Sex Workers: What to know when wanting a website

Occasionally I receive questions on twitter about how to get a website as a sex worker. This article will try to provide a some things you should know when wanting to get a website.

I know that it can be confusing, even after making things for the web for the past 13 years, I still need to look up so many things when making a new site. Technology moves fast, and you shouldn’t feel bad if you don’t know how to do things.

Without further rambling, here’s some things you need to know.

Domain Names

The first thing people generally think about when getting a website is a domain name. What’s a domain name? It’s what your visitors will type to find your website, such as twitter.com or mistressemelia.com.

Picking the right domain name can be hard: generally you want something relatively short and easy to type, but also not cost you a fortune. When picking a domain name it’s also important to think about how it may be misread by someone, for instance, expertsexchange is often joked about as being “expert sex change” instead of “experts exchange”.

Back in the day, there used to only be handful of what we call “extensions” or TLDs, these are the .com, .net, .co.uk part of your domain name. Today, however, there’s now hundreds, if not thousands of TLDs to choose from. Everything from .com to .adult and .sexy, back in the mid 2000s, it was even trendy to use a country-specific TLD (e.g., .us or .is) to make sentences or words as a domain name.

With all these TLDs come varying fine print or rules about how you can use them, for instance, in order to buy a .us domain, you must be a citizen or resident or legal entity in the United States. Some TLDs, such as .xxx and .porn, may also be treated differently be search engines and internet filters.

Additionally, different TLDs cost different amounts, for instance .porn currently costs about $80/year, where as .com’s currently don’t cost more than $5/year in general. Sometimes registrars (see below) will provide special offers and discounts.

Your domain is essentially the gateway to your website, so it’s important to think about what you’d like it to be. It may be hard for you to find the perfect name, as it is fairly common for domain names to be “squatted”, where by someone has already bought them, but purely for the purpose of reselling them at an inflated price. For instance, a domain name I was after a little while ago was already owned and the owner wanted several thousand for it.

Now that you’ve thought of your perfect domain name, it’s time to buy it, but how? This is where Registrars come in.

Where do I get a domain name from?

Registrars are companies who are authorised by ICANN (the organisation that oversees core internet infrastructure) and the owners of TLDs (such as nominet for .uk or .co.uk domains) to sell domains.

There’s heaps of registrars each with different prices, features and available TLDs. Some are Namecheap, GoDaddy, or, even Google.

Some places where you can register a domain name are, however, actually resellers, and are just partnered with an actual registrar. For instance, if you use Wix or Wordpress to purchase a domain name, then they actually just purchase the domain name on your behalf from a registrar. In some cases, such as for PervOUT Sites, they actually register the domain using their details, and actually even own your domain name.

If you find that your perfect domain name is already taken, you may be able to purchase it from it’s owner, but this will cost money, so be prepared for spending a decent amount of cash.

If you do want to buy a domain name that someone already owns, make sure you use a brokerage or escrow firm, such as DomainAgents. This will protect you from being scammed or cheated, and ensures the seller will only receive your money after they’ve passed control of the domain to the brokerage/escrow firm.

When choosing a registrar, it’s important to look at all their pricing information, search them for recommendations, and in general treat them like any other company which provides you a service. Some may have hidden fees, poor customer support or not the level of service that you expect, which can be a royal pain in the ass in the future.

Who would I recommend? Personally I use namecheap for all my needs at present: they’re cheap, are relatively easy to use, and present any fees as line items at time of purchase. They also have a free DNS offering which is really quite good (more on what DNS is below).

DN-what?

DNS is short for Domain Name System: it’s the system that stores records that computers use to know that myawesomesite.com actually goes to a specific server or other domain that is responsible for responding.

It can be pretty complicated, in general there’s several types of records that are the most common and important ones:

• CNAME records state that one domain points to another domain. For example, if you make a site with Wix, you’d use a CNAME to say myawesomesite.com points to myawesomesite.wix.com
• A records state that a domain points to a specific IP Address. For example google.com has an A record that is 172.217.5.238
• MX records are to do with email, these indicate where a computer should send email addressed to your domain to — that’s how you can email me at emelia@unobvious.technology.

There’s also some additional records, such as TXT and SOA, that are generally required to make sure emails will be delivered and not marked as spam.

Some DNS providers also provide a record type called “Redirect records” which are used to make myawesomesite.com redirect to a URL of your choosing.

Using a “Redirect record” provided by Namecheap is how I’ve made mistressemelia.com take you to my twitter profile, and the sub-domain pay.mistressemelia.com take you to my OnlyFans profile.

*phew* This is a lot of information, right?

WhoisGuard & Your Privacy

When registering a domain name, you MUST provide a valid legal entity, that is: you can not use your stage name. This is a legal matter, so make sure your information is correct and legally accurate.

Generally, after registering, your details will be published as the “whois” information for your domain, which is publicly available information, and can easily be looked up using services such as who.is. Traditionally this was so you could find technical or legal contacts for the given domain.

As a sex worker, you definitely do not want your legal name and address to be publicly available through a whois lookup for your domain name. So, how can you protect your privacy?

The answer is “WhoisGuard”, this is a service which will mask your details and instead show pseudo-anonymised information instead the public whois record. Usually it’ll cost about $5 per year, and will be offered at checkout time as an add-on that you can purchase through your registrar. With new domains, Namecheap give you whoisguard for free for the first year.

For instance, if you look at the public record for mistressemelia.com you’ll see that it doesn’t actually reveal my private information, and instead all the details are obfuscated.

So.. Website time?

Okay, you’ve read all the above, congratulations. You’ve picked your perfect domain name, bought it, and now you want to create a website… only, how?

You may have heard about how coding is all the rage these days, and all these things like HTML, CSS, FTP, and JavaScript. These all sound super complicated, and you’re probably feeling a little overwhelmed: the good news? You don’t necessarily need to know any of these to get a website.

Services such as Wix, Squarespace, and Wordpress.com all provide managed platform for creating websites, enabling you to get online without any coding knowledge. The features of these services vary, along with their prices.

The only downside to these services is that you’ll often have to pay to get your domain name connected to these services, and you’ll have to pay to remove their branding or ads from your site, but they can be a great way to start without learning to code.

If you’re after something custom, you have two options:

1. Learn how to do it yourself (reasonably time consuming)
2. Pay someone to do it for you (generally expensive)

If you want someone to do it for you, then I can highly recommend Candid Consulting, this thread on twitter also lists a whole bunch of companies that you can hire.

On Payments & Selling Things

This is very important: as a sex worker, any feature of services aimed at the general public which enables you to sell of goods or services, or receive transfers of money WILL NOT be usable by you. This is because the payment processors that services generally use to collect payments are not adult friendly, that is, they use Stripe or Paypal who explicitly forbid usage for adult purposes.

So, how can I sell my adult content?

I’d highly recommend IndieBill, who act as a seller and host for adult content. Alternatively, keep that content on an adult services and link to your profiles on IWantClips, ManyVids, MFC, etc.

Finally… Always read the fine print

This can’t be stated enough: before signing up to anything or buying anything, read the terms of service and acceptable use policies: make sure that the service you wish to use allows adult-oriented usage. Very frequently the Terms of Service documents will include a “no obscene usage” clause, which, as a sex worker, may prohibit you from using that service.

If you are unsure as to whether you can or can’t use a service, I would highly recommend contacting their support staff and asking for clarification, or getting a lawyer to check over the terms; For instance, I did this with Wix, and to paraphrase what they said: you can use them but it is a case-by-case basis and they reserve the right to refuse you service, so, probably keep it soft-core.

This article was written by Emelia Smith, the Founder of Unobvious Technology — we’re working to provide new products and services to the adult industry.