Now that things are official, I thought it might be time to share some updates. Not so much that I think we have any fans, since we’re just getting started, but maybe later down the road someone will want to hear our story.
Scrolling back several weeks, into mid-summer, a close friend of mine and I decided that it would be a fun change to go into business together in adult entertainment. Sounds fun right? Lucrative?
Wrong. It turns out that starting an adult business is just like starting any other business. It’s a ton of work, and there are obstacles that can stop you dead in your tracks if you aren’t careful.
So, this is going to be a remarkably unsexy post. Possibly the most unsexy thing you have ever heard a cam model or porn actor say in your entire life. Hope you can forgive me for it. ^_^
I won’t even waste my time talking about social media sites with over-aggressive KYC policies and shitty ID verification apps. That’s all so much of a sideshow right now it isn’t even funny. But here’s what we have been up to otherwise in our effort to have sexy fun times.
Firstly, we needed to incorporate. This is just common sense for any new enterprise. It is just the two of us for the moment, so an LLC made the most sense. It wasn’t all that hard to do, but for some reason I procrastinated for nearly a month on filling out the paperwork. If you form a business in Nevada or Delaware, it will generally cost you about $150, maybe double that if you are in a big ass hurry. Both these states make their money in the registered agent business. (That’s a lawyer, not an actor’s agent, sorry.) Next tax year the cost to keep it going will be about double what it cost to form it.
OK, so then we had to deal with the federal government. Applying for an EIN is so much easier than it was even 10 years ago. We didn’t have to have our charter or certificate of good standing ready or anything at all. So, we had a tax ID before we even had our official business certificate.
On the other hand, there is a new requirement that is more onerous and it will give anyone some pause if your privacy is important to you, and that is registering through the FinCen BOIR process. Starting like idk a year or two ago, all small companies must tell the government who their owning members are. This wasn’t required previously, so it would have been easy to form a company and only the one person submitting the paperwork to the state of formation would be “named”, and that could be a lawyer if you really wanted to keep your business on the down-low. Not so much these days.
We filed our BOI right away just to get it out of the way, but this is one of those things that made me really think, because in all other ways once the business was formed, my partner and I are free to use our stage names. FinCen is on the public record, they have our driver’s licenses and home addresses on file, and it remains to be seen how these might be used to stalk people in our industry. (More power to them for taking apart super-PACs and big tax evasion scams, but in this line of work the stakes and concerns are a bit more personal.)
Having accomplished those things, it was time for my partner and I to work out an Operating Agreement. This is basically a contract between us that describes how the business will work. I didn’t think it was too hard to do. From the first draft notes to buying a legal form online and filling that out, I think it only cost us $50 and took about 2 weeks to get it done.
And so the evening of our first adult filming session, we kicked things off by signing our corporate charter. Yay! We had a great time in the hot tub and uncorked a bottle of sparkling rosé. So, we’ll share some pics from our celebration real soon now.
I wish I could tell you it was all dildos and prostate massagers from there, but that’s not the case.
Sadly, there’s this little thing that most businesses like to do, called getting a bank account and being able to make money.
Most people do not realize it, but the banking industry has gone out of its way not to work with people like us. To be fair, they also don’t want anything to do with gambling, selling cannabis, and a dozen other industries that are considered to be “high risk”.
This means that accepting credit cards is difficult and expensive. Worse, you may not even be able to have a checking account to deposit them into! There are stories of industry folks having their bank accounts closed or their mortgages denied because they took bank deposits from OnlyFans or had their name credited on a particular film.
The truth is, SESTA-FOSTA, which was supposed to prevent trafficking of minors (and people in general) has done more to hurt those of us who want to operate legitimately than any other law in recent history. These laws need to be reformed, and that is a long uphill fight against the morality police.
So, now you understand why we’re so focused on our privacy. It’s not that we’re embarrassed, or that we don’t love our fans. There are real consequences in failing to compartmentalize this kind of work, and if you’re not careful they can quickly spill over into your private life.
A friend of mine with a government job says the harassment policy at their workplace considers posting ‘flirty’ photos to social media to be a violation, so consider how invasive that could be.
Even as I try to post this to WordPress, small technical issues connecting to our site leave me feeling like the federales have come to seize our domain name and shut us down.
So, how do sex workers earn money when everyone is set up to try and prevent it?
Certainly, big sites like Chaturbate have financial business partners they work with to ensure they can take credit cards and operate their businesses without disruptions. So, who are they working with?
Some SWs are using solutions like Cash App or Paxus to receive money and then move it into their personal bank accounts so they can buy groceries and pay their bills. This is nice, but it’s not a very practical answer for anybody with ambitions that go beyond simply doing some casual cam work or influence peddling. Real businesses need stuff like a savings account and business loans.
Well, I guess you could say we found a solution that works for us – for now. If you have this challenge, my suggestion is that you do some creative search engine querying on Reddit, and you’ll likely find what other people have done that worked out for them. (I will talk more about privacy concerns in a different post on some other day, but meanwhile try not to Google it.)
Nevertheless, there is still always the very real concern that one day you may wake up to the bad news that your assets have been frozen or that you can’t transfer any money that people have paid from their credit card.
So, will we be able to put together the services we need to support our fledgling studio? Time will tell.
We’re in talks with two of the biggest high risk merchant providers now. They both seem to be pretty open to working with us, but also ask a lot of nosy questions implying they want to make absolutely sure we’re not prostitutes (with due respect to the world’s oldest profession).
And we have a checking account for the time being, which I didn’t have to lie to get, so that’s a good start.
Also, after a long fight with LinkedIn, my profile was reactivated and my job posting for a freelance videographer has been answered twice now. So, we might actually be able to hire the talent we need to get the little studio off the ground.
Stay tuned for more news and updates. Things are getting exciting!
Leave a Reply