Adult Chat Lines – Part 1

I’ve really struggled with this blog series, but after lots of careful consideration, asking on Twitter and changing my mind many (many many!!!) times, I’ve decided to share it. In the interest of sharing another money making method and providing a useful guide to keep you safe, I decided that this blog post is a good thing. 

This blog post is part one of a series about working as a chat operative on an adult chat line. The series will cover which operators to use, how much you can earn and most importantly, how to stay safe. It will also feature a guest post by someone who makes their income solely from adult chat lines. Channel 4 showed a documentary almost two years ago about adult chat line operatives, and it seemed to create a lot of interest. Firstly in the money making aspect of it, but also for the shock factor. It has taken me a long time to finally get the courage up to try this sort of work out. Let’s set aside all moral debates about this sort of work, and focus on the “how to”.

A great site to get started with is Adult Work. I say “a great site”, but the design of the site isn’t great and things aren’t easy to find or explained well. There also doesn’t seem to be a good resource for how to use Adult Work to earn money (and stay safe) and things aren’t clearly laid out. This is my biggest frustration with Adult Work, but the main thing is that clients return to Adult Work over and over again, and this is what makes is a good site to use.

The site works on a credits system – the clients can buy credits using a variety of methods and top up their account. You are then paid these credits when you offer services. When you come to withdraw your earnings, one credit is worth £1.

Safety:
Before you even sign up to Adult Work, it is really important that you cover all bases for your safety.

1. Think of a name for your adult chat persona – this covers not only your name, but also your unique selling point (USP). You are creating a character. Have a second name ready for when they ask you for your “real name”. Don’t give a client your real name, and certainly don’t give them your surname.
2. Set up a free email address using your new pseudonym.
3. Sign up for a free SIM card. Although you can use your current mobile number, I strongly suggest that you go ahead and get another one. For a few reasons. Firstly, there is a service where a client can “book” your time, and Adult Work gives out your number direct to the client. THEY DO NOT MAKE THIS CLEAR (which I will cover below) when you put your number onto the site. And secondly, it is really nice to be able to completely switch off and only put the SIM card in when you’re working. You can also earn Quidco cashback by signing up for a SIM card. Here’s the links for T-mobile, GiffGaff, Vodafone.
4. Decide whether you want to use a separate phone. I’ve got a cheap £20 PAYG phone left over from sending my iPhone away for repairs. You can pick them up for as little as £7.49 at Argos (example). The battery life is much better on these phones than smartphones, and I like that I can still use my phone to text, tweet, etc.

Signing up:
Use your specially created email address and fill our your profile. During the sign up process you do not need to give your real name or address – just your preferred nickname, chosen password, etc.

Your profile:
Your profile will need to include at least one photo. You can add up to 3 photos to your main profile, and then add more to your private or public galleries later. You can pick what this photo is of – you can be fully clothed and showing your face, it can be an adult photo without your face on show, whatever. Be sure to fill your profile with as much information as possible. It doesn’t necessarily have to be honest. You can tick that you’re interested in each and every experience – the more the better. You also need to write a profile – again, the more information the better. And by information I do mean that of an adult nature. Here you can also list your availability for chatting throughout the coming week.

Offering services:
On Adult Work, you can offer a few services. For this series of blog posts, we are talking about adult chat. There are two kinds that you can offer on Adult Work – Direct chat or Pre-booked Phone Chat. The difference between the two is simple:

Direct chat – you provide your telephone number to Adult Work, and then you set your availability to “available now”. A client is then given a UK landline number to ring (that is not your number) and enter your unique pin number. You are then called by Adult Work and a recorded message is played, asking you to either accept or reject the phone call. You are not told who is ringing, so it could be anyone from the site. Adult Work take a fee for connecting the client through to you. I can’t actually tell you what the fee is, because I can’t find it listed anywhere on their site. Working through my fees, for shorter phone calls (under 5 credits) it has been around 30% and for longer calls it has been around 16%. So who knows?!

Pre-booked phone chat is where a client chooses to pre-book a telephone call for a set amount of time, at a set time and date. If you accept the booking then the client will be given your telephone number. Adult Work do NOT make this clear, and this is where I feel that it would be beneficial for you to have a different SIM card – you can bypass the fee that Adult Work charge for Direct Chat, but you can also ensure that your personal number isn’t used when you’re not expecting it. You can also leave your telephone number blank, and you’ll be required to ring the client, at your own expense. As a personal preference, I like to save the numbers that book via this method – using their names if I know them, just to give me an edge when they call.

You can set different prices for each of these services. So you could offer Direct Chat for a higher fee to cover the fees that you’re charged by Adult Work.

Another service that you can offer is Private Galleries – where you upload adult photos and clients pay for 24 hours, 3 days or one week’s access to these photos. You can set the prices – the more photos you have then the more you can charge. These photos don’t have to include your face, but they should be of an adult nature. This can be a good passive earner if you’re happy with this sort of thing.

Part 2 will be up next week, covering topics such as fees, maximising your income, what to charge, what to talk about and how to block someone. Part 3 will be a “Questions and Answers” session – please comment on this post, email [email protected] or tweet me @alditoharrods with your questions.