That post, or rather three posts each of the maximum allowed length, was probably two days work.
@nurturingman and @quixotic_life I suggest you take all the good information and advice in this thread and elsewhere, put your heads together and write a new sticky. It is certain to be better than the original since it will have your experience as well as mine. If it's written seriously for a serious candidate then it will indeed have a different feel - mine was initially written slightly tongue in cheek for the unserious hopefuls. It even has a joke in it that nobody has spotted. It's not very funny but I was quite proud of it.
Then you can crack on with the really important job: a converse post demonstrating the benefits of hiring a male professional. Thus forum, like all forums, has a large number of lurkers. Some of these are probably people who might hire a man to cuddle them if they knew more about it, and knew how to be sure it was safe.
Everything I've ever written on this forum is true. If I make a mistake I apologise for it. And I don't always hit the right tone. But I put a lot of effort into moving the cuddling community forward and I make no apology for that.
@CuddleDuncan ~ "...I put a lot of effort into moving the cuddling community forward and I make no apology for that." No arguments from me on these points!! You clearly have a passion around all this, and I hope you continue sharing that with others.
@Mark ~ I don't think you need to unsticky it. But adding a note up top with the reasoning behind the choice to have it stickied, as well as your thoughta on the subject, might be a nice addition.
Was the “sign up for a pro account — do it now [with hyperlink]“ call to action in the March 18 original post? I don’t remember it being there then. Or was it added on July 4, when the admin‘s/moderators must have turned on a special permission to allow it to be edited more than 24 hours after it was posted? That’s one of the things that I find most concerning.
And, by the way, I didn’t mean to imply that I would necessarily be the first male pro to make; I just meant that if (and I’ll say hopefully when) I do I’ll be happy to share my success story.
I find this thread being "stickied" says the site is backing a premise [...] [...] I don't think you need to unsticky it.
I find this thread being "stickied" says the site is backing a premise [...]
[...] I don't think you need to unsticky it.
I'm not emotionally invested in whether this is a sticky or not. It's meant to be a benign action but if it's leading some to feel uncomfortable or speculate on hidden agendas/endorsements, I'd rather not touch it. I also I don't think a thread should require a mod disclaimer for it to be acceptable as a sticky. It should stand on its own merits.
I created a “post demonstrating the benefits of hiring a male professional” a week ago, @CuddleDuncan : https://www.cuddlecomfort.com/forum/discussion/11689/let-s-give-our-male-pros-some-love
It’s more of a call for comments than a demonstrative post. I’d love to hear from clients themselves about the benefits they enjoyed in hiring a male pro, because I feel strongly about telling one’s own story. No one has yet responded to the call. I understand that a client has to get over the hurdle of admitting they were a client, but I wish they would.
@nurturingman yes the sign up CTA was in the original post.
The only edits were to the title and the opening paragraph. Mark proposed the new title, since the original was manifestly unsuitable for a sticky. The new title necessitated a minor rewrite of the opening paragraph, which I proposed. Both edits were agreed without discussion, and Mark implemented them.
You now have a whole bunch of experience which I don't have, and you didn't have at the time I wrote that post, so create a new one. Threequarters of mine can be dropped straight in with little or no editing. The CTA has to be in there somewhere but it doesn't have to be at the start: I put it there as an explicit plan to reduce the workload on moderators and increase revenue for the site. If doing that causes a greater harm, then we'll move it.
I saw that benefits post, and it's a great start - personal stories, if we can get them, are the most powerful thing. But you have to understand that if you don't write a 'how and why' post explaining the benefits of hiring a male cuddler to prospective clients, sooner or later I will.
I'd love to hear your experience of hiring a male professional cuddler, @CuddleDuncan ! 😃 Preferably, I'd like it if you would post it as a reply to my discussion. If we were in the same place, I'd love to be that male pro you hire that gives you a healing experience of nurturing touch with a man, and then you could tell your story. I bet you could find a good man in London, though.
The way I see it, this is a discussion forum, not a blog. If/when I write a post touting the benefits of hiring a male professional cuddler, it will be on my blog. I'm afraid the mods might frown upon my linking to it, but my blog is under my real name, Daniel Greene, as well as my username, nurturingman. I'm sure you can find it. I might write something here anyway, though. I’ll wrestle you for who gets to post first. 🤼 😆
Back to your original post, if I had my druthers, I would have a link — not call to action, just a link — to sign up for a male pro account at the end of your informative post, so the men who have read it are making an informed decision about whether to be a Pro here.
@nurturingman , I saw that thread soliciting comments from those who have hired male pros. So far, no comments. I suspect that’s a reflection of how seldom that happens.
I’m wondering: how often do women hire female pros? Mostly you hear about men as paying clients. I don’t ask this to hijack the thread, but besides all the other social barriers, women may be reluctant to hire pro cuddlers of any sex, presenting yet another challenge to male cuddlers.
@Babichev I've been cuddling over 3 years and I've had 1 legit female client. The few others that have contacted me turned out to be catfish. Also had a session w/a M/F couple once but both are Unicorn cuddles, not anything frequent at least for me.
@Babichev
I’m wondering: how often do women hire female pros?
FWIW I used to regularly ask female pros whether they ever had female clients, and if I recall correctly the majority had never had a female client but 2 or 3 of them did have a female client at some point (but we're talking one female client in over a year of cuddling, among many dozens of male clients).
So it appears that the number of women who book professional cuddlers may be very few if neither men nor women are getting bookings from them. I may have missed it but are there any male pro cuddlers that we know of that have managed to build a clientele or generate a significant number of bookings?
@Babichev if there are male pros who book a lot of clients, they’re not sharing that information. I used to think one of the videos I saw of a male pro was evidence that there were successful male pros, but I recently re-watched that video and saw it said he books about one session a week (see the YouTube video). And I read in one of the comments on YouTube that the female client featured in the video is a pro herself. I asked the members of a private Facebook group for pro cuddlers if any male pro was doing good business, and one man said he booked or or two sessions a week. Others said almost none. One got really excited because he papered telephone poles with tear sheets and someone in the media did a story on him. He was thrilled he got one request for booking. I followed up with him and he said no one else responded to the tear sheets nor the radio spot. Another said he had sent out scores of letters to therapists introducing the benefits of cuddle therapy and asking to work with them, and got no responses. One guy who has several videos on YouTube declined to talk with me about his business. No one has responded to my requests for a mentor. And, as you can see, I am the only male pro engaging in this discussion.
If I booked even one session a week, I would be thrilled! At least I would be doing the work I have the heart ❤️ and training 🎓 to do! If I could book four hours a month at $40 an hour, I would earn $160/month. That would cover my $60/month in listing fees and leave me with $100/month to pay off the $1,151 I've already invested in being a pro (see below). It would take me over 11 months to pay off my starting costs, or about a year to become profitable. And as I'm learning the hard way, booking four sessions a month, even at $40 per session, is a big if.
$533 Travel to Colorado for my approval session (hands-on role-play try-out) to become Cuddlist Certified
$120 Cuddlist Listing [$40/month for 3 months so far]
$1,151 Total
I don't regret investing in educating myself to be a serious, therapeutic cuddler. I am disillusioned by the lack of work. I had heard from a couple of male pros that they were getting no work, but somehow I had hoped it would be different for me. Luckily I have an established career doing something else, and cuddling is a midlife passion project.
I'm sharing these data to support potential male pros in making informed choices.
It seems to me that the foundational problem is that women aren’t booking with pros, male OR female. I would suspect two reasons: 1) the idea of cuddling with a stranger is uncomfortable and 2) not enough women have the disposable income or, if they do, they don’t see spending it on cuddling. I do believe there are plenty of women who want cuddling and don’t get it so how does one find and then market to the ones who have the disposable income to pay for it?
I am NOT a good businessperson. I’m about the last person to have any good marketing advice. I’m getting the sense that we need someone really good at marketing.
I have to admit I’ve thought of marketing to the wealthy ladies of Scottsdale. They are the ones with money to spend on lululemon, yoga, Botox, etc., but I’m not sure many of them are single or would want to cuddle with a “stranger” even if they could afford it.
Quite honestly, I’m not comfortable marketing myself. I believe to know me is to love me, but I’m afraid I’ll choose the wrong words or images to help someone know me in a few seconds. I already fret over my profiles on here and Cuddlist, though since I haven’t gotten many requests or bookings, I don’t know if it’s because I haven’t gotten my profile right or it just doesn’t matter how I change my profile since the level of interest in hiring a male pro remains the same.
I do kind of wish I could hire a whoop-ass team to do it all for me. I could yell at them “Not getting bookings, people! Get cracking! I want fliers, print ads, click ads, radio spots, podcast interviews! Get me on GMA, Today, all the night shows, stat! If I’m not getting eight bookings a week by New Year’s, you’re fired!” 😆
P.S. I’m afraid I’d say the wrong things in interviews, though, so … 🤷🏻♂️ I guess I’d have to rehearse a lot with that whoop-ass team — after they run focus groups, of course. 🤓
The only booking requests that I’ve had from women have involved fetish inquiries (diaper and foot stuff—more popular with women than you’d guess 🤷🏻♀️). I obviously didn’t take those bookings. I’ve even offered to cuddle female enthusiasts for free, but they’ve never yet followed through with a booking.
Among female pros, I’ve only heard of @Sheena123 having a longterm, regular female client, and, by her description, that woman was specifically seeking out female energy.
Others who have discussed having women clients have often described them as being trauma survivors who may be actively avoiding male touch.
I haven’t done any formal research into what women who cuddle are seeking, so I don’t want to come right out and say there is no market for professional cuddling among women, but it is clear that you have a bad product/market fit.
According to Andreeson Horowitz (a startup guy who provided early definitions of the term):
”A value hypothesis is an attempt to articulate the key assumption that underlies why a customer is likely to use your product. Identifying a compelling value hypothesis is what I call finding product/market fit. A value hypothesis identifies the features you need to build, the audience that’s likely to care, and the business model required to entice a customer to buy your product. Companies often go through many iterations before they find product/market fit, if they ever do.”
We know there are women with unmet touch needs out there, but you don’t know what “product” will satisfy them. Right now, you’ve been operating under the assumption that women will seek out highly-trained therapeutic male cuddlers to meet their touch needs. This is your value hypothesis. What if this is wrong?
It is possible to train a market to recognize their need for an innovative product, but that takes time and media, and money. Instead, you’ve gotta change your product or approach. If you want female clients, you’ve gotta ask some women what kind of cuddles they’d pay for.
Incidentally, are you looking at gay male clientele? This seems like a more natural fit. If so, CC and Cudslist don’t appear to be where those folks hang out.
I would actually love to cuddle with straight men, and whether or not they know it, I believe they would love it too. There is so much to be gained when men hold each other platonically. Of course I am also happy to cuddle with my LGBTQ “siblings” as well.
I totally agree with you about product/market fit (or in this case, service/market fit). I do believe we need to train the market to recognize their need for, and the value of, professional cuddling services, especially those that are offered by men. I’m trying to do that through blogging, vlogging, and social media. I’m going to keep at it, but yes, we need expensive marketing, and I alone can’t afford that. I wonder if there’s any chance multiple pros could pool their money into paying for a marketing campaign.
On a different note, another reason I don’t think there should be a call to action for men to sign up for a pro account before they read the original post is because men need to earn people’s trust, and one of the ways to do that is to have cuddle partners write good karma reviews to vouch for them, and it’s a lot less likely that men will get that karma as pros. It would probably be better for them to be non-pros for a while and rack up some good Karma before they expect people to pay them.
It’s a lot easier to change your product or approach than to try to change consumer behavior.
I’ve been kicking around an idea for a new client funnel.
Air BnB has recently added an “Experience” function. A few weeks ago, a friend and I took a demo class with a massage therapist. The idea was that you’d book a massage at his Air BnB studio, he’d teach you (as a couple) some easy massage techniques and show you how to use them on each other, and then you stay overnight at his Air BnB with access to his massage table to continue practicing during your romantic weekend.
I thought this was brilliant—he’s attracting business both to his massage business and his Air BnB location. Both were sort of off the beaten path, and I definitely wouldnt have driven out that far for either a massage or an Air BnB, but the combo experience with the class got me over the hump and earned him two new potential clients/guests.
Cuddle parties are still a little tough right now, but what about coaching couples or small groups? Would I dare combine a cuddle session with an Air BnB stay? This is similar to an idea @ubergigglefritz has proposed for a combo guest room with optional cuddle add ons.
Could thinking about a sales funnel like this help you find some new clients? What if the draw was a cuddle party or a class on the topic of consent? Could you set it up as an add on to an air bnb or pitch it to a hotel/resort in some new-agey place like Tucson or Sedona?
Heh.
One of the oldest dodges…
If you can’t sell it, run a “workshop” that teaches others to sell it.
For a small fee, of course…
One thing I am good at is teaching, so presenting on something like consent would be right up my alley. I’m not sure where to present on that, though.
It costs $975 to become a certified Cuddle Party facilitator, and I don’t want to do that yet. I did attend a Cuddle Party wearing my Cuddlist t-shirt and I let people know I was a Cuddlist-Certified professional. I had a great time, but it didn’t generate leads.
Thanks for the idea about Sedona! It's a marvelous day trip from Phoenix. Now where to start with presenting there… 🤔
That’s unkind and unnecessary, @CharlesThePoet. Facilitating group events to generate client leads is a far cry from an MLM. No one implied that participants in a workshop would need to sell anything.
Cuddle parties are the way many folks are introduced to the concept of platonic cuddling. It’s a lower barrier to entry than one-on-one cuddling. Thinking of ways to extend that idea when large gatherings are imprudent is not a dodge, it’s just a business strategy
@BellaSera
I apologize if it seems unkind, but in a thread about “making it” as a male professional cuddler, and one discussing the available market demand for male cuddlers I think it is necessary.
I hope that men who are considering becoming professional cuddlers are aware of how difficult it is.
How little demand there is overall, not to mention in their local markets.
How many potential competitors there are.
How much work is involved in presenting themselves, building not only trust, but overcoming the underlying cultural distrust that exists.
And being very aware that there are enthusiasts, gurus, and opportunists, that will take advantage of any romanticism to gain whatever profits they can from the inexperienced and naive.
Again, if it seems unkind I apologize for that, but this is a discussion about business.
And, the cliche is a cliche for many valid reasons: business is war.
@BellaSera I do plan on having Airbnb space (two eventually, a homeshare and a separate space rental 👍), and it will be available to cuddle clients, but I don't plan on advertising cuddling on the Airbnb platform. It will be on my personal website for my cuddling business though.
@nurturingman , I understand the hesitation to marketing yourself, lots of massage therapists have the same problem. Think of it this way: how else are potential clients going to know you are available?
As for your fear of being afraid of using the wrong words: whatever you put out there to describe yourself and/or what you do/offer, have three women read it, preferably of different ages and women not already in the cuddle community. Run it by people here, too, but the clients you are marketing to mostly are not already cuddling with strangers.
Some possibilities: If you haven’t already (forgive me if you’ve already mentioned you’ve done this) have a website and blog about anything related to touch or cuddling. If you are not a writer, get someone to write for you or have someone who is a writer look over anything you write before you publish. Keep your articles short and to the. Blog frequently enough that it helps with your standing in search engines. Get your friends to read your blog to start generating traffic to your site.
Make a FaceBook business page. All that other stuff - Instagram, etc., - I don’t know about it, I’m old school, but do it. On all of these, put up stuff that people want to read.
Surely there are weekly papers in your area? See if you can write some articles for them. Usually you have to take out an ad to do that but especially the ones that are kind of “New Age” may have an audience more open to pro cuddling.
Get business cards. Give them to people. Let them know you are looking to expand your practice. Have referrals. Give someone a 1/2 hour session for each person they refer to you.
I have printed up postcards and put them on bulletin boards in coffee shops and other places. They are larger than a business card but smaller than a flyer. Make them really attractive. Make sure that whatever images you use look comfortable, cozy, and warm, not sexy. Vistaprint is a company I’ve used. They probably won’t have a ready made appropriate image but you can find stock photos. Even using non-human images, like kittens cuddling, could be really good. Put them places where people in high-stress jobs gather. Give them to nurses and teachers.
Get magnets made. Make them really ice to look at. Like a really nice image of kittens cuddling with just your name, number, and “professional cuddler” on the bottom. People keep magnets. Other people who come to their home see them on their refrigerator.
Ask for help from your friends. Surely they know people who are lonely and need human contact. They probably know someone who recently went through a breakup. Give them your card/postcard. If they mention you to someone, that person will be more comfortable with you. When you get clients, ask them for referrals and give them a discount on their next session with you if they refer someone.
If ANYONE sends you a referral, send them a hand written thank you card, maybe with a $10 gift certificate to a local business that you know they like. Find some cards with really nice cuddly images on them.
I’m a terrible businessperson but these are low-cost ways of getting yourself out there. You need to find the people who need what you have to offer and let them know what you have to offer them. They are not going to magically find you on their own.
Some really good stuff in those last few posts, @BellaSera and @nurturingman, thank you.
@nurturingman you are not marketing yourself. On a superficial level you are marketing a service, but that's not really it either. There is only one product in the world - dream satisfaction. People only shell out hard cash for one reason - to satisfy a dream.
Perhaps they are dreaming of a new pair of socks, or maybe their dream is not to be hungry anymore and BANG! Walmart has moved another banana. Marketing a new product is hard because not only do you have to sell them the dream-resolution, you have to give them the dream in the first place.
I definitely think you should market to the bored lonely rich of Scottsdale!
A few more ideas:
Make up a couple of T-shirts that say something about cuddling. Wear them.
Talk to the women in your life and ask them for ideas on how to get it out there.
Market to women who are older than you are.
Sometimes there are groups that are looking for speakers. Think up a good presentation on touch, cuddling, touch deprivation, etc. Contact those groups. There are a few coffeehouses in my area that have presentations. I can even see doing a mini-workshop in such a place. The place I’m thinking of has sofas and comfortable chairs. Give a presentation, then invite those who would like to participate to find a cuddle buddy in the room and they can cuddle on the sofas for 10 minutes.
I think the idea of doing presentations and workshops on consent is a great idea. Everything doesn’t have to be directly about cuddling. Just getting yourself out there in a context that presents you as safe and approachable is good.
@CharlesThePoet
One of the oldest dodges… If you can’t sell it, run a “workshop” that teaches others to sell it.
What @BellaSera was proposing was a workshop that teaches others to buy it, not sell it. It would be a presentation to potential clients about the benefits of hiring a cuddler. Sometimes these consumer education things work; sometimes they don't. I don't know if you've ever been on a cruise or gone to a resort (I don't expect everyone to have done so; it's just the only analogy I can think of offhand), but in these places the spa and fitness center give free talks and demonstrations about cool sculpting / liposuction, tooth whitening, exercises designed to melt body fat, free foot mapping that shows you where you're putting your weight on your feet so they can teach you other ways to stand and walk, and/or can sell you sole inserts, etc. These free classes are ways to introduce consumers to products and services they might be interested in paying for.
As I said, they don't always work. Twenty years ago I gave a free presentation to the local chapter of the Association of Late-Deafened Adults (ALDA). Many of the members read lips. My presentation was about "oral transliteration," a service I provide in which I very clearly mouth what other people say, rewording it as necessary so it is easier to speech-read. This is especially important when speakers are moving about, turning their heads away from the listener, or if their faces are hard to speech-read due to a moustache or imperceptible diction. This service costs the consumers nothing. All they have to do is request my service as a "reasonable accommodation" per the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). That is to say, all my audience members had to do was ask their doctor, lawyer, teacher, or anyone else subject to the ADA to request my services at the cost of the professional, not the consumer. I got no leads from that presentation. Still, this kind of consumer education can work, and it's not a "dodge" (makes me think of "the artful dodger" from Oliver Twist, haha).
P.S. One of the reasons I said above that I'm not comfortable marketing myself is that I have tried other things unsuccessfully, and it's so painful for me to have big dreams, work hard at making them come true, and not have any success with them, that I'm weary of it and I dread having to do it for cuddling, which is probably the toughest sell I've ever tried. Some of the professions I have ventured in the past were commercial acting in New York City when I was eight -- got signed with the William Morris agency, went on several auditions, got nothing, and saw the other kids in the waiting room end up on TV in the commercials we both had tried out for; modeling in Los Angeles when I was 19, and being told they didn't want me because I didn't have the "severe GQ editorial look" (chiseled Adonis) only to see waifs end up in Calvin Klein ads two years later; voice acting, spending a year and a few hundred dollars studying it because people told me I had a voice for radio, spending more hundreds of dollars making a demo, only to get three gigs, one of whom told me I made more mistakes as a reader than all the other readers he had hired (reading long-form aloud was never my strong suit); spending several years and hundreds of dollars on singing lessons only to be repeatedly cast in the chorus, a Christmas caroling quartet group (about 40 singers put in quartets of soprano, alto, tenor, and bass to do gigs all over San Diego and southern California) and once as a supporting actor in a singing role in a rural community (Flagstaff) I had to drive two and a half hours to; commercial acting as an adult, spending time and money on a commercial acting class, signing with an agent, going on auditions and landing no commercials…
Although I'm passionate in my vision of men as professional cuddlers and myself as one of them, I just don't know that I have it in me to try so hard and fail at yet another thing. I'm sure others who have tried and failed can understand, and if you've never tried anything like this and therefore never failed at it, you can understand why someone wouldn't want to try. You're giving me great ideas, but it's hard to bring myself to do them, knowing that each thing I try and fail at is yet another failure to add to the heap. I don't mean to be dramatic here, but I think what I'm saying speaks to the reason almost no one else is even trying these things. Almost no other man, anyway.
P.S. It's too late to edit now, but in my post yesterday when I was joking about yelling at a marketing team about "getting eight bookings a week by New Year’s" I actually meant to write eight bookings a month, which at this point would be "making it"!
@CharlesThePoet, the metaphors we use to discuss things say a lot about how we perceive and understand them. They can also demonstrate blockages we have that prevent us from being successful and happy.
Business need not be war. It seems counter productive to me to characterize cuddling as being adversarial or competitive in any way. It lessens the pleasure of the experience for the client and the pro as well as making a pro potentially feel guilt or hesitation in marketing themselves, as @nurturingman described.
Sensitive people can struggle with sales because they have so much empathy for their customer that they get overwhelmed anticipating all the objections to their pitch and never finish making it.
Ian Stillman write a book called Same Side Selling that offers a helpful shift in mindset. I’m not saying this book is any be all end all, this is just a helpful thought:
”The most widely used metaphors in sales are those related to sports, battle, or games. The challenge with this mindset is that it means one person wins, and the other loses. Instead of falling victim to a win-lose approach, what if you shared a common goal with your potential client? How might things change if the client felt that you were more committed to their success than making the sale?”
I like to think of selling a product or service as meeting a need. When I am selling something (whether that be a physical item or my custom services), I look for a need my customer has and show them how I can help them meet it. This takes the pain, self-consciousness, and guilt out of the close (the part where you ask for money). I’m offering help and if they don’t take it, nobody wins or loses. My asking them to buy my xyz doesn’t hurt them. My commitment to excellence and service makes me confident that I will do my level best to help them and meet their need.
This isn’t a grift or a dodge or a romantization of cuddling. I don’t promise to change your life, but I can provide a human connection, a listening ear, a new adventure, a meaningful conversation, a passable back rub, a lesson on how to engage your loved one more effectively…
You’ve made your feelings about professional cuddling clear on other posts. To each his own—if it’s not for you, that’s ok. I agree that male pros are working against the odds. I don’t think any amount of picture or profile tweaking will change the fact that the women on a site like CC have little interest in paying for pro cuddling. Men have to change their product or approach to make this work.
Thanks for that wonderful quotation and perspective, @BellaSera ! Now would you come here, hold my hand, and go with me somewhere to make this pitch together? I'm feeling lonely and vulnerable.