identifiable.

How Does A Sex Worker Keep Personas Separate?

Well, that it’s in the marketing. If a woman offers sensual services in her home area, then she may want to focus her escort persona on seeing out of town and non-hobbyist men. The escort person will not and should not post/ advertise on message boards. She has to pay for premium advertising on a websites such as EROS or Cityvibe. Every website she has should have a completely different design, photos and marketing strategy. Another option is that her escort persona travels and she isn’t available as an escort in her local area.

If a woman offers BDSM/Fetish services and also has an escort persona, those two are also easy to distinguish because the advertising and marketing outlets are completely different.

How Does A Sex Worker Maintain Anonymity?

As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, the website of any persona should follow the model of any well-marketed, professionally designed escort website. It should have clean design, easy navigation, simple copy and have the proper search engine optimization. Why? Because it’s the first step in maintaining anonymity between personas!

• The design of website and tone of the writing should not match a woman’s main persona, it’s the first thing people look for when identifying/outing someone.
• A woman will also need different photos, even having them taken with different photographers is not out of the norm. Locations and lighting go a long way. Different photographs are another way to distinguish two personalities; each persona has their own lingerie and outfits. If a woman can pull off fake hair and wigs, that works amazingly well. If proper compartmentalization, discovery is minimal. It’s all in the marketing and presentation.
• A woman should have separate email addresses and contact information for each persona. It’s a pain in the butt cheese, but if a woman is going to go to all the work to have multiple sites, it’s one more step she has to incorporate into her business. It would be an insult to be outed by someone who was just able to Google a phone number.

How Are Women with Multiple Identities Outed?

The chances of this happening is very low if a woman keeps the identities compartmentalized well. But it’s not impossible. When a woman is outed, she usually is responsible for it. A woman fighting with her other persona in order to generate business on a board will find this strategy will only blow up in her face. Board owners & members pay attention to drama and guess what, they also log IP address and access points. The second most common way for a woman to be outed is by a hardcore hobbyists, these are not regular men who seek the services of sex workers, they live in the “hobby world” and have more reviews than most women on the board. In their free time, they crawl boards and look for Eros ad numbers/names. They then post the information.

What Does A Sex Worker Do When Multiple Identities Are Discovered?

When this happens and if it’s true, I believe a woman should OWN IT. She can say, “Yes, it is me, but you know what you see WHY I have two separate identities, there is no service overlap”. And therefore, no breach of “ethics”. If the proof isn’t conclusive, then a woman may choose to deny it. It only becomes a big deal if the provider makes it a big deal.

Is there anything else to consider in having multiple identities?

Yes, please keep in mind, that the more personas a woman has, the more time, effort and money she will have to invest in each. So plan accordingly. If it takes 16 hours ever three months to update ads, refresh website copy and add new photos, that time will double with each personality. At this point, some women have their webmasters help them maintain their sites by managing banner exchanges, reciprocal links, photo changes and even ghost writing blog entries. In an industry where time is money, it’s not a bad idea.

I am very happy that many of you are jumping on the social media train. Many savvy sex workers and adult industry business people are using it effectively to network with others in the adult industry, but some people are misusing it.

Social media has a place in adult business, it is for networking, promoting your books, educating mainstream audiences and developing new concepts. Anyone who uses them is very careful about content. They don’t put racy photos on it or link it to escort sites.

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I will keep this short and sweet. I have learned through the webmaster grapevine that The Erotic Review and BigDoggie.net are going to be banning all websites in the Rare-Escorts.com group. For the past few weeks, I have seen advertising on Date-Check, BigDoggie and a plethora of other sites for EscortSite.com, a highly customizable “free” escort web hosting service. . EscortSite.com is not something new, it is actually owned and developed by the RARE-ESCORTS conglomerate to step up their appeal. While Some people love them, but I don’t. I created a fake test site and played around with it awhile, just to see how great it would actually be. But to my dismay, it was just a better interface for the same crappy site. Here are my complaints:

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As an escort, your first mode of communication for scheduling appointments with a client is email. For a few, it’s phone (phone ladies - I suggested you got to email).

You can tell a lot about a person through their first email communication to you. If they send an email or submit your request form with all the information on it, you are most like good to go for screening and seeing that person. But if the send you an email that goes something like this:

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I firmly believe that every escort should hire marketing professionals for web design, photography and image development strategy.

Every person who enters the world of escorting knows that is was a growth and learning process. Most likely, they started with a local ad on a free board that turned into a presence on a review board and ultimately became their first paid Eros ad. But this post isn’t for the “newbie” or part-timer. It’s for the seasoned professional who has been in the business for a while.

There are lots of resources - blogs, ladies only forums and books that has tips on how to develop, grow and cultivate your business in to a lucrative endeavor. They are fantastic resources, but they don’t hold the secret to making $250,000 to $500,000 per year.

Do you want to know how the women that make over $200,000 per year do make that sort of money?

They pay for it.

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There is no reason that an adult entertainment professional can’t be their own webmaster/webmistress when it come to simple, everyday tasks.

Top Five Things An Adult Entertainer Should Be Able To Do

1. Make Simple Copy Changes. There is no reason you shouldn’t be able to change a few words, a page or add a legal disclaimer. You site should be designed in a way that allows you to change text yourself.
2. Add Your Own Photos. With all the available content management systems, WordPress plug-ins and Flash gallery applications, there is no reason that the site you paid to have designed should not allow you to change photos. You should not have to wait three days or three weeks for photo updates.
3. Add Your Own Banners. Link and banner exchanges are an important part of the adult entertainment web world, especially when it comes search engine optimization, search engine marketing and traffic sharing. You should be able to upload a banner and link it to the affiliated website quickly. You should also know how to embed banner codes (as some directories request).
4. You should know how to access your websites hosting controls and CPANEL. Even if you never use it, you should have access to your domain registration and the place in which your files are hosted. If you don’t ask your webmaster. It is often something like http://www.YourWebsite.com/CPANEL or http://168.308.30.1.
5. Have Access to a website traffic monitoring program. You should be able to look at factual statistical data that shows where your web traffic is coming from. Some webmasters can fake this information, so it is best to use a reliable third part source, such as Google Analytics. Once per month, run your site at Alexa.com and see what sites link to yours. This is invaluable when you are paying for advertising. This lets you know if it is.

Other Things to Consider

Also, you should have a clear understanding of billing practices of your webmaster/webmistress. Every design professional should tell you whether you are billed hourly or by the update. They should let you know if any minimum fees apply.

As an adult entertainer, it is your job to be savvy about business expenses. Web design & maintainance costs rank right up there with advertising costs. Is paying a designer $200 to update one photo set worth a the cost of two months on Eros? To the majority of girls no, you can manage this yourself. One half hour resizing in iPhoto, Corel or Photoshop and fifteen minutes uploading is something you can do yourself.

Exceptions To The Rule

The one thing you should not attempt, unless you had excellent training, is changing your site’s CSS/HTML/PHP code. You could bring down your whole site structure, so if you want design changes, contact your webmaster, he or she will do these for you.

If you are a professional who works a lot and or maintains an pay site, then it is a wise investment for you to have your webmaster be responsible for banner exchanges, photo changes and continual content updates are time consuming. Larger scale sites are better off handled by a secondary person so that you are not bogged down smaller, less important tasks. In this industry, cash is king and time is money. So use your best judgment in what you pay for. It is still important for you to know all the above information though.

In closing, remember, you own your site, you paid for it. Your webmaster/mistress has no right to hold files, domains or your blog hostage for any reason. If you wish to move or switch companies, they should facilitate the process in a timely, professional manner.

A Girl’s Guide to Escorting: Taking a Hiatus or Entering an Exclusive Relationship With a Client

Question: I have been in the sex industry for three years now. I am thinking of being mutually exclusive with one of my clients but I have put a lot of work into my website and marketing. I want to test the arrangement, but if it doesn’t work out, I don’t want to loose all the work? What should I do?

Answer: It’s a great question and it pertains not only to mutually exclusive relationships, but also to sex workers who just need a break to pursue other business, school or personal goals.

Have your Webmaster back up your entire website, save it to a private folder so it can easily be reinstated if you want to come back. Make sure the main page of your site (the INDEX) is still existent.

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Unless you work as a sex worker or are a frequent client, you’re probably unfamiliar with the term “provider.”

The term “provider” was developed by clients of sex workers (also known as “hobbyists”) who write detailed stories of their experiences with sex workers on discussion-oriented websites known as Review Boards. The term became commonplace in the adult world, replacing terms like sex worker or prostitute because the activities involved were not as simple as, “sexual services given in exchange for money”. The term also gave the industry a gender-neutral term to describe all sex workers; as sex workers can be male, female, couples and /or transgender. They can also be straight, gay or bisexual.

Providers fulfill a variety of sexual needs. Often these sexual needs are not even sexual in nature, except for the person who has the need. For example, services such as foot fetish, BDSM, tantra, role-play, sensual massage, et cetera, don’t have entail penetration and may not even include sexual release. A provider offers sexual relief for their client who is unable to attain sexual fulfillment any other way.

- Callie Simms for Sex Work101.com