It's true: some women pay men for sex and companionship.
But the number of women who do so is nowhere near as many as the number of men who pay women… or even the number of men who pay other men.
Anyone who says otherwise is after your money.
But the nice people who want my money say…
Adapting the words of one of the most famous escorts of the 20th Century, Mandy Rice Davies, "Well, they would, wouldn't they?"
If you look at the websites of some 'agencies', you'd be forgiven for thinking there is a huge market out there, and a desperate need for more 'straight male escorts'.
In fact it's such a large market and the need is so great that… they want to charge you, the wannabe escort, money.
Why? Because they can't make a living out of charging women clients to meet you!
In reality, nearly all of them are advertising sites – you pay them to advertise your details – and most of them are bad places to advertise. Really staggeringly bad places, in some cases. They'll happily take several hundred pounds from you and then not let anyone else see your ad!
Are there any agencies worth working for?
Well, some agencies that primarily have female escorts do have some male escorts too. We've no idea just how much work they get, but it must be enough to cover the time and effort in promoting this side of their agency.
Before you rush off and offer your services, remember these agencies will be able to pick and choose which men they take on and very probably already have enough for the demand they experience, so be prepared to be rejected. If we ran an agency (which we do not) we would not even bother having straight male staff: the amount of bookings they would get would be too small to cover the hassle of handling all the calls from hopeful men.
For non-sexual work, there used to be an agency that passed the basic test of not charging its staff – even for the cost of 'security checks' – and only making its money from finding them clients… but it closed in 2007. We've no idea how much work their small band of escorts got, but we suspect it wasn't much. One of the problems is that the scams can have a far bigger advertising budget, but even so this lot were only really findable if you already knew their name. Oops.
At one point in late 2010, there were signs of another bunch of optimists starting one up, even if they had to be talked into not charging the escorts anything up front. Don't ask us where to find it: if you cannot do so, how do you think any potential clients will manage? (In fact it looks like they had given up by early 2011!)
Working as a couple
The market is not as large as for single escorts, but both men and women sometimes book 'mixed' (i.e. one man, one woman) couples.
For some clients, it is a chance for voyeurism and exhibitionism (watching and being watched), and for others, it is a chance to explore their bisexuality. While you may like the idea of being with two women, if you rule out having another man as the client, you are rejecting over half of the possible bookings.
You will need to find someone prepared to work with you though, and any woman already working as an escort probably gets offers to work as a couple several times a week. They are unlikely to welcome yet another man apparently after some free sex with them.
DIY
The alternative is working independently. Registering your own .co.uk domain costs about £3 a year, and you can find free webspace easily. Or you can place your own ads somewhere, but be aware that as of February 2011 just one 'adult work' site already had over 7,400 very optimistic men looking to sell sex to women. We would bet our entire earnings from male clients that almost none of them will ever get a booking from a woman, even the ones who are generously offering their services for free.
However you advertise your services, you should be up front about looking for payment, even if this has to be done discreetly at first (looking for someone 'generous' is one common euphemism).
Again, be prepared for things to be quiet – a significant proportion of work for straight male escorts is gained through word of mouth. Imagine how good you have to be for a woman to tell her friends that she's paid for sex… and it was worth it.
You also need to consider how appealing you are. A book we like on being a sex worker suggests that women considering escorting pick up someone 'average' in a bar and have sex with them, and seeing how that feels. For men looking to escort women, the equivalent test would probably be to go to a bar and have every woman in the place willing to go home with them. If you can't do that through a combination of looks and attitude, you may find it tough going.
It's not just men…
Incidentally, the situation seems to be much the same for female escorts who only want to have women clients. While there are women who pay other women for sex and companionship, most of the responses to escort ads in the lesbian press are apparently women wondering about becoming a lesbian escort themselves.