by Lynsey G
Specialization at a small scale has proven itself a more sure thing for performers than shooting old-school porn scenes in the new millennium, and porn has morphed to meet the needs of its fans as well as the wallets of its smaller producers. As Danny Wylde told Forbes in 2017, from his perspective as a retired performer, he can see “the reality that performing is no longer a way—for most people—to make a lot of money.” Even performers who frequent the mainstream LA porn studio circuit have branched out into alternative revenue streams for the extra cash and the control it can give them over their careers.
Performer websites, for instance, began to revolutionize the way adult actors made money as soon as the World Wide Web began displaying photos. Nina Hartley told me in a 2010 interview for WHACK! that performers had “more leverage and power, in that they can learn how to run their own websites and keep more of the money for themselves” than in the past, and since then that trend has deepened. Almost every performer has their own website today, as well as a phalanx of social media profiles, giving them more power over their image and finances. With the ability to produce and display their own images, models can monetize their own content and make money on their terms.
But websites are just the tip of the porn iceberg. In a 2016 study, Heather Berg, a professor of women’s studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, found that of the eighty performers she interviewed, nearly all were making money outside of prerecorded porn scenes. “For all but the most popular performers (and then usually for only a short term),” she wrote, “there are simply not enough film performance gigs to sustain an income.” Anything from phone calls to used lingerie to Amazon wishlists can be sources of income for porn stars these days.
“There are a lot of girls who do webcamming and make a lot of money,” Nikki Darling said to me in 2016. “There’s starting to be a lot of multiple revenue [streams] or multiple hustles. I think ten years ago, you could be a full-time porn star and you could really make money and a good living. But with the rise of the Internet and piracy, and how easy it is to get content for free, there now are all these alternatives that are widening your net.” A few weeks before I spoke to her, at a panel at the XBIZ conference, four out of seven models affirmed that they made fifty percent or more of their money from sources other than filming traditional porn scenes.
As sex scenes have grown ever more passé, consumers have developed a taste for interactive, custom-made content that connects them directly to performers. As such, webcam shows that put models into one-on-one, or one-on-a-few, contact with fans have exploded in popularity. At the Adult Entertainment Expo in 2016, Christopher Ruth of the Fine Ass Marketing agency told me candidly that he estimated easily fifty percent of the industry’s profits now came from camming. There are a number of big webcamming companies that operate on a variety of brilliant payment models, but the long and short of the camming industry is that models—sometimes porn performers, sometimes not—do sexy things on camera for a group of onlookers, and the company hosting or producing the cam show takes a cut of their profits. Cam shows are prized for their interactivity, with viewers able to type messages to the model during her show, to take her into a “private” room for a more intimate experience, and to suggest ideas for what the model should do next, or just to say hi. The camming industry has maintained its edge by keeping up technologically with the trappings that can help their industry, notably with the finest in teledildonics (long-distance smart sex toys) and every new iteration of high-definition filming and viewing technology, including virtual reality.
But webcamming isn’t the only game in town for adult models to make money between filming porn scenes; clips are another performer favorite. With videos ranging from a few minutes to full-length porn-style sex scenes, most clips are produced by models themselves for their fans—either solo or with partners, in any configuration or niche they want. The videos are loaded onto “clip stores,” either on one of the many large clip websites that host content and take cuts of the payments, or directly on the performer’s website (using one of these large website’s interfaces). Nikki Darling told me, “The amateur clip type of thing is kind of where, from my vantage point, I see a lot of porn going.” For the performer, it’s an opportunity to make money and take control over their labor. And for the interested consumer, it’s worth noting that purchasing clips from the performers that make them is often relatively inexpensive.
Clip stores are a good source for independent income, but Nikki says that they’re not all that simple. “I think it can be beneficial, and it does widen your net of income … You’re picking up different skills. You’re learning how to edit, or you’re speaking to people who know how to edit. You’re figuring out how to upload and shoot … It’s entrepreneurial in a lot of ways, because you’re making yourself a business and figuring out what’s best for the business and what your market is.” Moving behind the camera is an excellent source of not only cash but agency in the adult entertainment industry. In today’s MindGeek-dominated landscape, entrepreneurship may be the best way forward for performers like Nikki, whose careers are diversifying every day. From creating custom videos and photos for fans, to sending those videos and photos over mobile apps like Snapchat for pay, to monetizing social media streams using new apps like FollowPlus, to paid private Skype video calls, to text message sex via companies like DreamLover, the possibilities abound for a savvy performer to make a living without shooting for MindGeek at all.
Live, interactive possibilities also abound, like feature dancing at gentlemen’s clubs, educational speaking engagements that are opening up to sex workers in the 2010s, public appearances at night clubs and elsewhere, and, of course, one-on-one sessions with clients. For adult entertainers of the kinky persuasion, work as a professional dominatrix can be extremely profitable. For those with less specialized tastes, short stints at legalized brothels in Nevada bring extra attention and cash to the brothels and the performers. And, though it’s still taboo to speak of, private escorting gigs are—and have long been—standard practice for many.
AS EXXXOTICA NEW JERSEY approached in the fall of 2011, the ways in which escorting and industry events dovetailed weren’t at the forefront of my mind, preoccupied as it was by the pending art show. WHACK! was planning to attend the expo in full force, and we were in talks to put together a red-carpet, media-heavy party in Manhattan the weekend of the show. We hoped to invite press outlets to take photos and ask questions of the industry royalty in attendance. We’d also, of course, give said royalty lots of liquor and shuttle at least a few to the event in limos.
We were extraordinarily lucky to have a generous pro-domme friend hooking us up with all of this, as to date WHACK! had not made any money. Under the guidance of our “business guy,” Moe, we had gotten a website redesign and a booth at Exxxotica Miami, but no more. His behavior had become more and more erratic, with WHACK! always coming in last place behind whatever other schemes he was running. As time went on it became clear to me that he was a drug dealer who knew a lot of people in business—not, as we had been led to believe, a businessperson who did a lot of drugs. As Moe began showing up hours late for meetings, sniffling more and more during our chats, and failing to come through on any of the things he’d promised, we got tired.
Tensions grew, and by mid-October they reached a breaking point. Over beers at a bar one night, we told Moe that we thought it was time we parted ways. He had, after all, shown up almost an hour late for a meeting across the street from his apartment, so by the time he arrived, we’d had it. We wanted to be polite; j. vegas and I had prepared a whole list of talking points that we wanted to communicate in order to figure out how best to end the relationship to everyone’s benefit. But, after vegas got a few sentences into his prepared spiel, Moe stormed out of the bar without looking back. Bemused, the rest of us finished our beers. Then, the texts started coming. I don’t know where he went after he left, but for hours after we departed, vegas and I were barraged with t
ext messages. With vegas, he wheedled and whined, trying to get back into good favor. With me, however, he let loose. He called me a variety of—in Moe’s defense—rather creative names and accused me of sowing discord amongst the team, blaming me for everything. I’d never felt more confident in my slightly paranoid but on-point creep radar.
At any rate, as we approached Exxxotica New Jersey in November, we were leaning heavily on friends who were better off financially than we were to make our party happen. We were excited—this would be a gala event that would attract media and fans and put the WHACK! name at the top of the “cool” list at that year’s convention. Despite Moe’s shenanigans, we were maintaining a good rapport with many companies and performers, and in the week leading up to the convention we had a healthy list of confirmed A-list attendees for our party. We made it clear to them that we were hoping they would arrive, walk the red carpet, get their pictures taken, have a drink, and then feel free to stay for the evening or head to other engagements as they saw fit.
We sent press releases to every media outlet we could think of, billing our party as an Exxxotica-weekend event. We hadn’t gotten the convention to partner with us, as they had official, branded parties running at the hotel in Edison, so we were careful to avoid any confusion over whether the convention itself was involved in the party. However, when the media got hold of our press release, headlines implying that our party was an official Exxxotica-branded event began to circulate. We attempted to alert the media to the mistake, but nobody seemed to care.
Until I got a phone call from an extremely prominent adult star. We’ll call her Alyssa Lane. I had interviewed her in a hotel room in Manhattan a few months prior, and we had gotten along swimmingly. She was such a huge name in adult film that the interview had gotten a lot of attention for WHACK!, and we had maintained a good rapport with her since. But Alyssa had gotten word of our press-heavy event and read the erroneous headlines, and she flew into such a rage that she called me at work to scream at me for ten minutes. I had no business calling it an “official” Exxxotica after-party, she said. I was diluting the brand, and disrespecting the convention by taking models away from the real Exxxotica after-parties. Furthermore, the performers who attended might miss other important appearances in New York because of our party. They might drink too much and end up hungover the next day, then be late for their signing obligations at the convention. In short, she told me that the party we were throwing was disrespectful and unprofessional.
I tried to counter her shrieks, but she was not interested in hearing anything I had to say. And, over the next few days, we got word that Alyssa was on the warpath, alerting her friends and at least one talent agency that we were up to no good. Soon, performers began backing out of our party. By the time we left the convention on Saturday evening, our two limos were full of adult stars, but nobody else was coming. The WHACK! crew and I drove our friends’ beat-up cars into the city and arrived at the red carpet just ahead of the limos. We did some red-carpet interviews and managed to attract a decent press turnout, but the party was not nearly the star-studded extravaganza we’d been hoping for.
In the aftermath of our letdown, our domme friend, who had kept her head high throughout the debacle, explained to me why Alyssa Lane had gotten so angry she’d blocked most of the performers from our red carpet.
“Alyssa is a madam,” she told me, point-blank. “She runs girls every time there’s an event in New York, and so does the guy at the talent agency that slammed us. If their girls came to our party instead of escorting on Saturday night, they wouldn’t be making their pimps any money, and pimps don’t like that.”
I was floored. The concept of porn stars doing escort work was not unfamiliar to me; I’d often wondered about performers’ sudden trips to New York, and I’d heard oblique references to “private” work, but mostly when performers were assuring me that they didn’t do it. Those who did, they said, were liabilities because the unprotected sex they might have with outsiders could bring disease back into the porn industry. The fears of STI transmission from escorting work aren’t unfounded. A number of actors who have tested positive for HIV in the past decade were later revealed to have been escorting on the side. One of the most difficult issues around testing in pornography is the fact that when people aren’t on the clock—or on camera—it’s impossible to keep track of what they’re doing with their bodies. That’s why the testing protocols for performers are so strict. Unless they were to get new tests literally every day, which would be prohibitively expensive and might leave the talent pool completely drained of blood, there’s not much room for making the rules stricter than they already are.
Anyway, despite the risks, performer escorting is a big business, and as time goes on, more appear to be partaking. As the industry continues to shrink, everyone is looking for extra cash. And few alternative revenue streams pay as well as escorting. Because of their celebrity status within the world of sex work, their relative scarcity in the escorting market, and their business acumen, porn stars can charge exorbitantly for private bookings, with hourly rates reaching into the thousands. I can’t confirm the rumors I’ve heard about royalty in the Middle East procuring the services of porn stars for tens of thousands of dollars a night, but I can say that I’ve heard those rumors from enough different sources that I believe them to be true. In a climate where the average female performer earns about half her income from porn, a flight across the world and a night being wooed by some of the richest men in existence in exchange for twenty grand can be an awfully compelling proposition.
But it’s important to recognize, as well, that not all porn actors are “stars” capable of racking up tens of thousands for a night out with a fan. Many porn models do private sex work for other reasons that are as diverse as the people themselves. With the porn economy in the state it’s in, working in porn and even moonlighting as a cam girl while picking up paid text messaging on the side doesn’t always fulfill some models’ needs, whether professionally, emotionally, or financially. A large number of them started out in private sex work—stripping, domming, doing phone sex, camming, or escorting—before branching out into porn, and vice versa, some out of necessity, others out of curiosity, and many others for reasons we will never know, nor should we presume to judge.
Escort, writer, porn actress, and educator Christina Cicchelli told me once, “When it comes down to it, most of us enter this workforce for money, for a place to stay or for a bite to eat … When I first began in the industry I didn’t really plan it and didn’t consider being a stripper or a call girl as a career. I just knew I needed money and I would rather dance and entertain clients than work at the mall.” There are many in the sex industry with similar stories.
Although prostitution is illegal everywhere in America except for Nevada—and even there, only under very strict regulation—some of the stigma that comes with private sex for pay is beginning to dissipate, ever so slightly. In the past few years, sex workers of all stripes have become more vocal, especially on the Internet, forming online communities and support networks, speaking up for themselves in droves, and shining much-needed light into their field of work. Naturally, not everyone who does private sex work is willing to come forward and demand respect from the public, given the stigma they face and the fact that their work is currently criminalized, but those who do are making great strides in visibility for their industry. Efforts like the Red Umbrella Project have brought the experiences of sex workers to the public in storytelling and film as sex workers begin to unite for common goals. And the best part? People are beginning to sit up and take notice.
Of course, the old second-wave-feminism, sex-negative view of sex work as inherently exploitative still exists, and it may be dominant in most of America. But a new generation of articulate, empowered, and increasingly outspoken sex workers are speaking up for their work, their rights, and their struggles to an ever-more-compassionate and educated public. They argue that sex work can be just as legi
timate and non-exploitative a means of income as any other, that outdated ideas about sexual morality are behind the continued criminalization of most forms of sex work, and that that criminalization and the surrounding stigma contribute to the majority of the risks that sex workers face—not the job itself.
Porn stars in particular are getting more reverent treatment from the public. A growing number of colleges and universities have begun asking performers to speak to students at campus “Sex Week” events and in classes on topics ranging from sexual representation to empowerment to sex education. In 2014, Routledge began publishing a brand-new, peer-reviewed academic journal called Porn Studies, dedicated to the important discourse about porn in our culture. Trade publications, too, are showing interest in hearing from the people who actually do sex work instead of from wallflower journalists like me. Ten-year veteran of the porn industry Aurora Snow’s ongoing work for The Daily Beast is an excellent example, as are Andre Shakti’s smart and pithy columns for Cosmopolitan. Former performer, director, and producer Tina Horn recently wrote a book, Love Not Given Lightly, about her experiences and those of her friends who have done professional sex work of various kinds, and she’s gone on to write for numerous websites about her experiences. And these few are just the tip of a growing iceberg of outspoken sex workers building audiences around the world. In short, while porn and escort work are still taboo subjects, neither is quite as hush-hush as it once was, and the crossover between the two types of work is starting to come out of the shadows.