Almost a year ago I published “In the Club“, wherein I explained my two-year plan for reducing stress and making my life easier by spending more energy on the things I’m good at, and less on the things I’m not good at. I’ve never been good at marketing, and the post-FOSTA advertising landscape is so frustrating I can’t even deal with it any more. So as I explained in the aforementioned column,
…by the end of [2019]…I’d like to be off of formal escort advertising sites entirely. This doesn’t mean I’m going Under the Radar, which would be impossible anyhow; it just means I want to increase the fraction of my business which does not come from traditional ad malls…to 100%. I am moving toward all of my business being either regulars or people who approach me via my blog, Twitter, other writing, my public speaking, TV interviews, etc. Then…I want to tighten it up even more so that by the end of 2020 I’m no longer taking new clients without a direct recommendation from one of my friends. I have no plans to stop working any time soon; I enjoy my work and I like making people happy. What I don’t like is having to constantly deal with advertising, screening and all that jazz. If you’ve already seen me or plan to soon, you’ve got nothing to worry about; once you’re a proven client you are “in” unless you start acting like a flake or a danger. But if you want to be in that select group, I suggest you not wait much longer…
Well, so far so good; I dropped Eros last summer and though most of the men who’ve contacted me from my other traditional ads have been cretins and/or time-wasters, I’m in exactly the same position with my budget (two months ahead) as I was last January. What this tells me is that there’s no real point in paying for ads any longer, because most of my business is coming via other channels anyhow. I’m not going to delete my ads completely, but neither will I be paying for upgrades or the like; my own escort website and the various media I appear in seem to suffice. That means I’m apparently on course to stop taking new, unrecommended clients by the end of this year. Now, mice and men and all; things may not go as I hope, and I may have to push back the deadline. But I wouldn’t count on that if I were you. It’s not at all unusual for new clients to tell me that they’ve wanted to see me for a while, but put it off in order to build up their courage to approach me; after the end of this year, it’s very possible that guys who do that may find they’ve procrastinated for too long. So if you’d like to be in the “club” of people I’ll see in the future, I suggest you make a date in the next few months, while I’m still taking applications.
