When it comes to working as an escort, whether you are male or female, gay or straight, you can decide 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 matter, but you need to take into account the pros and cons of each thoroughly before starting work.
If you are new to the business then it may be a good idea to work for an agency, even if only for a while, so that you can learn the ins and outs of the escort business. This will also give you the opportunity to speak to other escorts employed by the agency, and benefit from sharing their experiences.
The Advantages of Working for an Agency
There is more to working as an escort than many people assume when they initially begin, and it can be nice to have someone else to take care of some things for you, while you find your feet. For example, the agency will look after advertising, will screen potential clients, will manage your diary for you, and will handle booking hotel rooms and arranging transport, when needed.
Perhaps most importantly 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 aware of this. This provides you with a notable degree 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 accustomed to what you and cannot do. This again can be enough to stop you inadvertently running into problems.
The Disadvantages of Working for an Agency
An escort agency is just like any other business, and some are ridiculously well run while others are poorly run, and may even simply exploit 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 sort of agency you are joining.
While an agency will take care of much of the background work for you, such as advertising, client checks and organising appointments, they will also ask certain things from you in return. For example, they may need you to be free for work between particular hours each day, and decide how much time off you can have each week. They may also decide where you have to be when you are not working, perhaps allowing you to go home, as long as they can contact you on the phone, or requiring you to be available in the agency’s office.
The agency is also in the business of making profit and does this generally by taking a percentage 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 uncommon for clients to pay several hundred dollars an hour for an escort. You will have to look carefully at the financial arrangements required by different agencies and select what is, and what is not, acceptable to you.
The Benefits of Working as an Independent Escort
Private escorts are esentially their own bosses, deciding for themselves when they work, who they accept as clients, and what they are comfortable to do. In effect you are enjoying 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 arrange everything yourself, including such things as advertising, sizing up 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 easier as time goes on. One thing that you have to understand though, and which will never go away, are the risks that accompany with escort work.
Like it or not, escort work is potentially very dangerous, and you must not only be constantly wary, but must take positive steps to care for yourself. The list of precautions you need to take is far too extensive to explain them all here, but will include such things as ensuring that any room you use with a client has an emergency exit that you can use, and being positive that someone knows where you are, and that the client is aware of this fact. Telling 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 at the top of the list of things to consider for independent escorts.
On Balance
As with any job there are both good and bad sides to being an escort, and this is deifnitely one job that you need to go into with a wary 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 understand what you are doing, and set your business up correctly.