This is part 3 of a series about working for adult chat lines. Read part one here and part two here.

Questions and Answers:

Do I need a landline number to do this kind of work?
No – you can use your mobile number.

Does Tony know about this work and how does he feel about it?
Yes, Tony knows. I asked him whether he was okay with me doing it before I signed up. I’ve actually stopped now that I’ve cashed out, but we’ve discussed whether I will start up again. He encourages me to make extra money and listens to me when I tell him about clients – especially particularly disturbing ones.

Can I see your profile?
No, sorry. I worked hard to get my profile to what it is, and I certainly don’t want anyone I know being able to see it.

How much have you made?
I earned £172.60 in total, but after fees, this was £88.04

What’s the strangest thing someone has said to you?
A lot of things are pretty strange!

How do you stop yourself from laughing?
The mute button is a great thing! I also doodle whilst I’m on the phone which helps.

Have you ever had to end a conversation with someone/cut them off?
Not exactly. I did have a bit of a scare, hence me having to block someone. He called me up one morning whilst I was in the car with Tony – parked waiting for a shop to open. I put him on loudspeaker and he very clearly said my name – my real name. Tony confirmed that he heard it too. That was a bit worrying in itself, but I thought nothing of it. I hadn’t told anyone my real name at all – when asked for my “real” name, I gave callers a variation of my middle name. Then, all day, he kept ringing me and putting on various accents.so that I wouldn’t think it was him – although of course, Adult Work gave me the username. After the 4th call I went ahead and blocked him – the whole thing was feeling very strange and in the end he was getting me to do all the talking, which in itself isn’t weird, but I just had a bad feeling – as though he was someone I knew, recording me. A few hours later I logged in and had a phone call within minutes. The same fake Scottish accent, and this time, although he never said anything alarming, I got really freaked out. It was after this phone call that I waited 24 hours to cash out my earnings (credits take 24 hours to fully show on your account, just in case there is a dispute) and I’ve not been on since.

Should I become a verified member?
To become a verified member, you can do one of two things – either provide a copy of your passport or send in a full body photo of yourself with your Adult Work username in the photo somewhere. I am 100% not comfortable doing either of these and I don’t believe it has affected my earnings. If you do become verified, when you offer other services such as DirectCam, and be charged a lower fee.

This is part 2 of a series about working for adult chat lines. Read part one here.

Fees
Adult Work provide a service to you and to the clients – the site is free to use by both clients and service providers. By this, I mean that there are no upfront costs. But of course, Adult Work need to make some money. They do this by charging to connect your calls via Direct Chat (which is more than fair since they are protecting your telephone number), but they are not transparent about any other fees they charge. When you attempt to cash out, you’re met with a cryptic message telling you that cashing out will leave you with a negative balance. This is because when you go to withdraw your earnings, Adult Work will charge a 30% admin fee. I’m not against the fee at all, but I was very annoyed that I had to look long and hard to find this fee listed. All in all, I earned £172.60 but after all the fees that Adult Work charge, I was left with £88.04

Cashing out:
You can withdraw your earnings using four methods – bank transfer, cheque, Payoneer and PaytooMobile. 1 credit is equal to £1. Depending on the withdrawal method, you’ll be told how long it will take to process and when you will have the money. Payment transfers are completed two weeks after they’ve been requested. The withdrawal limits for these are:

Cheque 50 credits (£50)
Bank transfer 150 credits (£150)
Payoneer 50 credits (£50)
PayTooMobile 50 credits (£50)

I opted for a cheque, and at this stage, you are required to enter your real name and address. It doesn’t actually have to be you – you can get it paid to anyone, as long as you have their name and address or bank details.

Maximising income and what to charge:
There are plenty of other service providers on the site, so you really need to stand out. I’d been online as available for a few sessions before I got my first phone call. What is your unique selling point (USP)? You can play on anything – your looks (young, mature, BBW), your accent (well spoken), your experience or lack of it, your “preferences” (however true they may be) or anything. Take a look at some other profiles and see what they’re writing and offering. Personally, I found that stating something along the lines of “I’m not escorting at the moment, maybe you can convince me to change my mind” often gets mentioned in phone calls – someone wants to be the one to “convince” me to escort. I have no intention of ever escorting, but Adult Work is also used for escorting services.

Knowing what to charge can also be difficult. Setting your price low at 0.50 credits means that you might be very busy, but the quality of callers is sometimes lower. I would strongly suggest that you start off at 0.50 credits, then as you start to grow a client base and earn more feedback and profile views, you can start slowly increasing your prices.

If a client has been on the phone with you for more than 5 minutes (there are plenty of times when they aren’t on for 5 minutes) then you are both able to leave each other feedback. If you’re able to mention in the phone call that you’d appreciate feedback then please do. Remember to leave prompt feedback for them – you can check out their profile to see other feedback that has been left, and choose something along those lines. There shouldn’t be an occasion to leave negative feedback – the credits are deducted from their balance straight away so there should be no issue with payment, and if they hung up on your then you’ve obviously done your job.

You can also use credits to “feature” your profile on the site – this will give you a prime location during certain time slots. You can pre-book these – the earlier you pre-book then the cheaper the rate that you get.

Be sure to respond to any emails you get on Adult Work in a prompt fashion. These can be short and sweet. You might also want to message clients after a phone call to tell them how much you enjoyed yourself and how much you’re looking forward to your next chat.

If you’re lucky, you may find yourself getting regular clients – clients who are so happy with your services that they want to ring you regularly. This is a good thing!

You can choose when you want to appear as available for telephone bookings. I’ve not had much success on weekend nights – which I thought would be busy. Instead, I find that I’m extremely busy if I log on the moment I wake up on weekends until about 11.30am, with a slow tail until 1pm. I think this is because fewer service providers are online and available during these times. On the few occasions where I’ve signed on before work I’ve been busy.

Types of clients, what to talk about and can you do other things at the same time:
Of course, the nature of this work is by default, adult. No two phone calls are the same – sometimes you’ll also have the same caller ringing you but not making that clear. I’ve spent a few hours talking to someone about religion, politics and what food we enjoy. You’ll soon learn whether a caller wants you to do all the talking, or whether they do. You may need to be very creative and come up with some interesting topics.

Despite the Channel 4 documentary – you can’t do much else whilst you’re on the phone to a client. Remember that they’re paying for your services and they can tell when you aren’t giving them your full attention.

Blocking someone
If you get into a situation where you want to block someone from calling you, you can do this by going to your email inbox and clicking “blocked senders” and then adding the nickname of the person who you want to block. You’ll see that I already have someone blocked.

Next week I will be posting a “Questions and Answers” session – please comment on this post, email [email protected] or tweet me @alditoharrods with your questions. 

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.