Who wants an SW built and run platform for FSSW and Creators?
On SM lots of SW complain about how the platforms they use to reach their clients pay them no heed, allow reviews when they don’t want reviews, etc.
Creators want more freedom to do their stuff, and better payments, or at least better managed ones.
They seem to think it’s hard to build such a platform.
It isn’t. All you need is 50-100 SW willing to commit $200-$300pm for a year or so. After that, the long term price should be “low tens $pm”, depending on the business model, and content storage/delivery costs.
Legal issues – no one sane in the USA would want to build/run it on account of it being a legal nightmare waiting to happen. So, you need someone to build/run who doesn’t live in the USA, and who has no plans to visit, ever. These can be, should be, different people, as different skills. But they need to be physically based in a SW friendly jurisdiction.
You’ll need – probably expensive – lawyers to structure this such that any Americans in the core funding group don’t have any liabilities in US law.
CC issues – assume you won’t get the ability to take credit cards. From what I gather, even in Europe the CC companies won’t provide for new escorts and escort services. (Some older ones seem to be OK, but that might be grandfathering in).
Kink/Fetish Bonus – if you’re not taking CC, content rules become “whatever is legal, in ALL OF the country where the site managed from, where hosted, and where the SW member is”.
Payment : Members get paid direct by customers, using whatever they like (bar CC). If you handle money collection that’s a tax and liability nightmare, and you don’t need to, (because no CC). This is also why everyone pays for membership, at whatever is needed for sustainable development. Maybe give people 6 months free if you can, help those in difficulty get started.
Tech : Drupal, hands down. Free – enterprise class open source content management with granular user permissions. I used it to build and run AdultIndustryResources (2006-2018, RIP)
Hosting : Mojohost.eu (fine with escorts). Start at around $100pm, might reach 200-300 if you hammer it. After that, scales with use, so, hopefully, revenue.
Dev : Drupal developer, full time, lower wage country, (I’m sort of thinking Eastern/Southern Europe), 6 months at $3000-$4000pm ish. Then maintaining overview for a few hundred pm.
Design : Low $Ks
Management – i.e. moderation and dealing with people. Full time job, $3000pm, mainly for fluency in English. Ratio per users, not sure (this number will be the biggest driver of whatever the monthly fee has to be).
After that, costs scale with success, but revenues should too, so, not to panic.
I am happy to give pointers to any serious groups of SW who want to explore this. I could even oversee the build.
But I can’t actually DO the build, because it will need a higher level of expertise than I have, eg in encryption. You are building a BIG JUICY HACKING TARGET. You’ll want encryption baked in, everything possible encrypted at rest. This isn’t expensive any more but is still technical and above my skill set.
Nor do I wish to run the site, though if push came to shove, I could. But it would be better if SW, or ex SW, did so.