Adult Site Broker Talk Episode 185 with Amy Taylor

This is Bruce Friedman of Adult Site Broker and welcome to Adult Site Broker Talk where each week we interview one of the movers and shakers of the adult industry and we give you a tip on buying and selling websites. This week we’ll be speaking with elite companion Amy Taylor. Just to let you know I’ll be at the upcoming shows in LA and Vegas. On the 15th I’ll be at X-Biz in LA and starting the 24th the Adult Site Broker Roadshow moves on to Las Vegas for AVN and Internext. If you’d like to sit down and talk business drop me a line on our contact page at adultsidebroker.com. Speaking of events we’ve added an event section to our website. Now you can get information on B2B shows on our site as well as special discounts reserved for our clients. Go to adultsidebroker.com for more details. Would you like an easy way to make a lot of money? Even sellers or buyers to us at adultsidebroker through our affiliate program ASB Cash. When you refer business to us you’ll receive 20% of our broker commission on any and all sales that result from that referral for life. You can make $100,000 or more on one sale for some of our listings. Check out ASB Cash.com for more details and to sign up. At adultsidebroker we’re proud to announce our latest project thewaronporn.com. You’ll find articles from industry websites as well as mainstream publications from around the world. It’s designed to raise awareness of our industry’s plight in the war on porn and the numerous attacks on our industry and online free speech by hate groups, the religious right and politicians. You’ll find all that and more at thewaronporn.com. Now let’s feature our property the week that’s for sale at adultsidebroker. We’re proud to present a one-of-a-kind, unique and legendary site. It’s a pro-amateur ethnic reality site founded in 2005. It’s stalled after popular late night shows like The Tonight Show. Viewers never know what to expect. With a variety of different performers from brand new amateurs to famous porn stars, there’s no other site quite like it. It continues to grow and expand with no major competitors in the niche. What makes it unique is their 100% original content that has uncensored and unscripted reality TV style scenes. They let the performers be themselves while having fun. Their video trailers are short webisodes that encourage the viewers and are immensely popular. Almost all the visitors are organic with some affiliate traffic. The site gets almost 20 joins and 40 rebuilds a day. This iconic site is available for only $1.4 million. Now time for this week’s interview. My guest today on adultsidebroker talk is Amy Taylor. Amy thanks for being with us today on adultsidebroker talk. Thanks so much for having me. It’s an honor to be here. It’s an honor to have you. Now Amy was born in New England but raised in California. She modeled as a teen and young adult. She was a sorority girl at UC Berkeley where she first learned of sex work. After undergrad when working in biotech for low wages, she was a sugar baby. Not wanting to marry early, she opted instead to move to LA and get her MBA. And there she began to escort. After graduate school and during her first career job in the petroleum industry, Amy was a part-time companion to a few gentlemen. She also continued to model part-time since LA provided many opportunities. Sadly, she was outed by a pimp who wanted to control her career, had to take legal action but then suffered at the hands of stigma. She decided to turn her favorite hobby, aviation, into a part-time job while continuing being a companion and still modeling. She recently moved to New York City where she continues to see a few loyal clients, model when it seems fun, fly planes part-time and generally enjoy life spending time with her friends, family and her little dog. It’s been quite a ride but she’s a survivor. You can find her online at amytaylor.com and on Instagram and Twitter @amytaylornyc. So Amy, you’ve been a model, a pilot, a sugar baby, you’ve worked in biotech, the oil industry and now you’re a high-class escort. Talk about the journey and the many hats you’ve worn. Yeah, it’s been a little twisty-turny. I suppose because I never was a wife and a mother, like most female people, that sprained up a lot of time to do other stuff. So I did other stuff. I enjoy learning. I’m a professor’s kid so school was kind of the first obvious choice and I love it. I had the time, I’d probably just go get like 25 different PhDs my whole life but you know, who doesn’t love to learn? We’re all curious. I mean, you are. That’s why you do this podcast, right? Exactly. I studied molecular biology and undergrad and then unfortunately I found out that I did not really like working in biotech. Studying something isn’t the same as doing it for a living and maybe I should have done an internship in something more similar to find out earlier. Intellectually biophonics is very interesting but I had, I really struggled with animal sacrifice and when you’re the lowly lab tech with just a bachelor’s degree, you’re not the principal investigator, you don’t run the lab, you’re not even writing grants and things like the people with master’s degrees. You’re just killing my soul. I couldn’t do that. Yeah, it was awful. It was really awful. I know it has to be done. I take medicine so you know, it’s all tested on animals. This is the world we live in but it was a little hard on the soul. Well, it’s one thing other people having to do that and it’s one thing you having to do it. Yeah. It’s such a morbid memory but to watch them care for their young and know that we were just culling nine-tenths of them as wasted lives because we were looking for these genetic knockouts, it was just a little hard on me. I’m not like some PETA person who thinks it should be outlawed because we don’t have better models in computer science yet although it’s heading that way and that will be good. So anyway, that’s why I course corrected. And also like to your point of what you said, the wages was very low. I had a boyfriend who was a physician and wealthier than me but I was staring down the barrel at being a doctor’s wife in a small northern California town and I was going to have to have kids. Wow. Where were you? He was in Davis. Oh, God, yeah. Yeah. I grew up in Daly cities. I certainly know them very well. I love the Bay Area but I was in my mid-20s and he was quite a bit older and wanted to have kids right away because of his age so that I would have been co-opted to have his children and I would have been a small con doctor’s wife with no career and I guess that probably would have been easier and many women would love that life but I dreamed of flying planes and shooting guns and I used to have dreams of being like a little old lady on the upper east side with a small dog and a penthouse apartment and I’ll be damned if I just maybe if I survive it I just might get my dream. We’ll see I guess in the future. Sounds like you’re well on your way. We shall be and at great cost no question being an adult and entertainment has not been cost free. Well, sure. There’s a price for everything. Indeed and we can’t, I guess, whatever way you choose you give up something, right? If I had chosen that life it would have been certainly more societally respected. I wouldn’t have had to lie all the time which I hate about who I am and what I do but yeah it sucks, right? It causes so much mental stress and I’m more out of the closet than most but so I course corrected out of biotech. He and I broke up. He got married and had kids. He’s fine. He’s just fine without old me. And I went to grad school and because like you said had already heard of escorting or companionship whatever you want to call it and they had kind of been one with just one client. I mean I had a he was paying for everything and giving me allowance. It was the same. So nice to be a beautiful woman. I tell you I’m jealous. You know a lot of men say that but the truth is there’s when somebody is controlling the purse strings there’s a certain power they have. It’s undisputable. It’s different than having your own money and nowadays a lot of the young men don’t want that because they say I don’t want to wonder if the woman I’m with is with me only because of finances. I want to know that she makes her own money and is with me only because she wants to be. When I was single I didn’t really get the shit to be honest with you but you know they’ve got a niche in porn called Fendom and that’s the whole basis of it. I have many men that like to send me money and gifts all the time and they’ve never met me. They don’t ask to. Some ask me to be mean to them. Some don’t. Some just want friendly attention but yeah my shoe closet has hundreds of pairs of shoes from men that have never even asked to meet me. And you gotta love it. Yeah I think attention from beautiful women and you know while we still have it and we’re all on borrowed time is something that many men would die for. I’ve never really understood it to be honest with you. I’ve never understood why guys go to strip clubs and pay hundreds of dollars to be in a VIP room and not even get sex. I’ve never really totally understood the popularity of porn even though I broke her porn sites. I come across some things where I go yeah that’s pretty cool. That’s fun and some things that turn me on. I really like Bukaki. I think that’s cool. But I mean otherwise there are a lot of things that guys do like you talk about like give you a lot of money and don’t ask much of anything or nothing in return just a little attention. God if guys are that lonely it’s kind of a sad world sometimes. I mean it’s a sad world that we put silicone bags into our chest to be more attractive to men. That shouldn’t be either and yet I did it was a business decision and it was a damn good one. It was easier on my back when my chest was lighter. A real relationship is a place you go to give. Hopefully you get something in return. I agree with you that one should. But some people have kind of a giving fetish. There are men out there who really they feel financially powerful that they can give women money. They typically have it to give. They’re typically too afraid to meet in person either for legal reasons or stigma reasons or they’re intimidated but they do like virtual attention. The Internet has facilitated that in a big way and they’re in some cases maybe being fleeced but in most cases that I’ve seen they have utter control over their budget and when they don’t want to spend they don’t. I’ve been to a couple of recessions in this business and most of them have self control that the ones who are addicted to spending that’s an addiction problem like any other. They need a good wealth manager to cut them off right. They should. I hope they have that. You’d like to think so by the way you mentioned that your dad was a professor. Does he know what you do? Yes they do. I was outed about a decade ago so they do. They don’t love it but they love me. There you go. I was wondering. I was wondering. I don’t think my mom my mom died before I got into working an adult. I don’t think she would have understood. She would have accepted it because she loved me but I don’t think she would have been too happy about it. You know they typically parents want a life for us that is easier and free from stigma and shame. My father says he has no moral problem with what I do. He has a legal problem with what I do. He worries about my safety and from bad men and my own government and nosy people who seek to use salacious info about me to hurt me. Those are the things he has a problem with. But my father is an immigrant from Europe. He has dated sex workers. He had a girlfriend in Amsterdam when he was a teenager who was one. He kind of broke his heart. He said he wasn’t rich enough to retire her. He was young but he had hired sex workers when he was young. He is a man. So I’m sure it is not what he dreamed for me. Anyone who loves you is scared for you at this job but my answer to that would be then he should be scared any time I go on a date as a civilian woman too because it’s identical. There is nothing I do as an escort that everybody isn’t doing on Tinder for free. It’s identical. It’s the same thing. It’s just dating. You know what it reminds me of was my mom was perfectly fine with mixed race couples but the one time a black girl called my house and asked for me. She’s like is that girl black? Really? So she wasn’t fine or just not for you, her son? Not for her son. She wanted me to marry a nice Jewish girl. Wow. I married a nice Buddhist girl. So there you go. It’s a little bit of a kinder religion. God is your friend instead of God is the taskmaster. Our people do like us to stay within the tribe. I can relate. Big time. So what do you think about dating and relationships and is it possible to have a normal one while performing as an escort? So many, many of my colleagues are in relationship and/or married and many of them are quite happy. Most all the retired companions I know now are in relationship. Very few of them are just single and the couple that I can think of who are it’s my choice. For me, I did this for a few years, about six or seven years while having a boyfriend a while ago. It’s been a long time since and it started out okay for him and it ended up hurting him. So I’m loathe to do it again because of what I saw it do to him. In the beginning, it’s just wild and fun and he liked that I had my own money and he kind of thought it was interesting in the beginning. But as he started to really care more deeply about me, he was worried when I’d go off to see a new client. He was not involved in my business at all in terms of helping keep me safe, although some people’s partners are, and that my government criminalizes that is insane, but whatever. Well, it really comes down to this. Are they a boyfriend or are they a pimp? If they’re a pimp, it should be criminalized and I think those people are the lowest form on earth just like what we talked about with you and what happened when that pimp tried to out you. But I think if it’s a boyfriend, someone who loves you, well then yeah, they should be able to protect you, but the law has no differentiation between the two. You’re right and there’s nuance and some pimp present themselves as boyfriends because they know that’s a kind of a way to hide or advocates or allies as bullshit. They just want the money and they want to be predators. And you’re right. So there’s a lot of nuance there that’s hard to tease out. This boyfriend of mine at the time had his own career, quite successful, not successful enough to retire me, but was not any part of my business at all. That said, he also became jealous. He said once, "Look, I make plans with you for New Year’s and then some guy with a yacht wants to go to St. Bart’s and you go because you need the money. You want the money." And of course, my answer was, "Well, I don’t love that guy and he might be nice and rich, but sometimes he’s not that nice and trust me, he’s usually not attractive." But my ex, now ex, said, "You always go when the business is offered and I said, ’Well, I have to. It’s not a nine to five, right?’" So it ended up ruining us. And I think it wasn’t good for him. He’s okay. Now he moved very far away and has a different life now, but I don’t know if I’ll ever try to do it again. At this point, at the end of my career, I think I’ll just wait until I’m fully retired and it’ll be hard enough then to find somebody and tell them what I used to do. That’ll be hard enough, right? Yeah, you have to find somebody very understanding, but I think it just has to take the right person. If you find someone who is very open-minded, sure, that’s great. But unfortunately, most people aren’t that open-minded. They tend to think we’re always going to do it. I laugh at that because once you have money and you’re old, fewer people call and you don’t need the money. So why would you keep doing it? So it solves itself, right? Typically, but we shall see. I’ll cross that bridge when I get there, I guess. And it’s coming in not too much longer, but we’ll see how it goes. How close do you think you are to hanging it up? I don’t know. I can’t believe people still call me. Who knew how many guys like Cougarie, Tepa, Middle-Age, Lin? Can I ask how old you are now? I’m 46. And I get hit on all day every time I walk down the street. Well, I saw your pictures. I mean, you’re better than okay. You’re better than okay. Thanks. That’s very sweet of you. I mean, I work hard at it. I eat healthy and work out. And it turns out I don’t have a problem attracting potential dates in either my regular life or work. And then some of my regulars, even very far away, I guess I’m so grateful they like me and they fly me to them instead of seeing whoever’s near them. And I don’t really know why they do that. It’s very nice. So I work a little and it doesn’t even feel like work. So I don’t know when I’ll hang it up. I guess when they stop calling, maybe. Hey, you’re always on vacation. You know, I mean, how could that be work, right? You got somebody paying your way places and you’re going to all kinds of exotic spots and what the hell? You might as well let it ride. And if you’ve been seeing somebody for some of these guys have been seeing for more than a decade, I really do like them. I wouldn’t I wouldn’t keep seeing them for that long if I didn’t. Of course. I got a question. Do you see any of those people as potentially marriage material when you’re done? Yeah, he might be listening to this. If he is high. Okay. Well, we won’t. Okay. Okay. I know it’s okay. There was one time I thought maybe I was could have transitioned into something regular and and we tried for a few days and it went really badly. And then now we don’t see each other. A few days like we tried to change it into something normal and it didn’t go well. And I don’t think he likes me very much, but I thought I was in love with him. I think maybe maybe I wasn’t just wanted to not be a stranger because he was such a big part of my life. Well, that sounds like an occupational hazard, though. Yeah. I’ve monetized my loneliness. So of course, it’s psychologically not the healthiest to have your income and your social life be all in one. But what would be better if they treated me badly and I hated my work? That would be worse. Absolutely not. You wouldn’t be doing it. I know what I already know about you. I know you wouldn’t be doing it then. So talk a bit about your job. How did it come to be and what twists and turns has it taken over the years? So yeah, I found out about it in sorority. It was a sorority sister of mine at Cal and she told me she was doing it. And so my first impression was probably too positive because she worked for this high-end agency in San Francisco and would go across the bridge and have dinner with some tech guy and go home with thousands of dollars. And I was like, "What? That’s the coolest thing I’ve ever heard of. Like why I’m doing the same thing with one guy for free?" And she was very pretty, of course, and all that. So I kind of put it, filed it in the back of my head. And when I found myself in grad school in LA and single and had been, we broke up and I needed money and didn’t want to drop out of school and didn’t really want to fall in love again. I was kind of brokenhearted. So I was like, "Oh, I’m going to find an agency and do this. I’ll date rich guys casually." That sounds perfect right now. But no agency would hire me because they hired these like LA fitness glambazons with bigger boobs and smaller noses and longer hair. But when agency owner, she told me, she’s like, "Oh, you’re super smart and you’re very nice." Yeah, your personality and your brains for God’s sakes. High-end men love that. Yeah. And she said, "You may not look like the gorgeous, gorgeous LA chick yet because I hadn’t bought things and learned how to do makeup and all that stuff." But she said, "Yeah, men are like you. You don’t need an agency. You can do this on your own." I said, "Well, how?" And she told me that a couple of websites and I did some research. And it ain’t rocket science. You need a name and a phone number and an email. And the mistake I made though, being overconfident and naive and young and stupid, was that I didn’t know how to screen. Because I didn’t come from the street. In my world, if somebody said, "This is my name and this is who I am," in my world, that was true. And that’s not the case in this game. So my first two clients were awesome, a billionaire who he’s ill now and close to the end of his life. But he saw me for many, many, many years. And a Hollywood agent who took me all over the world. We had tons of fun for years. And then the third client was a cop. Oh. Yeah, that’s hot. That day wasn’t fun. A working cop. Yeah. Yep. And he was really nice until he wasn’t. Oh, geez. So I spent like an hour and a half in jail. The sandwiches aren’t very good. Yeah. So I hear. Let’s just say as a customer, I’ve had experiences with law enforcement. We’ll just leave it at that. Yeah, it’s scary. And I didn’t feel one bit guilty or ashamed. I was like, "I own my body. I’m going to date with an attractive older man who, I was very exciting to have a nice time and maybe we mess around. Maybe we don’t. Depends if he wants to." You know, I believe in consent. I wasn’t going to force anybody. And then sure I would like it if he’d help me with graduate school bills. That would be nice. And instead I got thrown to the floor and a gun to my head. Oh my God. Really? Oh yeah. Oh yeah, they acted like they had caught, you know, Jeffrey Dahmer. It was ridiculous. Fuck. Yeah, it was nonsense. And then the rescue was that they offered me a job cleaning toilets for minimum wage, you know, no. Fuck off. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. What part of fuck off don’t you understand? It was just such an odd experience to learn that the state, my government doesn’t think I own my own body, which to me seems deeply unconstitutional, right? I think the drug and prostitution laws in the United States and anywhere in the world are just fucking insane. I mean, in Thailand, prostitution’s technically illegal. Very few people know that. Okay? Most people are surprised, but it’s permitted and every once in a while the cops come in to make things look good to the religious people. So I mean, POT’s legal here now, but the only tough part is there’s a lot of POT tourism now and I just saw an article about this Russian couple who freaked out after they ate a POT brownie or something. And I’m like, oh, geez, amateurs. Anyway. My cousins lived on Kostin Mui and I went to visit them. They’re back in London now, but when they lived on Kostin Mui, I went to visit them. I’ll tell you that Thai whiskey in a bucket did far more damage than we’d ever did me. Yeah, but evil. Yeah, I found I found scotch and gave that shit up. And the thing is in the bars that I used to go to where the girls would be dancing and everything and they’d have numbers on them and all that stuff. The Thai whiskey, the Sangsam would be the same price as Johnny Walker Black and I’m sitting there going, okay, what’s wrong with this picture? And I’d get Johnny Walker Black and go, hey, this shit’s good. So I’ve had very little Thai whiskey since then, only in a pinch. And I’ve gone on to single molds now. So it’s like, I’ve graduated anyway. So what’s your favorite part of your job? Having to sit across the table from somebody who’s so brilliant, I would probably pay to have dinner with them. Sure, power, sure, money, but these are not people who are ever stupid. And they’ve had fascinating lives that I was a middle-class kid from medium-sized town in Northern California. I wasn’t going to meet people like these in my real life. So this job has allowed me to meet people that I never would have had access to. I’ve learned from them. I’ve learned a lot from them about business, about finances, about travel, etiquette, all that. Are most of your clients married, by the way? I have to go back and actually make a list and do the numbers. But I’m going to say it was like 50/50. And that is the part that I struggled with. I wish they had all been single. Now that said, one in particular who was a big client, the marriage was miserable. He finally got out of it and he’s happier now, which is great. I don’t see him anymore. And if we didn’t exist, sex workers, he probably just would have gotten divorced earlier when the kids were little. And I don’t know that that would have been better for his children. You’re absolutely right. There’s a lot of benefits to sex work for the men and their families. That day had both filed on each other a bunch of times. They didn’t like each other. Now I know people would say you should just break up. But when you have kids, it’s not just that easy. Tell me about it. My folks broke up when I was young. So I know. Yeah. It’s not easy. Do you think it was for the best? Oh, 100%. My dad was nuts. And yeah, he was seriously bipolar and bipolar disorder is about the only thing that I inherited from him. I got a mild form of it, fortunately, but he was seriously bipolar and violently bipolar. So yeah, no, my mom needed to get the hell out of that. I’m so sorry. Did she remarried? Did you have a stepmother? Never remarried. He had a son with his second marriage and now we’re very close. So that’s my only brother. Okay. That’s cool. Yeah. He’s a cool guy. He’s really a cool guy. So yeah, in fact, we haven’t talked in a little bit, so I got to catch up with him for sure because we shouldn’t go too long. Families everything. And you know, there’s so much trauma and abuse and nonsense, but there’s also a lot of beauty and love that can come out of these blended families and mixed up stuff. And my mother is my father’s third wife and she was his student, not in preschool folks in university and actually in grad school. I was hoping that would be what you said. He was a university professor. It was kind of figuring, but I was going to say thank God for that. Oh, my dad said in the sixties, you that was like the perk of being a professor with the 18 to 22 year old ass you got. But now you can’t now you can’t do that so easily. I’m sure it still happens, but now you can’t do anything in the States. Everything’s so damn politically correct. That’s why everybody’s so angry. Nobody’s getting laid. Nobody’s having any fun. Everybody’s mad. Do you watch Bill Maher real time? Sure. Yeah, that’s he he nails it. Yeah, I was so this is funny. So I watched two shows regularly on HBO real time with Bill Maher and this last week tonight with John Oliver and he’s he’s he’s brilliant too. And he keeps winning Emmys. So I was paying, I think 15 bucks a month for HBO. Got to use a VPN here in Thailand to get it because otherwise they blocked me. So oh, my dog. My dog snoring now, by the way. So yeah, one of six, one of six. So anyway, we’re nuts. But yeah, no, no, it’s a it’s an absolute beautiful thing. So dogs are the best dogs are the absolute best. Yes. No, Bill Maher is poignant about the nonsense of in the States and elsewhere surveillance state, no freedom. Nobody’s it’s not in a going in a good direction. I just saw his interview with Ron DeSantis last night. And you know what? I mean, I don’t like DeSantis politics at all. But unfortunately, he made too much sense. It scared me almost. I’m like, okay, a lot of his shit. I don’t like and I don’t I don’t like how he tries to pit people against each other. But at the same time, he didn’t back down at all. And the two of them had a fantastic conversation. It was really, really good. I have to watch it. I haven’t seen it yet. I need to watch it. So anyway, I watched the last couple nights. I didn’t even know the writer strike was over. That’s how tuned in. I’ve been to the news since January 6, 2021. But we don’t talk about that. Anyway, so I went, okay, I’m going to get an annual subscription for HBO. And like two days later, the writer strike starts. Oh, no. So I paid them like, I don’t know, $150 instead of 180. And all of a sudden I didn’t have any of my shows. I was so fucking pissed. I even sent him a support message saying, okay, I want some of my money back. No reply. But anyway, big surprise there. So you talked about your most favorite part of your job. What about your least favorite? Oh, the 10,000 to one ratio of people who contact me that are totally inappropriate. They’re even insulting or violent or threatening or just lazy or crazy. The people who think that we are subhuman, that you can do whatever you want to us, that we are not worthy of any respect. And the every morning when I wake up and rifle through the people that contact me, you know, it’s literally like 10,000 to one totally wildly inappropriate to like somebody good. And that’s because the internet is available to everybody. Maybe you should hire somebody to screen that stuff. Oh, I have twice and it was a disaster. Hmm. Interesting. I might be, I might be able to help you find somebody. So the people I’ve hired didn’t screen well, sent the good clients to other people who were paying them more than I was. I send them off for themselves if they were women. Oh yeah, it’s been that whole thing’s been a colossal disaster. We do a lot of women in my business pretend they have an assistant. It’s actually just them. And that’s to try to get guys to think there’s an assistant, like a layer of professionalism. I never bothered with that. But I mean, obviously an agency would have done that filter and work for me, but I never worked for one and I never wanted to be managed. I just didn’t ever find anybody who could care about me more than I care about me. And maybe I just didn’t get lucky. Maybe there’s somebody out there who’s amazing, but I never found him. Interesting. So there’s one thing that’s stressed by all the sex work support organizations and our industry as whole is that sex work is work. So what image do you think people have about what you do, but what image should they have? Hmm, that’s a great question. I asked it, I know. Modest abuse or sex work is work. And it’s worthy of respect. We’ve always been part of the economy and we always will folks. No matter what you do to us. That said, it’s hard sometimes for our own clients to enjoy being thought of as quote unquote work because that’s not fun for them to think I’m super attracted to this woman. So attracted to her that I’m willing to screen and pay her and go through these hoops. And she thinks of me as work. That’s not a turn on for my ego. That’s not fun. There are clients who are fine with it. They’re like, I pay it’s work for her. I don’t care if she likes me. But most people have some kind of ego and that’s not such a nice feeling. The imbalance of how much each of us likes the other one. I have met a lot of clients who don’t enjoy the even the phrase sex work is work. They don’t even like to hear it. But it is. Well, of course it is. And what we mean when we say that is not necessarily that, oh, clients are such hard work because we hate them so much. That’s not what it means. It means that it’s work in the sense that we should be able to get. I mean, we were excluded from PPP loans in COVID. We should be able to unionize and lobby and get health care and not be murdered and go to law enforcement and go to court when we have a legal dispute. All the things that a regular legitimized industry has. That’s what we mean when we say it’s work. We do not mean clients years terrible hard work like in the coal mines and we don’t like it because many people love their work and many of us do. You seem to like it. I do. Some days it’s so great. I can’t believe somebody’s paying me. I really feel that way. Other days it’s some guy that I probably wouldn’t date if he didn’t pay me, but that doesn’t mean he’s terrible at all. If he’s terrible, I don’t see him. Yeah. I think one thing that you do to mitigate that is you have very few clients, right? I do, but somebody who has more that still works, she’s still worthy of respect. Even if you hate all your clients and it’s miserable, it’d probably be a homelessness. Shelter and food ain’t free. This is America. They’re not free in Thailand either. But we live in the world we live in and so it’s the arbiter of whether sex work is the image of us that you say that society should have is that we’re content with our work. If the arbiter is that every single day we adore our job and it’s just a paradise, well that’s ridiculous because that’s not the case for anybody’s job. Not that I know of in any pilots, doctors, cops, firemen, nobody. Work is sometimes great and sometimes what’s so and that’s okay. Sometimes it’s a four letter word. I wish the image they had of us was just as human beings, as multifaceted as we truly are. We’re in your yoga classes. We’re in your whole foods. We’re just people. I know. I know. I know. I probably passed you in the canned vegetable aisle. I mean, there you go. Girl, I know who works in a body house in Australia. She was joking. She’s like, they call us organized crime because there’s three of us that live here and work together and it’s just like three ladies in sweatpants answering email. It’s your organized crime ring. Give me a break. Well, yeah, and they’re in Australia. They’re a lot more open-minded. Yeah, Canada too, Europe too. Yeah, my developer lives in Queensland and he works with a lot of sex workers and also has a creator site and he tells me a lot about what goes on there and he goes to the award show every year and he’s always taking pictures with all his girls and everything. That’s really funny. Yeah, they’re doing better there. New Zealand too. I think the creators world has a lot to teach about privacy and because their work is a little more legitimized and respected, they’ve been able to like go after, do the DMCA stuff and stand up for themselves in a way that we’re not allowed to because the minute we go to any good lawyer, any law enforcement, they think we’re garbage people so they don’t help us. Yeah, I’ve got an interview coming up next week with a friend of mine who’s an attorney and we’re going to talk a lot about creators and DMCA. Well, it’s not going to run. I don’t know if it’s going to run next week after this drops, but it will be on in the not too distant future after this comes out. So FOSTA CESTA became law on April 11, 2018. Now it was intended to be a tool to stop sex trafficking or that’s what its authors in Congress said, but how has FOSTA CESTA impact sex workers both in terms of their safety and their livelihoods? A disaster and it’s a canary and Coleman for free speech and as a whole on the internet, as you know, they made it effectively that communicating about sex work as a felony now in America. If I post that some other companion is a great girl, great gal and they say that she sells sex for money. Then because I spoke about her, I am now a felon. Right. You’ll see a violating FOSTA CESTA. I am and I am responsible for whatever she may do that’s against the law, which is the CDA 230 part. So websites, ours and others were not responsible for UGC, user generated content, right? Because they couldn’t have stayed. It would have the lawyers required to stay compliant would have prevented the internet from growing as it did in the last 30 years. And these laws are happening in the UK and it’s not just FOSTA CESTA. But that was the way they shoved it in was that they said, we can’t get the child fuckers if we, you know, whatever the people are selling kids everywhere, guys, you got, you know, that’s always the way they passed up. Yeah. And any politician who voted against it would be voted out of office. Well, there’s one Matt Gaetz in Florida. He voted against it. I don’t like Matt Gaetz, but I’m glad he did. Well, he likes, I mean, he’s been outed as being fond of. Right. But he’s right. He’s always always that. Oh, was that a joke or the truth? No, he’s had girls at parties and he’s been. No, no, no, I know about that. But did he vote against it? He did. He’s the only one who did. That’s ironic. Yeah. And I’m not a fan of his either. I think he’s too polarizing and I guess he gets donations when he trolls people on Twitter, but I think that’s nonsense. But why Trump signed this into law, I guess was PR. He may not have, these guys get briefed on stuff in 30 seconds. They don’t really know what they’re signing. Not that that’s an excuse, but I’m surprised he signed it because I know people who’ve dated Trump for pay in the 90s. I do too. You know, the, the whole Stormy Daniels mess. I know the woman who was with her and Tahoe. Oh, yeah. So right. I mean, it’s nonsense that he would do something that would hurt sex workers when everyone in Manhattan in the 90s knew that he was quite a fan. Oh, yeah. Also a Democrat. I know. I mean, this tech we’re under is simultaneously from the left and the right. And what annoys me as most is there’s both people on the left and the right that hire us and then they don’t speak out for us. And I understand why they can’t. They’re worried about what they’ll lose. Well there is some potential good news in talking to the free speech coalition. They’ve been very active in lobbying. They’ve been now to DC a number of times are also going to state houses and they’re, they’re filing lawsuits against some of the very restrictive age ID laws and they’re doing everything they can in their power to get through to some of these politicians and they’re actually making some headway. When the enforcement of it is ridiculous because my beautiful insane, messy, crazy industry, one thing about us, we find a way to survive. It’s the oldest profession when it comes right down to it and it’s not going away. And the CDC estimates about one million women are engaging in sex work in America at any given time. So that’s one in every 125 women and that includes like strippers, only thing, everything. That’s a lot of people. Yeah. Porn models, cam girls. Yeah. So the enforcement of this Festa Fosta nonsense, my, I did take down my links page under advisement of my lawyers, but very few of my colleagues have, they just kept them up and none of them have been arrested. So the good thing is I don’t see it being enforced. Is there much enforcement? That’s what I’m saying that there’s not. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, the supporters of Fosta Cesta are arguing that it’s essential in combating human traffic and protecting vulnerable individuals. Talk a little more about the effectiveness of that. It’s not what we’ve seen. You know, it’s new, but the data isn’t bearing that out. Even local law enforcement have been saying that they’re having a tougher time finding stuff. And I do know at the sort of lower end, because we lost our sites where we could screen, do deposits, do all the things that kept us safe and created a little bit of leverage against bad clients who would try to otherwise rape, rob, beat, not pay us. If we can’t have those sites to help us do all that, the only way we can stay paid and not beaten up and raped and robbed is with a pimp, right? A big scary guy who scares the client into behaving. And so at the sort of most vulnerable end of the spectrum in my business, like street-based workers is what I’m getting at. Many of them have gone back to having a pimp because the case will over and die, right? Right. If you work West Oakland, for instance, or East Oakland, you got to have a pimp. You’re dead. Yeah. And what was wonderful is in two decades of really ethical people before FOSTA/FOSTA, it was the business was heading toward more professionalism. Being able to use merchant accounts, being able to accept payments in other ways, being able to screen, being able to do deposits, being able to do a lot of things that let women not have to have a pimp, right? Which if the business is legitimized and run like a business, then you don’t need a pimp. But what we are seeing now with FOSTA/FOSTA is that workers are going back to more often feeling like they need a pimp. And that is not good. Yeah. I mean, I have told this story before on the podcast. I was at the Phoenix Forum, which was a very popular trade show for years, unfortunately. The year before COVID, somehow their timing was amazing. It was the last year they did it. And right around that time, I think that was the year, I was talking to one of my friends and clients who had a very large escort site. I am positive you used it at some point. I’m not going to mention it, but it was very, very big in LA and it was out of LA. So you probably know the one I’m talking about. And they were making about $6 million a year. The day FOSTA says to past, which was the day before I saw him, he switched the site off. Yeah. The same lawyer did some work for me and he’s the one who advised that gentleman, "There’s no way for you other than to just quit." And that was probably the right decision for that gentleman. It was a great site with great staff. I went to their building a couple of times if it’s the same one. And they were lovely people. Hey, lovely guy. And they were very cooperative with law enforcement, with the AGs. And now law enforcement doesn’t have any of that. And yes, the workers are ending on the lower end or ending up on the street. Well, and the #304s are proliferating like cockroaches on Instagram. And what’s 304? It’s a hashtag #304. If you turn it upside down, it spells HOE. Like remember the old calculator with the boobs? Remember that? Right. Yeah. So #304 is typically a street or sort of lower end. I hate to use it with lower, but you know what I mean? I’m going to get yelled at for this. Whatever. Let’s pay. I don’t care. Yeah. I’m sorry. I don’t care. You guys can be mad at me. I don’t care. We got work to do. I’m trying to help everybody stay alive. You know, giving blowjobs in cars and things like that, that would be lower end. There’s no two ways about it. They get mad at the, they call it the horror arc again. I’ve never once said they are worse or better than me. I just mean lower end in terms of, anyway, doesn’t matter. Yeah. What they make, how they do it, the lack of safety, lower end in a lot of respects. Well, a lot of them are wild young things that don’t want to be told what to do. The brothels have the best psychological outcomes the data shows when they can work in an environment that’s safe, has security, you know, cameras, house mom and the clients can’t misbehave very easily. Not perfect, but, and they’re sort of living together so they’re not lonely and isolated. And big one, their work is legal in that one county in Nevada. They have the best psychological outcomes that said it’s not a perfect system either, but that model seems to be much better, which is, you know, Australia does that for the most part. Canada has massage pilers, but street based workers like freedom. Yeah. I’ve got friends who have worked in the ones outside of Vegas. I think it’s more than one county. And I’ve also got an interview that would have run by now with Madam Bella Cummins. I don’t know if you’ve heard of her, but she’s very, very successful and very popular. And it was a great interview. She was funny and she was Frank. And we just had a fantastic conversation. She’s a lovely woman. Alice Little is brilliant and comes out of that world and does a lot of outreach and advocacy. She’s an amazing young lady. But of course, people don’t like brothels and their zip codes because of their real estate stuff. I mean, nothing’s ever perfect. But I think FOSTA-FESTA are a step backwards. They’re badly written laws. The enforcement is a failure. It has not taken down anybody that couldn’t have been taken down before they were passed. So they’re unnecessary at best. And it has pushed the online world overseas, which of course is a loss of tax revenue for America. So it’s stupid. Yeah. And let’s face it, the sites are still up except for like that page. Yeah. And they’re all overseas and Bitcoin based. And so they’re not paying taxes. I mean, they did this with gambling. Remember sports gambling? They pushed it all offshore under bush and it was a failure. And now they brought it all back and it’s pretty okay. Yeah, it is. People will gamble. You might as well tax it. So discuss any proposed amendments or reforms to FOSTA-FESTA and their potential impact on the law. You know, I wish I was more of an expert at this. I’ll leave it to the smarter people that are advocates that you speak to. I’ve tried to read the law as it was actually written and I don’t have a law background. So a lot of the legal age is not my forte. I found something you don’t know about. I mean, there’s a lot about geography, history, the law, finance. I’m a moron. Sounds like the makings of a song, but anyway. I understand that we live off words, but I kind of find the legal system a bit of a joke because we parse words in these laws and what happened to the spirit of the law, right? Yeah, I’m pretty tight with a lot of these guys, a lot of the adult industry attorneys when we get into the weeds on that. So yeah, and I guess that’s the system we have, but even precedent-based law, I think is bizarre because often the past stuff was wrong. So why would we base things on precedent? I guess we have to. It’s weird. I’d make a bad lawyer, but what I see is it’s very odd to go after an independent sex worker who is harming no one. Everyone is consenting in her world and no one’s being abused. To me, that seems deeply unconstitutional because the state is effectively saying that it’s not your body. You don’t own it. And I don’t understand how that can be legal. No, I agree with you and only in America, but well, not only in America, but primarily in America. They tell you what to do with your body, especially women. What advice do you have for individuals and organizations who want to engage in advocacy or raise awareness about the issues surrounding foster sex? So yeah, if you love a sex worker or you are one or you want to get involved, there are SWOP, that stands for Sex Worker Outreach Project, SWOP, we call it. There are chapters all over the place, all over the world. There’s one in the city near you. Been trying to get the Las Vegas chapter on my podcast. It’s the only one I know of, but if you know anybody who wants to be on the podcast, I’d love to have them on. And now you, oh yeah, I know tons. That’s happening. Yes, I know many. And they do great work. And it’s easy to get involved. We have many chapters with brilliant people and even some small things you can do. There’s something wonderful called Sex Workers Behind Bars. You can write letters and communicate with sex workers who are incarcerated and you’d be surprised what just communication with somebody who’s pretty lonely can do for them. And that cost you nothing. If you want to write letters to hot hookers behind bars, kind of sexy, right? Sorry. I like how you spin it better. I think it’s great. I’m trying, did it self. Oh, hey, you got me. I’m going to write a letter right away. Sorry, didn’t mean it like that. What is one final thought you’d like to leave our listeners with? Love is a human just like you and nobody’s perfect and neither are you. And try to judge less because everybody’s journey is different and not just sex workers, but everybody you know has got a story that would bring you to your knees just like you do. Your traumas, your history, your stuff, everyone else does too. So hate never got any society anywhere, but love does. So more love. Let’s hate, please. Yeah, here’s the thing and I go back to the whole anti sex worker and foster sister and all that. What sex workers do is a very positive thing because men wouldn’t go to sex workers if they didn’t have a need and men go to men and women go to men sometimes and I could go on all day with that and around and around. But the thing is that people don’t go to sex workers unless they have a need. And if that need is fulfilled, then who is it hurting? Is it hurting anybody? No, and it will always exist. And I’m not interested in a world that people think should be in some religious or whatever fantasy. I’m interested in the world that is and how that world can be better, less harmful, more kind, more understanding, more empathetic. Yep, I agree. Well, it’s a good place to leave it. Amy, I’d like to thank you for being our guest today on Adult Site Broker Talk and I hope we’ll get a chance to do this again soon. Likewise, thank you so much for having me. It was fun. I really appreciate it. It was fun for me too. My broker tip today is part three of what to do to make your site more valuable for when you decide to sell it later. Last week we talked about making a good offer and how to structure your site. Next, keep your website design up to date. Do a redesign from time to time. People will tend to think your site is the same as ever and click out of it without even looking at it if something doesn’t change. So keep it fresh and up to date. Times change, so should your website. Look at what your competitors are doing and see what it is you really like. If you know a site to be successful, look at what it is they’re doing and do some of the same things. I’m not saying copy their sites. I’m just suggesting you improve your site by looking around a bit. You’ve got to keep up with the times or you’ll end up being left behind. Also, keep an eye on your competition and make sure you’re offering everything on your site that they are or more. Don’t just look at their design, but make sure your offers are good and competitive. The same goes for your content. Do you ever wonder why one site does well and others don’t? Check out the competition’s content. What are they doing that you’re not doing? Be willing to make changes. People can’t understand why they’re losing sales to a competitor, yet the competitor is clearly doing everything better. Amulate success. Make sure everything on your website works well. Make sure all your links work properly. Check them on a regular basis. If things don’t work, you’ll lose customers. People are not patient these days. People’s attention spans are like that of a nat. They click out immediately and go to the next result in Google if they don’t find what they’re looking for. If the site is hard to navigate or if things don’t work. Check all your internal scripts and plugins and make sure they’re updated regularly as well. We’ll talk about this subject more next week. And next week we’ll be speaking with adult industry attorney Nick Zargarpour. And that’s it for this week’s Adult Site Broker Talk. I’d once again like to thank my guest Amy Taylor. Talk to you again next week on Adult Site Broker Talk. I’m Bruce Friedman. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]