Turn missed bookings into Business

[Jotap]

Hello, thank you for the feedback I have tried to address all concerns and such. I will try to keep this to the point & keep within the rules of the forum. I might lose you again however!

Just to be transparent ? I have lived in the UK for nearly 10 years, currently in Reading ? originally from New Zealand and lived/ travelled all over.

amy: I have had the legalities checked by a Solicitor around the site and in particular adding a fee to the booking - I am within the legal parameters? I definitely do not want to end up with any legal ramifications! The website will be for existing persons in the sex industry ? independents only no agencies, therefore; we will keep our terms of use strict in the sense we comply with; but not limited to the law ensuring we are not: Causing or inciting prostitution for gain: Section 52 Sexual Offences Act 2003. Along with Section 53 Controlling prostitution for gain ? BookaDate is a platform to maintain a personal profile/ booking/ financial management ? the key to this point is: without influence or control; from the site provider.

RE: my autoresponder tells people when they can call me back if I'm busy and they can text me in the meantime; Depends, how long between autoresponder telling when to call back and; when one actually can, same principle goes for text? bookadate.com/amy then click availability ? 15 seconds give or take ? booked within 1 minute. Also RE: I can't look at your site any quicker than I can my own phone at the end of a booking, can I? Agree ? but it?s only a few extra seconds.

It would be your prerogative if you decided to just go direct after a punter finds you through the site but, here?s hoping the site provides enough value that you or the punter continues to use the site in future. You're not obligated by ongoing costs.

Kay/ amy/ all: Definitely take your point on naming convention ? I appreciate that but, most of the catchy names are already gone, so I had to come up with something new for a future generation of punters ? but also catering for a future global market, not just UK ? albeit my sole focus to get started.

VoluptuousCurves: Thanks for liking the concept ? again I take the point about the name? As a man looking at mentioned site(s) ? the opposite is true from some of our perspectives too around appearing sketchy but, I won?t labor my previous comment ? bookawhore is available but it didn?t quite sit right with me so I passed it up?!?

Revenue model ? Customers pay upfront by credit or debit card, this is held by a third party UK regulated institution, and paid direct to you after the booking. This method won?t be for everyone? But the common theme I have heard is verifying your punter for security ? this helps that ? you will still get their phone number to call and say ? hey, thanks for booking etc. etc. and if you get a weird vibe ? cancel the booking. How much validation can you do in a 2 minute phone call anyway? Please remember I worked security for working girls? 

You can still add cash customers by reserving the booking slot (in real time) with their details if you want or, just do it on your phone as per and remove the availability slot from your BookaDate diary ? which will be easy. Ideally, I will automate this for your convenience ? that might have to be a feature down the line?

Clarification on Process:
Client goes to www.bookadate.com/VoluptuousCurves
Clicks Book/ selects time/ makes payment
Diaries updated on phone, and details exchanged for you to interact

For touring, I think this would have to be a high priority feature down the line and certainly on the radar, but you would simply block that time out as ?On Tour in Manchester, call me to make bookings? and manage that as per, until we figure out the user experience, on both sides. 

I tried to keep it short, sorry it took so long ? lots to think about, then cook dinner and come back to it

[amy]

Along with Section 53 Controlling prostitution for gain ? BookaDate is a platform to maintain a personal profile/ booking/ financial management ? the key to this point is: without influence or control; from the site provider.

Your solicitor is wrong. If you are taking payment for arranging somebody else's prostitution activities then you are both controlling and gaining from that persons prostitution; 'control' in this context means nothing more than that. The only legal way to offer such a service is to charge for other things in the way that sites such as Adultwork do - note that they charge for virtually everything humanly possible but they're not stupid and they know fine well that charging for using the online system to make a booking would put them over the line.

RE: my autoresponder tells people when they can call me back if I'm busy and they can text me in the meantime; Depends, how long between autoresponder telling when to call back and; when one actually can, same principle goes for text? bookadate.com/amy then click availability ? 15 seconds give or take ? booked within 1 minute. Also RE: I can't look at your site any quicker than I can my own phone at the end of a booking, can I? Agree ? but it?s only a few extra seconds.

I still don't understand. Even if my autoresponder tells somebody I can't answer for two hours, your site doesn't alter that. If I'm on a booking I'm not checking my phone, computer or anything else so if it tells a punter to leave a text or call me after 12, the first I will know about it is at 12 and if the punter is keen to book he'll just call me then and quite possibly be on his way over shortly afterwards? How can that be made more efficient?

It would be your prerogative if you decided to just go direct after a punter finds you through the site but, here?s hoping the site provides enough value that you or the punter continues to use the site in future. You're not obligated by ongoing costs.

And how happy do you think punters who book independents will be to be paying a random third party? The reason many don't use agencies (who are performing the same function and breaking the same law as you and for the same reasons) because they think the money should either go to us or stay with them?

Revenue model - customers pay upfront by credit or debit card, this is held by a third party UK regulated institution, and paid direct to you after the booking. This method won?t be for everyone? But the common theme I have heard is verifying your punter for security ? this helps that ? you will still get their phone number to call and say ? hey, thanks for booking etc. etc. and if you get a weird vibe ? cancel the booking. How much validation can you do in a 2 minute phone call anyway? Please remember I worked security for working girls?

'Working security' for prostitutes gives you no inside knowledge about how and why any of us work the way do, and the ridiculous paragraph above confirms that - all it gives you is knowledge on what people who work security do. I can assure you that I can screen a punter for myself on the phone in a couple of seconds 90% of the time, and less than ten seconds for the rest. I may be reading this wrong, but is what you're getting at that your site will allow punters to arrange bookings with us without our having any say or even knowledge of it - do you think we want to be 'ordered' like pizzas or taxis? A huge number of us keep our Adultwork booking diaries locked down precisely to  prevent people doing this.

It won't work for God knows how many reasons - what if a punter I wouldn't see in a million years puts a five hour booking through just for shits and giggles so nobody else can then book? And when am I supposed to have time to piss about updating an online diary often enough to make it work, or go through all these unsolicited bookings cancelling/deleting them - at least some of the punters will be thinking that it's job done and could potentially be getting ready to set off before I even know anything about it?

As for the idea that payment to us will be anything other than cash upfront, good luck with that. I wouldn't take off one shoe without my money safely handed over any more than the Odeon would let me in to watch the film or the bus driver will take me to the other side of town without my buying a ticket first. And you're expecting punters to cough up without having even seen us in person? How do they get their money back if all is not well? How will you stop them getting it back if they contact you and say the booking never happened and they want a refund?

Clarification on Process:
Client goes to www.bookadate.com/VoluptuousCurves
Clicks Book/ selects time/ makes payment
Diaries updated on phone, and details exchanged for you to interact

Or, to give an example from yesterday:
Punter calls me at 1.37pm and gets a text saying I'm busy and can answer from 2pm.
Punter calls back at 2pm, arranges booking for 3pm and is given directions.
Punters arrives at 3pm, pays upfront so I have my money, he has a service in return and leaves at 3.30pm.

Bear in mind that the first step only applies if I'm busy when they ring. The rest of the time it's no more complicated than steps two and three and nobody needed to go near an 'app'.

[mature helen]

As usual OP everything Amy has written is right.
Your business plan is a non starter.

[amy]

As usual OP everything Amy has written is right.
Your business plan is a non starter.

I didn't actually realise how much I'd prattled on there. I've had a lovely late breakfast and was feeling unrushed .

And even after all that, I can still think of a list of reasons why it wouldn't work.

[mature helen]

I didn't actually realise how much I'd prattled on there. I've had a lovely late breakfast and was feeling unrushed .

And even after all that, I can still think of a list of reasons why it wouldn't work.

Amy it was the perfect response explaining piece by piece how and why it wouldn't work, I enjoyed reading it and I totally agree with everything you said..as usual with your posts it was explanatory with a twist of humour.

[VoluptuousCurves]

OP I'm sorry but there is absolutely no way your revenue model is going to work.

Have you ever worked anywhere within the adult industry and dealt with payment processing? The chargeback rate on adult services is HUGE compared to regular retail/service, because the first thing Joe Punter does when his wife is accusingly waving his credit card statement at him, is to say "Oh my god! Someone must have stolen my card details! I'll call the bank right now!" Bang goes your profit. Are you going to indemnify us, the service providers, against this? Of course not, you'd have to be a moron, because you've then opened your doors for all the bait and switch artists who will accept lots of lovely bookings then not provide a service.

Once you've got a significant number of chargebacks on your account, you're going to run into problems with your payment processor.

Let's leave aside the whole issue that most punters are going to run a mile rather than use their credit/debit cards to book a hooker. Most of them are married! They do not want a paper trail of any sort. That's the reason we mainly deal in cash (or as a friend recently christened it, "Ho Dough". )

I genuinely want to like your concept, because I'm a tech geek and an early adopter and I'm all over ways to make things more streamlined, but this really hasn't been thought through properly.

Do you have any independent sex workers on your development/concept team? Or is it just you right now?

I'd say you've got two choices:
1. Completely re-think your revenue model. You originally mentioned BookATable. If I use that to book a restaurant, I don't pay BookATable, I pay at the restaurant. I assume their revenue model is that they charge a set fee to the restaurant per booking, or maybe the restaurant pays a monthly fee, I don't know.

I would consider paying a reasonable monthly fee to advertise on your platform, provided that there was a very robust app which would allow me to block out time slots quickly and easily myself. You could actually consider marketing it as an electronic  diary/appointment organiser. I know many ladies prefer to keep it old school with a paper diary (and so do I right now) but if I had a robust electronic diary I would use it.

2. Change your offering to appeal to agencies, and work directly with them as an appointments system and/or payment processor. I actually think the concept as described would work well for agencies as they are able to entertain multiple customers at once (so more like a restaurant) whereas as indies we can only handle one at a time (unless they're paying extra  ) You could look at selling your platform as a white label solution or SAAS.

On the legality aspect, I have little personal experience of the laws around prostitution but my lay person's understanding is in line with Amy's. This doesn't stop hundreds of agencies making lots of money out of it, but it's something to consider if you want to be sure of not ending up with your business shut down and assets seized, not to mention a criminal record.

[Lucie268]

The only way a business model within this industry would work is to make the process easier, whereas this, and a lot of the other proposals on this board, actually complicate.

A phone call from a punter to me is a means of booking and a means of screening. If someone books me via an app, I'm going to have to have them call me anyway so this is an extra faff.

Plus yes, if you take payment for the booking itself that's most definitely illegal. Even people who work for escorts (drivers, maids etc.) are arrested for pimping charges, so if you're making a profit from someone else's sex work, yeah that constitutes pimping.

And there's definitely no way either client or escort would be comfortable with payments via card. It's cash or nothing.

[Jotap]

Thank you all again ? I haven?t figured out how to do the quote insert so please forgive my ignorance in just replying point by point...

amy:
Your solicitor is wrong - I will definitely get a second solicitors opinion, as the point you make is very much valid. It is a fine grey line I am skirting and will make certain before I do anything.

I still don't understand - The punter will see you are available at 1230 and book and pay there and then ? you get a text saying Joe has booked you at 1230 (Yourself and VoluptuousCurves make a point about the revenue model ? which I?ll address)

And how happy do you think punters - I think this might come back to the revenue model but, my thought process was the small % added will indicate the independent is still making what they make normally...

'Working Security' for - Perhaps I should have added; I lived with a Dominatrix for a year too in a ?relationship? and was somewhat active in the work ? but no, I?ll never completely understand and apologies if I sounded like it.  It?s not about ordering you like I would a pizza, not my intention at all ? the intention is from a user punter experience easily finding someone with availability and taking the next step ? again, I think it comes back to the somewhat flawed revenue model.

It won't work for God - This is where I thought the revenue model would work as the punter would pay for the 5 hours up front? Perhaps a rule that any bookings over 1 hour require confirmation from the independent?

As for the idea that payment to us - You will know the money is secured, when the punter arrives you reply to the confirmation text YES and this validates the booking and will release the cash after the booking time. There would also be a set rating system ? Profile V Reality to give punters the reassurance they are getting what they pay for, for example. Refund process is all parties agree then money is refunded ? there will be strict terms around this, setting the terms will be in conjunction with yourselves. But as mentioned ? I agree the revenue model has room for improvement if not removal.

Or, to give an example from yesterday: - Completely Agree ? like I?ve eluded to, this site is not the one stop ? there are so many sites and means but, over time with your input and such ? this might be that ?perfect site? 

VoluptuousCurves
Just me at the moment, hence I am looking for a number of you to help test and develop/ mould the site into what you actually need. I did want to market this to independents but, I take all your points on the revenue model, agency viability, and some adjustments to be made.

They do not want a paper trail of any sort - The payment description would be non-descript or ?The Steakhouse ltd? for example ? which would give ability to explain over why ?200 cash might have left their bank for an obscure reason! Surely married men wouldn?t be going to a sketchy site though!

Whilst the process might feel complicated (which is my fault as I haven?t detailed everything for compete purposes) ? all the complicated pieces are managed in the back end ? the user i.e. punter experience to search and make a booking is simple 3 steps. The user i.e. independents experience will require you to manage it. Initially will take getting used but the system is very straightforward and intuitive that, within a couple of days you will be a pro? Pun intended?

If I were to change/ add/ remove certain features and more importantly change the revenue model, but also to what you say VoluptuousCurves marketing it as an electronic diary/appointment organiser (with a profile and features) on the pay as you go model with a monthly fee ? would this be of interest and; what would you see as reasonable? I was thinking free trial for 1 month and ?10 per month for the Elite and ?15 for Elite+

I am definitely glad I ran the idea past you all first ? yes I should be paying for market research! Can I donate to the site to support what you all do here?

Thanks again.

[Caledonia]

You are still missing the major point that has been made multiple times. No one is going to pay by card. Most of us have enough problems getting a deposit for travel costs if we cant confirm where someone lives. (And thats for outcalls, never mind getting a deposit for an incall).

Even agency girls get paid in cash, then they give the agency its cut.

If you keep thinking you can get guys to pay before even meeting the lady, then you're idea won't go anywhere.

[hippydippy]

They do not want a paper trail of any sort - The payment description would be non-descript or ?The Steakhouse ltd? for example ? which would give ability to explain over why ?200 cash might have left their bank for an obscure reason! Surely married men wouldn?t be going to a sketchy site though!

For most of my clients, I wonder how would they explain spending that amount of money to their other halves? Service Provider or steakhouse it's still undesirable attention on their spending habits. Some men have to be sneaky and put a bit of cash away at a time as not to be caught by their significant other.
"I thought you were visiting your sick mother, what were you doing at a restaurant? Who were you with? "etc etc
Not good.