This was in the Sun today. They've been doing some research. Apparently agencies are being overrun with applications from laid off loan officers and bank tellers.
I find that hard to believe. I've never understood why anyone would want to work for an agency now that the Internet and TER have given rise to the Golden Age of the Independent. But that kind of number for a single agency almost shrieks "not true."
There is no where near that kind of increase in the TER review column. Wonder if EROS and City Vibe are showing a big increase?
Maybe the closure of CraigsList has something to do with a stampede to the agencies but I still suspect the guy they interviewed for this statistic was grossly inflating his application numbers.
The whole argument by the brain-trust Allison Schrager in the article about providers not lowering their prices in hard times but offering more(time, acts, 2 hrs for 1) sounds suspiciously like when the housing bust first started in and builders refused to lower their prices but were throwing in all sorts of extras(granite countertops, swimming pool, free HOA for a year,etc). Didn't work in the long run.
I think a lot of the boom and price run ups in escorting can be correlated to the housing bubble/bust. People who otherwise couldn't afford the hobby at a high level were extracting large sums of money from their homes and blowing it on partying. Those days are over. People only left with their incomes/savings/pensions to support any hobbying.
The media tends to portray working for an escort agency as highly lucrative, safe, and easy. I can understand the appeal to somebody brand new to this. 40 apps every day - "The majority of whom are women running from the wreckage of lost finance jobs". That I find very hard to believe.
I liked the stat about women rich enough to afford a private jet. 20% of them had paid for sex, not that much lower of a percentage than men.
Even more, I wonder how this reporter got Stacie and Rebecca to speak on the record about their business. Did she just phone the numbers on their web sites and say: "Hi, I'm from the Las Vegas Sun and would like to ask you some questions about your business. Such as, how much do you make per hour and how many clients do you see in a week? Don't worry, I'm not an undercover IRS agent." Also, are "Stacie" and "Rebecca" working names or real names. (I searched for and could find no reviews for a "Stacie" and "Rebecca" turned up two girls, with the most recent review in 2007.) Did the reporter say "I will protect your alias by using your real name" or did she say "I will protect your alias by using another alias?"
Once again, the ubiquitous Amanda Brooks is quoted. She was extensively interviewed in that CNBC show a while back. I haven't read her "Internet Escorts Handbook" but I have read her web site and have come to the conclusion that she is absolutely full of crap. (Example: she says a provider should never allow reviews of herself to be posted.)
40 applicants a day to work for an agency? If that number were true, that's all we would need here in Las Vegas, 40 more girls (a day!) doing bait and switch, upsell, and cash and dash. 40 more girls (a day!) that hate themselves for doing the job, and hate you for calling them to do the job.
I suppose some new girls could be coming from lost finance type jobs. I remember the first girl I ever saw her in Las Vegas. It was before I moved here, and before I had ever heard of TER. I was staying at the Orleans and called one of the escort agency ads in the phone book. They sent a very good looking, petite black girl. She was very sweet. It was just after 9-11, and she said she had been laid off from a credit card billing/processing job. She was great, BBBJ and mish/cowgirl, $ for the agency and $$$ for her. The next time I was in town I called the same agency and asked for her. She was no longer available, so they sent somebody else, and my experience was more typical of a Las Vegas agency, which is to say, a shitty experience.
Abigail Goldman is well known within certain sexworker rights circles and was thoroughly vetted by several people directly related to SWOP http://www.scapa-lv.org/ prior to anyone speaking with her. The interviews came from referrals by well-known providers who knew that she was "safe" to speak with and the exact view point she would be taking prior to speaking with her. You would be correct in assuming that nobody would have spoken to her otherwise.
Rebecca and Stacie are "real" providers with reviews and yes an alias name is used for the sake of not alerting the unmentionables. I will leave it entirely up to them as to whether they choose to come forward or not. Abigail spoke to over 25 different ladies at all different levels in order to compile this information and to cooberate it. Yes I was one of those ladies she spoke with!
As for reviews, I know many of you would not believe this but there are many ladies at both ends of the price point who do not need reviews to make their business work for them. I think it just goes to how you choose to run your business and what works well for you. Amanda Brooks was a very well respected working provider in Dallas for many years who chose to not allow reviews and did very well without them. There are many others just like her out there so to each her own whichever way a lady decides to make her business work for her. I do think that because we are in a city more prone for ROB's and fakes we tend to be a bit more jaded in our views of ladies without reviews. I must admit that I get my fair share of dates from EROS and most of them know absolutely nothing about TER (until I meet them of course) and I explain to them how lucky they were that they found someone "real" and what could have happened.
As for the agency exaggeration I too find this a little difficult to believe. I guess those that choose to work for an agency are different from those who choose to have reviews or to not have reviews. Every lady works in her own comfort zone and the way she chooses is not for us to say!
for the author’s conclusions to have any statistical validity. To her credit, she candidly acknowledges that it is a “guessing game.”
Nonetheless, it is intriguing to postulate that there is a $650 "tipping point" with ladies at that range being most affected by the economy, while the high and low end ladies have not felt much impact yet.
Articles like this and the recent CNBC special typically tend to glamorize the incomes of the elite companions without accurately reflecting how very few ladies make this much. No way that Rebecca’s $15,000 per month minimum gross income could be viewed as an average for “indoor” providers. That has got to be way up at the high end. In the smaller TER world, I have not seen anyone who has a $2000 minimum, other than a very few porn stars and I think they get very few takers at that price.
There is a major thread on the GD Board as to provider incomes, and the estimates were all over the place and based purely on personal knowledge of the posters. I used the only data available – the study by the Love Goddess which specified average yearly male partners and average yearly acts of intercourse – to project gross incomes of TER registered providers and that data projected a gross ranging from $44,000 to $120,000. While I had to make some guesses, I think the projection is at least in the ball park.
Rebecca would be way over the average and would fall into the elite category. So my message to the 40 applicants a day to that single agency is, don’t think Rebecca’s success is typical.
Well I did say over 25 not knowing the exact number as it was a generalization. I do know that she did her homework and I agree with much of what she printed knowing some firsthand information about the business myself.
As to your comment about the CNBC special and this article glamorizing the incomes of the elite companions I will just say that for the most part the entire world of escorting is usually depicted in such a deplorable way that any publicity that is positive is a giant step forward. There have been very few articles or specials on the high end when people like Diane Sawyer are involved and they usually try to make us all out as streetwalkers, druggies and losers so I for one applaud the article as it depicts us more as businesswomen than victims.
As to your assumption about gross incomes and such I would have to completely disagree with you in your generalizations. Las Vegas is a completely different animal than other cities and most of what is being spoken about on the GD board is from ladies outside of LV which imho does not apply to LV. I won’t get into specifics here as most ladies keep their incomes to their own specific little circle but suffice it to say that before the economic crisis many mid range LV ladies were pulling in well over 15k without even having to blink. My guess is that most ladies just don't publicize the truth about how much they earn in order to not draw any unwanted attention to themselves and can you blame them. Most well established ladies had more appointments than they could handle to be quite honest before this slowdown and some have not seen much of an adverse affect on their personal business. Remember that I say some not all here! Has the business slowed down well yes of course for most but the average income earned is still far and above what one could make flipping burgers at McDonalds or working a desk job as a secretary. This is even taking in account advertising fees for some and general personal grooming necessities that do cost us money.
It is not for me to say what most women are making these days as quite frankly it is all over the board dependent entirely upon where they live and what rates they are charging but I know for some their business has not changed much. I think hobbyists are less inclined to see new ladies and mostly are sticking with the tried and true women who have established reputations. Some are still doing well and some are not but most are still doing well enough to continue on in this line of work.
I happen to frequant a few gentlemans clubs on a regular basis ( little do they know , I'm no gentleman ) and the influx of new talent is amazing . Mostley from the realestate and finance sectors . Its to bad there are fewer gentleman and not as much money around these places any more . The regular ladies are a bit put off by the new compatition , can't blaim them
The gross income projections I made were not projections about LV ladies. They were projections as to the average gross incomes of registered TER ladies, a category which would cover all 50 states and I guess London, based on the data supplied to Love Goddess, data that did not directly address this question and required interpretation by me.
But the gross income projections were not subjective assumptions by me, they were projections driven by the data.
No doubt many ladies make more but I was looking for the average. And of course without some data as to the expenses incurred, the gross figure is kind of meaningless. One lady on the GD proffered a $50,000 yearly expenses. If that is average (I'm guessing its high but she was in an incall drive market), then the net for the average provider is not that great.
But again I make no assumptions about the LV market other than that Rebecca's reported gross was much higher than the average TER provider nationwide.
If you are interested in some of the broader questions about TER providers you might want to take a look at her study. She is going to do the guys next (yike).
but given the fact that none of the ladies in my personal circle of friends participated, I think it may be fair to say that it would not be a true and real projection of the entire industry as a whole. Especially where LV is in a category of it's own. It is only a projection of those who decided to participate and my guess is that those of us who were very busy during this fact gathering mission did not therefore the numbers may be a bit off. Just as it has been said that Abigail needed to speak to more than 25 ladies to get real numbers, the Love Goddess needed to speak to many ladies in many different range of levels and locations in order to get factual data that represents the inustry as a whole.
No worries as it is all conjecture anyway and one will never know the real truth as only we ourselves know our own truth!
I just think overall the story was positive, the business is progressing into the mainstream in a more positive manner and that can't be all bad for any of us!
Sara I have always been impressed with your beauty and each time you post, more impressed with you intelligence and knowledge. Some day I my hit a jackpot and we will meet. Have a great holiday.
Forty a day does seem a little high, but it makes sense to me that girls just entering the business, coming from whatever endeavor that is going through hard times, would start off by applying to an agency. As TER members, we know that being independent is the best for both the girls and their clients, but a girl who is brand new to the business would probably not know how to go about being an independent provider, whereas working for an agency is relatively easy. Almost all of my favorite independents were with an agency at one time, either before or after I met them.
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