When I first started out on Niteflirt, I set my listings at .75 cents for the first two months. I wanted to drum up attention with the lower price and I wasn't sure what I wanted to settle on for the final price. Who doesn't like a sale, right?
That tactic was a little give and take. I had some people drop off because the price I had switched it to was too much for them. A lot had stayed with me, some went on to become regulars that I still talk to almost five years later.
One of those regulars I had taken a huge liking to and really didn't want to lose. I made a deal with him that if he notified me ahead of time, I would lower my price back to what I had started for the duration of his call. At first there wasn't anything wrong with it and I got to keep my customer who called way more than anyone else did. So I thought it equaled out in the end.
As time went on I was now a Niteflirt regular and I wasn't getting quite as many of the calls so easily that a fresh newbie charging only .75 cents per minute and with a low place bidding for ads does. But that wasn't so bad. I learned marketing and PR tactics. I networked and utilized many different forms of social media to get my name out there. I expanded what I did and the things I was into. Learned different fetishes and kinks and kept an open mind as long as it didn't break any rules. I forced myself to adapt and grow.
I kept changing my prices for that one regular but now there was a snag. He wasn't talking as long as he used to. I was also having money issues and was sliding further and further into survival sex work that was being exacerbated by my depression and anxiety and the living situations that made work and clip creation difficult. Every time he called the person that once made me light up when I answered the phone was making me groan out loud....and not in the usual way. Sometimes I would dodge his calls and pretend that I was sleeping to get a break and not have to change my price down.
I was getting paranoid that someone might see me at the lower rate and then wonder why it was only for that one call. Or that they would want to talk to me but decide against it when it changed after his call. I was torn between telling him I couldn't keep changing the price because I needed the money and all my other reasons, and potentially losing him and the money he did bring in.
So I sat down and weighed my options. With how little I was netting with the lower price, it would not make that much of a difference if he dropped me as his phone companion. The mental toll it was also taking on me to pretend to be ok and give my all to this person, who it now felt like was leeching off of my original good nature, was too much.
I wrote him a nicely worded e mail telling him in no uncertain terms that I couldn't keep switching my prices and I was very honest with telling him why. I let him know how much he meant to me as a person and a client and I understood if he felt he could not keep calling me.
E mailing him was the best thing I had ever done. It didn't fix my depression I had fallen into but getting his response and being told that he would not want to stop calling and he understood made me feel so much better about our calls. It also made me feel better about myself that I had stood up for myself and my job and nothing bad had happened.
I am glad to say that two years later he is still one of my best regulars and his calls are still frequent.
The moral of this blog post/story is this: Know your worth. It does not matter what you charge, the ones that matter will pay it. Charge what you are worth and don't look back.
I still do line sales during holidays and drop my lines to a dollar for that time period. This brings in people who still try to haggle with me on my prices claiming that they cannot afford me if I go back up. But I have learned my lesson and I let them know I'll talk to them next holiday because I am quality over quantity and I want quality over quantity.
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