Lovings Lounge

The dust is slowly settling, and Craigslist is once again filled with adult ads… in the new Adult Services categories. Now that the category ads are eyeballed and manually approved, most of them are offering “massage” (no surprise there).

Craiglist has also filed a suit against the publicity loving South Carolina Attorney General who wouldn’t stop harassing the site. In a classic Bush Junior move, Att. Gen. (who hopes to run for a Governor Real Soon), has in return called for a press conference, declared “MIssion Accomplished“, and quietly folded. Presumably, to find other targets who won’t fight back.

This soap opera has shook the adult service world, and I’ve received a lot of questions about other adult classifieds sites ladies can advertise on instead. Here’s a little list that works-

DO IT YOURSELF

Backpage.com - very much like Craigslist in the early days. Owned by the same giant that runs Village Voice, SF Weekly and dozens of other papers nationwide. Lots of traffic, good results. PAID (cheap)

Escort-Space - up and coming escort community and ad directory with some features of Myspace & Facebook. Easy to join and make a pretty ad :-). It looks like a “nice neighborhood”, so you won’t be surrounded by “cheaper” looking ads. Let me know about your results. FREE

Find-escorts.com - growing free classifieds part of Lovings adult guide. Shameless self-promotion. National, but best results in SF Bay area. Newest classifieds are also listed on Lovings.com paid sites. Ads are posted immediately, but *are* moderated to make sure nothing vulgar or illegal shows up. FREE

MyRedBook - major review site with classifieds. If you’re not worried about having your most intimate details discussed in public, good resource with very good traffic, with focus on California. FREE or PAID

Cityvibe Free Classifieds - offshoot of Cityvibe, free classifieds. Lots of traffic, but mixed reports on results. FREE

Escorts.com - with name like that, site gets very good traffic. Demographics show that the majority of visitors are less educated though… don’t know what this says for customer’s spending potential (compare to Lovings.com –> demographics). If you have an experience with them, please let me know. FREE

MAJOR PAID ADULT DIRECTORIES

While these sites cost more money, the total cost is less than a month of daily advertising on Craigslist (at $5/day, $150/month). All ads are manually approved, and you usually have to go through a live person for most changes. Most require proof of age. This is both good and bad - while you can’t make changes to your ad yourself, this does mean that *all* ads contain legal language, good spelling and grammar, and mostly decent photos.

A certain kind of customer likes the legal age checking and the “nice neighborhood” feel. It’s been reported that the callers tend to be nicer and calls less time-wasting. There is a perception of “higher-end” advertisers which allows you to establish your pricing accordingly (as opposed to $40 Craigslist specials), but this also makes for having to be more competitive - YMMV. You need good photos (professional are the best), and reasonably good error-free ad text (reps will help).

A nice thing is that you don’t have to keep reposting your ad for hours to stay on top - most sites shuffle the ad placement randomly, and you can in addition buy permanent high-visibility spots.

Lovings.com - (of course I’ll put my site on top ). Very good traffic in San Francisco Bay Area & Sacramento. In business since 1996. Live rep always answers the phone during work hours, no holding (you can also visit SF office). Ads posted the same day, or at worst the next morning (if you contact them late in the day). Now also in L.A., Las Vegas, N.Y areas, with higher traffic in California. Ads currently starting at $75 (visiting), $99/month special in SF Bay, $40 in other areas. Also offering professional photo shoots at good rates.

Eros-guide.com - huge international collection of Eros web sites. In business since 1997. Very good traffic in majority of areas, and a very strong national presence. Live reps, but be prepared to be on hold for a while. Ad turnaround listed as taking a couple of days. Make sure you don’t have any brand names in your photos, nor watermarks with competing site names. The most expensive, but with very good results.

Erin Ann Myer has written a fantastic guide to advertising on Eros Guide, in addition to all kinds of highly effective VIP escort marketing advice. Check it out!

Cityvibe.com - another huge national directory with excellent traffic & fairly good results. Live reps. Pricing depends on the area, and is somewhere in the middle between Lovings & Eros-guide. According to the stats, most national traffic goes to their free classifieds section eroticservices.cityvibe.com (second place is the L.A. area), so this might be a good way to check them out.