“I had booked hundreds of calls for other people. I had hundreds of conversations with sex workers about what to say, what not say, how to stay out of jail and how to keep themselves safe. All that flew right out of my head, and I did everything all wrong.”
Oh I went and did it, I started a fan club. See I actually do listen to you…. sometimes. You can now have direct access to chat with me, your divine Trance Mistress. Its a pretty nifty site and has a TON of features. The customer service reputation is A+ so its a great way to get in close personal contact with ME.
As i’m just getting started there is no subscription price yet, just follow me for all the free content and exclusive offers etc. A subscription is coming at some point but get in now for all kinds of awesome stuff and the ability to chat directly with me. If you are a long time fan you know, i do not chat often as i’m so busy making content and working on my farm but i love this site, so its really your gain.
If you don’t have a Loyal Fans Account use MY LINK to sign up, it helps me grow on the site. Click my button to create an account
I’ve been around the block a few times. I have my mp3 sessions available for sale in several places. I’ve opted to not put them on some platforms, I’ve pulled products and ended relationships with others if I felt they were being shady. I’ve always been very vocal about it when I feel a platform is not dealing with content creators fairly or ethically. I feel those people should be called out in hopes that others don’t get taken for a ride and platforms will think twice about acting unethically.
Enter Sensual Mistress. You might not know of them. They are a website that deals exclusively with Hypno-Dommes and Hypnosis Mp3s. When they first hit the scene I was reluctant to get involved. They are European-based and at the time they arrived the banking looked to be in Cyprus, a hotbed of Russian money laundering. The site is run by a Hypno-Domme who goes by Samba and the site didn’t look professional, it still doesn’t. I begged off joining, for years.
At the end of last year a colleague of mine, a top selling Hypno-domme, with a sterling reputation convinced me to put my files up on Sensual Mistress for sale. She had been listing with them since the beginning and told me of her positive experience. She made sales, she always got paid on time. I decided to give them a try. I wish I hadn’t.
It went well for the first couple of months. I made some moderate sales. The site takes 30% of your sales off the top but I saw some potential. 30% is ridiculous but that’s what a lot of sites take (which is why you should always buy hypnosis mp3s direct from the creator if you can) After a little trial and error I began to see that there was a slant to the kinds of files that sold there and began to list my back catalog in that fetish and a smattering of newer files.
Jump ahead to this last month’s payout. When I was short. Not a lot but enough for me to inquire as to what was going on. That’s when I was informed I was being paid in EUROS not dollars and I lost about 5% in the exchange rate. I suppose if I had been paying better attention I would have noticed this with the first payment but it took 3 payouts for me to realize there was a discrepancy. The way the site does payments to its content creators there was also a high fee to getting paid about 4%. So my 30% off the top when to 39% off the top. Meaning I made 61% of each sale and that my friends is a shitty deal.
I decided that for Sensual Mistress to remain worth the effort I would have raise my prices on Sensual Mistress $5.00 per file. That modest price increase would allow for any fluctuation in the exchange rate and the payment fees. The site owner was not pleased I raised my prices. Even though her off the top cut of MY work would increase with my price increase, she worried that someone might say something bad about Sensual Mistress on some unknown random forum somewhere on the internet. Clearly she believed the people buying mp3s were her customers, not my customers and didn’t know that in fact the content creators on her site were her customers. Whenever I see people make the number one business mistake of not knowing who their customers are it throws up red flags. Red flags were flying everywhere.
The site owner was worried someone on a forum (lets face it forums are where people pirate) would say something about how a file of mine increased 5 bucks and that somehow would sully the reputation of Sensual Mistress. We had a brief email exchange. I told her I increased my prices to cover costs. She decided that she would try to school me in pricing strategy (oh shades of Kinkbomb trying to school me on the definition of a charge back) and how I should price my products and compared her site to Clips4Sale and how on her site I made a 1% more then with C4Sale, therefore it was so unfair to her and her site that I didn’t in turn increase my prices across the board on every site I sell on. Including my own site where I make over 92% of my sale price (always buy direct!)
Lets talk about Clips4Sale. C4S is a huge platform, one of the oldest in the business. I’ve been with clips4sale since I started making content. I sold my fetish clips with them (since retired) I continue to sell my Mp3s with them. They have paid me on time for years and years and years. They have a huge built in customer base and massive traffic. I’m currently getting an extra 10% on all sales I drive myself, they will send out DMCAs for me, there is 24/7 technical support and if I have something to say I can call the owner on the phone and HE ANSWERS and he listens to my concerns. I have exchanged emails with him about features id like to see on the site and he listens. I’m small potatoes on C4S and the owner takes the time to listen to my concerns.
So I told Sensual Mistress that:
A. Her calculations about how much I make on C4S was inaccurate
B. Other sites offered other services that were of value to my business
C. If listing my content on her site was predicated on HER pricing my content (on her site and others sites) that I would happily remove my profile and files from her site.
I’m an independent content producer and I have never seen a platform attempt to price control and market control their content producers. Lots of sites have issues here and there but once you try to control how a producer prices their material and police their content on other sites no less, you have moved into real SHADY and unethical territory.
Before I got a response from the site owner my content was removed and my access to my store was disabled. My profile though remained and my listing was live. The email in return when it came was that the site couldn’t allow me to raise my prices. At that point it was done, I sent my termination letter, asked for my profile and listing to be removed and that all outstanding monies be paid in 24 hours. My profile and listing was removed I however have not been paid, it’s been well over 24 hours. I doubt I will be paid.
I thought that was the end of it until I heard that other well known Hypno-Dommes that were listed on the site had been treated the same as I was. Some got emails, some just got access to their store disabled before they got an email telling them that they were only allowed to sell their products on the site of they priced their files how the owner of Sensual Mistress dictated to them they should.
Sensual Mistress had clearly made it policy (though it’s not written anywhere when you join) that independent content producers were not to be in control of how they priced their content. The website Sensual Mistress is to decide how independent Hypno-Dommes are to price their products on ALL WEBSITES.
I’m not sure how my colleagues are planning on dealing with this but I know at least one was allowed her access back and got a grilling about how she was going to price across other platforms. To clarify, I made on Sensual Mistress in a month what I make on Niteflirt in a weekend. I joined because of a colleagues good experience and in the hopes that I might gain a few regular European buyers. I certainly didn’t join to be told by someone who cant seem to do any consistent branding how to price MY products.
Any platform that tries to price control, you should avoid like the plague. That’s unethical, it’s shady and it’s just plain stupid. When a platform that already charges you an abhorrent percentage because your products are adult, something no other industry could get away with, then tries to market control and price control how you do business with other platforms on top of telling you how to price your products on their site, That… Is … Crazy… and you shouldn’t allow yourself to be treated that way in business.
I know everyone has to make their own business decisions but if you are considering using the Sensual Mistress platform to sell your products, think hard. Do you want to make a less money per product with the fluctuation in exchange rates and very high fees for payout. Do you want a platform owner to meddle in how you do business with other sites. Do you want a platform to meddle and dictate your pricing strategy? Because all these things happen with Sensual Mistress. I deeply regret listing my files and lending my hard earned credibility and long standing reputation to Sensual Mistress for the short time I was on the site. Hopefully you can learn for my mistake.
Good luck. There are scant few sex workers verified on Twitter even though its the preferred social media outlet for the marginalized group. I was an early adopter and encouraged others if my ilk (at that time i was a hooker) to join me. We called ourselves “Twookers” and i still have a Twitter list of that name. Twitter allowed us to connect in a real way, to support each other, share information and ideas. We were able to create our own social media support support system for a group of people who are often discriminated against, marginalized and often just flat out denied access to the the things everyone else is allowed to participate in.
We cant use linkedin, we get chased off Facebook for having stage names, tumblr hides our accounts from public view, instagram deletes us with no warning. You tube kicks is off not because our content violates any TOS but because of WHO we are, Vimeo does as well. You get the picture we’re a discriminated group. Twitter was different, we were allowed to be there and as a group we thrived. Enter the Twitter Verified Account. It started with the famous, usually actors and the like. Moved on to political figures and people who were generally household names. Then it expanded. As it stands now anyone can “apply” to be verified. Verification has its benefits, if you are often impersonated it helps with that, you get ways to filter content, filter DMs, interactions that the unwashed masses don’t get. This is very helpful to a group of people often targeted for harassment yanno cuz we’re all whores. You need certain things enabled on your profile and you need to provide them links to prove not just who you are (especially if you have a stage name) and why you’re “noteworthy”
I figured id try and report back the process. You don’t see many sex workers verified on Twitter. I see a few international organizations and a had full of high profile porn starts. I wondered if that was because the process was daunting, somehow precluded sex workers from trying of if on a whole the industry didn’t want the blue check mark. Here’s what i leaned.
Its easy to apply but they give you very little direction.
Full out your bio, add your birthday, enable 2 factor authentication, conform your phone and email, send in some links, upload your ID, write a 500 character essay on why you should be verified. (FYI that’s about 4 tweets)
The thing that was hard to wrap my head around as a sex worker was the ID. I just sent it in. It would have been a much harder decision if i was still a hooker. However im retired and have been for about 6 years. I currently work in the 100% legal business of Erotic Audio. I make and sell erotic hypnosis Mp3s and i’m popular in my field and a top seller. I make a rather tasty living doing what i’m doing. So I sucked it up and sent in the ID.
Choosing which links to provide
This i had to think about you get 5 links. I decided to turn in 2 major publications that wrote about and interviewed me. This blog, Fairy Whore Mother and my E-Commerce site. The reason being since i was using a stage name, they needed to see i was who i said i was. The links to the media outlets was to show my newsworthiness.
Essay Writing
Okay I misread this at first and though it was 500 words. Its not, Its 500 Characters. So like 4 tweets worth of why you’re so great and should be verified. Its harder then it looks. This is what I wrote. I tried to tell them who I was and why my verification would benefit the Twitter community. I was a very early sex work blogger who blogged under my working name. Which back in 2008, let me tell you NO ONE DID. Not even Belle De Jour who later got a book deal and Showtime made a series about her wasn’t using her working name. BTW she is one of the rare sex work Twitter verified however shes came out publicly as a sex worker/Belle De Jour/ years back and is using her legal name not a stage name.
In any event I had to go back and edit down my Verify me essay to this:
After that was done. I hit send and waited to be told in email wither Twitter would approve more or not in 6 days. In the meantime while I twiddled my thumbs I learned that MANY sex workers have applied to be verified only to be turned down. Some multiple times.
I waited and got my response this morning. Denied!
So went to the link in my you are not good enough email to see where I screwed this up. I read this
Well it does reflect me under my stage name and I gave them links to prove that as well as my legal ID.
Not a corporation so this one is N/A
My header is one of my main photos I use in my Hypnosis Branding and my profile photo is if my face. Maybe they were expecting photo of my tits?
My bio says what I do for a living (erotic recording artist) links to my sex work blog and lists and what i do for a hobby (equestrian) .Its also also pretty clear i’m politically active. My tweets are open and i tweet a lot about current events, sex work and keep my self promotion tweets to under 10 10% of my twitter life. Oh and more then 90% of my followers are real. I have a very low bot follower count. Maybe I should have it rewritten my bio to use buzz words like “leading” and “renowned” I dunno. I see other profiles of people that are just blank but then we all cant be Chris Evans I suppose and he is soooo much more real then I am.
But wait there’s more… Additional info maybe I screwed up there and that’s why Twitter doesn’t think i’m real or relevant
Okay I gave them Links to Fairy Whore Mother Likely the most impact-full and one of only full of sites that cater to sex workers by sex workers. This blog which has often stirred up controversy for the 10 years its been in existence and links to places Vice, The Quaz, LV Weekly where I was written about or interviewed. Maybe they just didn’t read them, I mean if your job was to wade though bullshit about verifying some boring motivational speaker why would you want to read really compelling interesting stuff by a best Selling NY Times writer or Vice magazine. Oh and just as an aside, im followed and follow more then my fair share of Verified accounts because yanno all us newsworthy and relevant people know each other and have secret handshakes and stuff. I did hear a rumor the more check marks that follow you and vice versa the better your odds. Um ok Twitter, that’s dumb if true.
So in conclusion Twitter doesn’t believe I’m relevant in my field despite over a decade of sex work advocacy for which my peers respect me and or i’m not “newsworthy” even though major media has taken an interest in me. Though you can bet your ass if I somehow spilled my old Washington DC or Hollywood client lists they’d be all the fuck over me trying to verify me after the wold caught on fire. Cuz yanno Sex workers don’t count unless they are bringing down the demise of powerful men or being dragged though the mud labeled a whore. Right Twitter?