How to Set Your Price (or not) as a Sex Worker

The question is simple.  How much should a Sex Worker charge for their time?  I am thinking about this a lot right now as I have a personal dilemma: at what price do I set myself?

And that is exactly what I am talking about.  How much am I worth?

“I don’t get out of bed for less than $10,000 a day.”

Super model Linda Evangelista was much reviled for her comment, “I don’t get out of bed for less than $10,000.”  But why?  She was just stating a market reality.

Supply and Demand.  That is the foundational interaction in Economic Theory.  The price is simply a function of the two.  The idea was founded on the sale of a fictional widget.  Perfectly understood utility, features, construction, use.  Transparency.

None of these factors are really at play here.  As with all complex goods, and even more so, with services, transparency is a pipe dream.  In Sex Work, the challenge is even greater.

For one, most escorts are “face in”, meaning you can’t see their faces.  I understand this choice completely.  My choice has been to be face out.  We all make choices.  For me, the choice was to reject utterly the idea that society should judge the profession of Sex Work.  That we still have a debate about whether Sex Work is work is a measure of how far we have to go.

I am also not so sure that legalization would make much of a difference.  Some, yes.  But not everyone would decide to go “face out” if the entire world overnight legalized prostitution.  There is so much intimacy in the work, and even if most of that intimacy is “assumed” and therefore created in the mind of the client, the fact remains that it lingers.  It is definitional.

When we are intimate with someone, we don’t want it written all over the world.  What happens behind closed doors still happens behind closed doors.  I am a client.  I have been, and I intend to continue to be.  I am aware of just how much privilege I have to have not just to afford to be a client, but also to allow myself such a profound indulgence.  

My only nod to modesty in this regard is that I am intentional about the people I see.  I mean that I have a “reason” beyond the sex.  Convenient?  Perhaps just so much post-facto justification.  But for all the times I have seen providers, I only ever had two orgasms–and even then, I wasn’t sure (they assured me I had).  It is preposterous.  I know most clients probably expect an orgasm, but for me that isn’t the point. I can do that anytime. [As a budding dominatrix, I also don’t let my clients cum].  It is the intensity.

And the intensity is the value.  And intensity is insanely intimate.  And this kind of insane intimacy requires vulnerability especially on the part of the client, but really with both.  And there is so much noise gone—there is no pre-amble, no complexity.  We know why we are here.  And yet, as with many clients, I “add back” some of the trappings that we might associate with comfort, habit, intimacy.

These little wrinkles, these forms of complexity, are measures to me of their worth.  And when I think about what kind of Sex Worker I want to be, what kind of work I want to do, these considerations play.

But the truth is that my kink is human connection.  What price that?  And how can an aspirant submissive ever ask for such a thing?  One cannot.  But what I want as a sub is a direct reflection of what I want to give as a domme.  Is what you give, the gift, the source of the price?

What do I want to give?  Who do I want to work with?  What is my service offering?  What kind of client do I want to attract?

When I have posed this question to some of my current and future colleagues the answer has usually been about how rich they are…what they can afford to pay…that they are generous.  In a way, this should go without saying.  This is a luxury good.  I get it, subsistence sex work is not created or delivered as a luxury good.  That isn’t the discussion at hand.  What is at hand is really a question about the price of self-respect.  When a client sees a provider and she seems like a “good deal” in the sense raised above, you can’t tell me that on some level, the client doesn’t wonder, ‘what am I not getting?’ or even worse, ‘what is less about her than about the others?’

Okay.  Certain cities are cheaper than others.  Certain countries are cheaper than others.  Certain kinks attract a price premium.  I have no interest in brown showers, blood play, needle play.  These practices often attract a price premium. Toilet slaves will often pay extra to eat sxxt. [Yes, you read that right].  Is it the scarcity value of the person who is willing to do this, or is it something else…that this practice requires more of ‘me’ as the provider, sometimes quite literally?

I love adult babies.  Not surprising.  An adult baby might just be my preferred client.  Also, not surprising.  Leave out the poop, and we have a relationship.  Many, many dommes refuse to work with adult babies.  It may be based on a misunderstanding, but the fact is there is a market distortion.  Does this mean that the price for adult-baby serving dommes is higher per hour than it is for other providers—a function of the rarity, a function of the extra equipment in a studio?

It turns out that while rarely you might find price parity between a domme catering to adult babies and a more mainstream one, most of the time, the adult-baby catering domme charges less.  Makes no sense.  Even less sense when one considers that in one study I read, the adult baby is most often a senior executive, a successful businessman, and with a higher average income than a regular kinkster.  What’s going on?

This is the distorting value of social context.  When a Sex Worker is in the sweet spot of chic for a patriarchal society, just being a hot girl, a “call girl”, then she will often attract the highest prices of all.  But for a Sex Worker who is catering to a fetish that is outside of even the fringe of acceptable sexuality, she is tarnished just as her clients are.  I think that is what is going on.

In Economics, this is what is known as a market imperfection.  But what we are seeing as we drop through these examples, is that the entire landscape of sex work is characterized by these market imperfections.

Sometimes you see in the ad copy of a dominatrix that she is not a “kink dispenser”.  Meaning she doesn’t want you telling her what your fantasy is so that she can give it to you.  While this might seem strange, and as a client, I have yet to really ask anyone I have seen for something specific, they almost always ask in detail about my own needs/desires.  And not surprisingly, we end up generally staying within the boundaries of the terrain I have mapped out.  At least that is what seems to happen.  Driven no doubt in part by a desire for repeat business.

I don’t mind being a “kink dispenser”. I don’t like needy clients, and thus far, I have found that only men come across in this way. My women clients know what they want but they are much more gentle about asking for it. But I will do what you have come for, to a certain extent, as long as it lands within my sweet spot. We both want it this way.

I certainly want repeat business.  I won’t get very far as a dominatrix if I don’t build up a regular base of clients.  My reputation would suffer if they don’t come back to me, but also, I won’t make a living.  And that is the point.

These factors are all part of setting a price.  Time is the base factor.  But do you price for a service?  Does a Sex Worker who provides oral sex have that like a Chinese Menu item?  Some surely do.  I am in the world of the hourly worker.  But hourly price can be complicated with minimum time booked, with discounts for longer bookings.

I charge less to women and trans clients than I do men.  That is my anti-privilege discount.  I figure that it takes a woman or a trans person more effort to generate that cash, and so politics has crept into my pricing.  That has nothing to do with the nature of supply or demand.  So much for core economic theory.

What are some other obvious considerations?  How hot you are as a provider?  Of course there is some variability in what constitutes “hot”, but it can also be universally understood.  Tall, conventionally pretty, female.  

Race, tragically, is also a factor.  But so too are quirks or fetishes.  Big boobs.  A big ass.  Some clients love heft.  Trans people are less numerous in the upper echelons, but that is a reflection of our general rarity, and there are some very, very successful trans sex workers.  Apparently, there are also an awful lot of trans sex workers at the subsistence end of sex work, a sad reflection on the heavy discrimination that trans people face.

Level of education, if not just as a proxy of seeming or being posh, also matters.  That is why you will see discussions of how to come off as posh in some of the chat groups.  Education is another form of privilege. 

But I am not sure how much price is a differentiator.  As a client, if you have decided you want it, or need it, and have the means to pay for it, my sense is that you will see what you want to see.  

I see people I can’t afford to see.  There are only a few times I have come across SWs who are “out of my league” financially.  I don’t mean that literally.  I mean it in the sense that I would not feel the value equation was there.  This has to do with my own relationship with money.  Not at all of their value.  And that is an interesting thought.  Because the “market” in this sense is not being defined by an objectively understood notion of value for money.  It is all perception.

In other words, I will pay a rate for someone who I feel is good value.  And that does not mean cheap, or good value as in a “bargain”.  None of the people I have ever seen would one be able to say that about.  Least of all me.  As a client, I save up to see a companion, sometimes for many months.  I don’t bargain.  I try to figure out what it will be for a time together, and we settle into a pattern, and then I wait, however long I need, until I can afford that amount again…

I would be in big trouble if I didn’t have a limit on how much money I could spend.  It is a beautiful and natural break, and the time hiatus it imposes, keeps me from falling prey to my own addictive personality.  And thankfully, the providers I have seen, have neither minded only hearing from me six months later, nor picking up again as if we last saw each yesterday.  And this might be down to some incredible note taking, a skill that I also use, as it fosters connection.

It’s all a bit Goldilocks isn’t it?  Don’t price too high or you will price yourself out of the market.  Go too low and you will be looked down upon and the same outcome will result.  Fail to understand your value, or your client’s perception of value, and you will again price it wrong.

Do I charge as much the people I see charge me?  Would that be disrespectful?  After all, they are younger than me, hotter than me, more experienced than me, and they were born into being female and have had a lifetime of learning how to use their power…things I just don’t have.

But at the same time, I have other things.  Unique things.  Can I understand those?  Can I offer them up?  Resounding yes.  Easier said than done.

What of my colleagues? What of the people I see myself? Do I dare price myself at a rate higher than them? I dear friend pondering this same issue of how much she should charge noted to me, “I have too much to lose. Rate XXX isn’t worth it to me. I won’t do it for less than YYY.” And that is about her own sense of self-worth.

In the end I have set a price.  I charge more than I get charged by the people I see.  I was sorely tempted to charge less, but I also know what client I want. And my former colleagues, peers, could afford me easily if they chose to. I can’t imagine setting a price lower than what my corporate charge out rate was. What I am offering now is so much more divine.  The challenge in this concept is value creation. In my old life, I generated wealth for people and was rewarded for that. What am I doing now? Giving clients a good time? Changing their lives? A bit of both? What’s that worth?

Mainly I charge a rate that feels in line with what I would expect any qualified professional to charge…like a lawyer, like someone else who feels like a person you will want in doses.  It is a treat.  A luxury.  And I don’t want a client who thinks otherwise.

The price has to hurt.  But at the same time, and even more importantly, my price is a measure of how I see myself.  There is a point at which it becomes “just not worth it” to charge below.  I don’t even want to be close to that point, because to dip below it is another way of saying, ‘subsistence sex worker’.  That’s not why I am here. Will I do different prices for different services? You bet.

The things I really, really love to do most will be charged less. And for the rest of you lucky devils who meet me at play parties…only there, we do as I please, how I please, if I please, when I please, how much I please.

So, in the end, it is as simple as that.  I charge what I charge because that is what I think it is worth.  I got there by considering all the factors elucidated in this post, and no, there are no discounts, there is no discussion, no negotiation.  Why?  Because it is my self-worth we are talking about.  Actually, we aren’t even talking about it.  And we won’t ever.  It is also about your self-worth.  And we can talk about that.  All you want.

And in the end, that is the kind of domme I wish to become.  The kind that talks to you about self-worth.  The kind that helps you develop and deepen your sense of self-worth.  Your purpose.

And what if no client ever steps forward to pay my full rate? Tough. Maybe my mind will change…but it is more likely that I will stick with it. And why? That is business suicide. Because I am doing this for me. And my price is a reflection of what it will take me to really indulge a client, to really work with them deeply.

What price would anyone put on that?  At that point it becomes a question of delivery—can I deliver the goods?  I can see a client reaching for that question.  But here it is.  Change does not come from the outside and in, it comes from the inside.  We cannot change unless we want to.  To choose this path is the deepest form of self-love, even if it hurts.

How do you put a price on that?  Every client needs to have an intuitive understanding of the investment they are willing to make in themselves.  Most don’t ever realise that is what is at stake here.  But it is for those clients who I set a price for.

And if you are a client, would you ever want to see a provider who doesn’t value herself that much?