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Wheldrake -> RE: Pro-Domme question - not just a general complaint (11/7/2011 1:09:23 PM)
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ORIGINAL: LadyHibiscus
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ORIGINAL: Wheldrake
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ORIGINAL: Hisprettybaby
Also, when you think about it, all the leather and other stuff that a Pro has to buy to "keep up the image" and keep her customers happy, that costs A LOT. Have you checked the price of leather corsets online lately, for just one example?? OMG!! It's frickin' mind-blowing. I checked the price of Pros in the Seattle area just the other day and it was from $200 to $250 an hour and went up from there as the session time increased. I'm not surprised, given what all their business expenses are.
This is a good point, and it makes me wonder if there might be a worthwhile niche for professionals who don't work quite so hard at "keeping up the image" and, as a result, can charge lower prices and still turn a tidy profit. I've never been to visit a professional dominant, and I'm not likely to anytime soon, but if I were to go I think I would actually prefer one whose clothing and equipment were mainly basic and practical. Devastatingly effective, of course, in the case of the equipment, but not necessarily flashy or expensive.
Good luck with that. We do have a local outfit that does that, I THINK they work out of a house... As to "basic and practical", what does that mean, exactly? Fantasies are rarely practical, and cheap toys are cheap. You're not the market for a pro dominant, so you're not thinking like a client.
There was a stage when I was younger, much less experienced, unattached, and very eager to experience submission. At that point I was seriously considering going to see a pro dominant. So why didn't I? Well, partly because I was concerned about privacy and safety, and partly because none of the professionals in my area had websites that really grabbed me, and partly because I had intuitively absorbed the idea (despite finding it silly) that paying for erotic services is somehow shameful, but also because I was a student on a tight budget. At $200 to $250 an hour, there must be a reasonably large untapped market of potential clients who just can't afford the prices a professional would normally charge.
One way to tap that market, I would think, would be to keep costs down and charge a correspondingly low price. At the stage when I was considering seeing a professional, I wouldn't have been too concerned about whether she dressed up in leather for the session or just wore jeans and a T-shirt - if anything, the latter might have made the experience seem more gritty and authentic. I also wouldn't have objected to being tied up with nylon rope from the hardware store, festooned with ordinary clothespins, jabbed with a salad fork and soundly flogged with my own belt (one of the more severe beatings I eventually took, when I did eventually find someone, was inflicted partly with a wooden yardstick). Maybe that's an extreme example, but a dominant should be able to offer several different forms of pain and helplessness without having to spend huge amounts of money on clothes and toys. I don't know whether this would be a viable business model, but to me it seems at least plausible that it might work.
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