updated 5/11/2024
So, you've decided to delve into sex work! You've given it some thought and for whatever reason this feels like the right choice for you. Let's address the elephant in the room first: Sex work is work!
Somewhere along the lines, somebody told you this would be easy. You and your coworker at Starbucks found yourselves still at work an hour after close scrubbing a broken coffee grinder and you heard her mutter to herself "fuck this man, I'm ready to start an OnlyFans. I'm taking feet pics or whatever as soon as I get home," solidifying your belief that sex work is a magical land where one converts self-respect into dollars and "gets that bag."
Well, lovely human, I have some terrible, terrible news. Unfortunately sex work is not easy. In my time in this industry I have 100% seen a few models sort of "show up and get rich," but I do honestly suspect that they actually did a lot of absolute black magic puppetry behind the scenes that I know nothing about. Either making themselves so accessible via time spent chatting that they gave up their personal lives, spending so much time online masturbating that they physically injured themselves, or literally just marketing all day and barely making content at all (and thus dealing with virtual stacks of hate mail- no thanks).
In short: If they're making it look easy they're just good at their jobs.
Sex work is a grind. Sex work is a self-employed wild west fiesta where there is no union to protect you, no handbook to consult, no manager to check in with, and no ceiling on your earnings.* So, let's get the first few hard things out of the way so you can get to that point yourself.
*strangely there are exceptions to each of these points-- but we'll get to that.
Before you do anything at all and I mean anything as in make an OnlyFans, make a new Instagram-- ANYTHING, I want you to first look at your calendar and find a chunk of time that you can devote to beginning your sex work journey.
If you have a day job don't quit, seriously. Ignore any recruiter, mentor, guru etc. that tells you step one is quitting your day job. This is a tactic to hype you up and it might very well work, but you also might not make ends meet and find yourself in a desperate situation- which absolutely fucks you but will delight your potential manager. Seriously, keep your vanilla job until the day you can look back and solidly say that your last AT LEAST three months of earnings were higher in sex work than they were in normie-land. Six months would be ideal.
Being new on most platforms comes with tons of traffic. Usually you will have a "new" badge and the site will push you to the front and center of their site. DO get excited about these earnings! They can be really, really high which is why you need to set aside some time for this.* DON'T* get a new apartment, lower your work hours, or buy something expensive based on these earnings. They almost definitely will go down before they go back up. That's normal, so you should expect it and plan for it.
So, back to that calendar. If you have unused paid time off at work, some evening activities you can skip for a while, or basically any way at all you can set aside as much of a 1-2 week period as possible do that first!
Ok I know we already addressed the elephant in the room earlier, but it turns out this room is full of elephants, so here's another: Sex work is fucking dangerous. I don't care what facet you are in, you just inched a little bit closer to somebody wanting to hurt you in some way. I know that sounds really scary, so please keep in mind that the odds are still in your favor of being totally fine and never getting hurt- but they just shifted in a way that you need to pay attention to.
Here are some absolutely unbreakable rules:
These are some of the most tempting rules to break, seriously I get it. Maybe a model told you her real name is Samantha and you now feel like you should say yours back. Okay, but maybe "Samantha" gets angry with you later and leaks your information all over Twitter and that vanilla job you kept terminates you. You're free to share whatever information you like, I personally have told a handful of fellow sex workers my real name, they are friends of mine. Even then, my information was accidentally leaked by one. Trust isn’t always about intention, be aware of the mistakes that can be made by others, not just yourself.
So now that you know what not to do, here is what to do: