When it comes to working as an escort, whether you are male or female, gay or straight, you can choose to work for an escort agency, or join the ranks of the independent escorts, or indies. Which you should choose is very much a personal decision, but you need to take into account the pros and cons of each thoroughly prior to beginning work.
If you are fresh to the business then it might be a good idea to work for an agency, at least for a while, so that you can learn the ins and outs of the escort business. This will also give you the chance to talk to other escorts employed by the agency, and benefit from sharing their experiences.
The Benefits of Working for an Agency
There is more to working as an escort than many people assume when they first start, and it can be contenting to have someone else to look after some things for you, while you are getting comfortable. For example, the agency will take care of advertising, will check prospective clients, will manage your diary for you, and will handle booking hotel rooms and arranging transport, when appropriate.
Perhaps most essentially for many escorts, the agency provides a safety net as they know where you are and what you are doing at any given moment, and the client is very conscious of this. This provides you with a significant level of safety, and with a backup team to call on if you run into trouble.
Speaking of trouble, the law also plays an important role in many escort’s lives, and the degree to which it affects you will hinge on where you are working, and how you are operating your business. Many escort agencies have been around for a long time, and are very familiar with what you and cannot do. This again can be enough to stop you unintentionally running into problems.
The Disadvantages of Working for an Agency
An escort agency is just like any other business, and some are extremely well run while others are poorly run, and may even simply take advantage of their escorts without a care for anything other than the money the business can make. For this reason, you need to do your homework and make sure you know exactly what kind of agency you are joining.
While an agency will take care of much of the background work for you, such as advertising, client screening and arranging appointments, they will also ask certain things from you in return. For example, they may need you to be free for work between certain hours each day, and determine how much time off you can have each week. They may also dictate where you have to be when you are not working, perhaps letting you go home, as long as they can contact you on the phone, or requesting you to be available in the agency’s office.
The agency is also in the business of making money and does this typically by taking a cut of the fees paid by the client for providing him or her with an escort. Fees can be high, especially in major cities where it is not out of the ordinary for clients to pay several hundred dollars an hour for an escort. You will need to look carefully at the financial arrangements sought after by different agencies and select what is, and what is not, acceptable to you.
The Advantages of Working as an Independent Escort
Private escorts are esentially their own bosses, choosing for themselves when they work, who they accept as clients, and what they are prepared to do. In effect you are entertaining all of the benefits, including the monetary benefits, of being self employed and, for many people, these advantages often outweigh any disadvantages.
The Disadvantages of Working as an Independent Escort
Working for yourself means that you will have to handle everything yourself, including such things as advertising, checking out prospective clients, booking hotel rooms, organising transport, and indeed dealing with anything else that comes up. This can be a great deal of work at first, but much of this day to day work becomes simpler as time goes on. One thing that you have to take on board though, and which will never become irrevelant, are the risks that come hand in hand with escort work.
Like it or not, escort work is potentially very dangerous, and you must not only be constantly vigilant, but must take positive steps to protect yourself. The list of precautions you need to take is far too long to detail them all here, but will include such things as certifying that any room you use with a client has an emergency exit that you can use, and making sure that someone knows where you are, and that the client is aware of this fact. Convincing yourself that this is a safe enough area and that nothing is going to happen to you does not work, and safety needs to be the main concern on the list of things to consider for independent escorts.
On Balance
As with any job there are both good and bad sides to becoming an escort, and this is certainly one job that you need to go into with a careful mindset. That said, independent escorts can enjoy a very comfortable lifestyle if they get it right, and the job can be good fun if you have the right personality for it, take the time to learn what you are doing, and set your business up properly.