MALE Pros: How has it been for you?

edited February 2023 in Professional Cuddling

(Please note I am asking for responses only from people who are now or once were male professional cuddlers.)

Most of the articles and comments I've read about male professional cuddlers were written by people who are not themselves male professional cuddlers. Now I'd like to hear from YOU! I have many questions, but I'll start with just a few:

  • Have you gotten more cuddles as a pro, or has the "pay wall" stopped people from cuddling with you?
  • How much money have you made as a professional male cuddler? (I'm not looking to get rich; I'm just curious.)
  • What is the percentage breakdown of your clientele by gender (e.g., 80% men, 15% women, and 5% non-binary)?
  • What training have you taken in cuddling (e.g., Cuddlist, Cuddle Sanctuary)?
  • What have your clients told you about why they hired a pro (i.e., why you and not a man who is not a pro)?
  • What have you liked/disliked about being a male pro cuddler?

Please feel free to answer as few or as many questions as you feel please, and say anything else you want to add!

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Comments

  • edited June 2021

    Quick shout to say I always appreciate your thoughtful posts!

    I pretty much jumped straight into pro status, so I can’t comment on the paywall slowing down my cuddle traffic. I’ve already thought about pausing my status just to build a better base.

    I’ve had two clients thus far (both male), and am super thankful that they’ve covered a month’s school loan and a car payment.

    The advice I received on this site was to just go pro immediately, so I haven’t even made time or money for certified training. I’ve spent a lot of time researching other avenues, including chatting with pros, and booking one as a mentor.

    Generally, each client contacted me because they didn’t feel comfortable asking their male friends to cuddle. Beyond that, I never asked why they didn’t try to find a non-pro on the site.

    I’ve always loved taking care of people. My empathy vastly outweighs my intelligence, so I feel like I’m actually equipped for this line of work, rather than if I tried to be a therapist/doctor. Dislikes? Client outreach, and having people that DO want to cuddle me, living way too far away.

    Edit: I really enjoy this community at large, and hope my response comes across as more positive than how I reread it. Following your journey @nurturingman , I strongly believe you'll be one of the best examples for the rest of us!

  • Thanks for your answer, @ZacRedBear 🤗

    With hundreds of male pros on this site, I was hoping this question would get more than one answer… waddaya say, fellas?

  • I'll answer my own questions in the hope of getting this discussion going. As of this morning, In my first two months as a pro:

    Have you gotten more cuddles as a pro, or has the "pay wall" stopped people from cuddling with you?

    I have had fewer first-time cuddles since going Pro. I've continued to have free cuddle sessions with a couple of cuddle buddies I met here before going pro.

    How much money have you made as a professional male cuddler? (I'm not looking to get rich; I'm just curious.)

    $160. That's from one session booked on another site.

    What is the percentage breakdown of your clientele by gender (e.g., 80% men, 15% women, and 5% non-binary)?

    100% women. That's from a clientele of one.

    What training have you taken in cuddling (e.g., Cuddlist, Cuddle Sanctuary)?

    I'm Cuddlist trained and certified.

    What have your clients told you about why they hired a pro (i.e., why you and not a man who is not a pro)?

    My one client was a pro who told me she hired a pro to experience a session as a client.

    What have you liked/disliked about being a male pro cuddler?

    I like being a man, I like being a professional, and I like being a cuddler! 😄 What I dislike about being a male professional cuddler is how little interest there is in what I have to offer. The service I provide is every bit as wonderful as the service female pros provide, and I know in my heart that people of all genders and orientations would benefit greatly from hiring me. If they only knew!

  • I wonder if they even really interact on the forums much....

    @nurturingman , have you considered checking in with @Mark to see if there's a chance he'd send out a 'nudge' on your behalf?

    Because if he would, it might be a good idea to really think about what questions/answers are most important, what you're hoping to learn, and figure out what you'll do with the info you get, etc. Then craft a really tight intro and survey for Mark to send out.

    Maybe it could be a link to a SurveyMonkey or something where they can be anonymous/candid in their replies?? Or whatever @Sideon used for the Mod nominations??

    Just a couple thoughts... 🍀

  • edited August 2021

    I'm quite proud of our restraint of email use but happy to temporarily sticky something in case it helps.

  • I don’t blame you for not sending out an email, @mark, and I’ll take you up on that kind offer!

    it might be a good idea to really think about what questions/answers are most important, what you're hoping to learn, and figure out what you'll do with the info you get, etc. — @quixotic_life

    I want to know all the things! Seriously, the more data we can collect about male pros the better. I’m hoping to learn the true nature of the male pro labor market.

  • Would it be appropriate for @nurturingman to send individual messages to male pros, asking them if have questions or would be willing to contribute their experience?

  • I think that sounds perfectly reasonable.

  • edited August 2021

    @Babichev some of the “data I’ve collected,” if you will, has been from two or three pros I’ve messaged, or who’ve messaged me, in conversations that were not just about how much work we’re getting, and that info came out in a broader conversation. I wouldn’t feel right messaging many pros just to ask them how work was going.

    P.S. Apparently @Mark beat me to answering! 😄

  • @nurturingman of course you should message men professionals. You're just drawing their attention to a thread which might, in the fullness of time, contribute to a larger market for such people and therefore more business for them. Nothing wrong with that.

  • I just started I think I created my profile wrong I don’t see professional on it

  • @sebastian223 if you have been throught the correct procedure it usually takes only a day or two to be approved by the site.

  • @sebastian223 , you have to apply for a pro account. Go to the home page. On my device if I scroll to the bottom of the page there are things like “FAQ” etc. In the second column there is “Become a pro.” If I click on that, there’s a page about that and on the right hand side there is a link for submitting an application. This may appear differently on your device but should be something similar.

  • @nurturingman I tried going pro twice with for a few months last year.
    Based on my comfort zone, I did limit my clientele to only females.

    It did not work out for me - the only requests I got were from male clients.
    I tried changing up the hourly rate between 60 - 100, but did not see any difference.

  • As a male pro hopefully my response will be able to answer some questions. Most of my clients have been men with some women and one transgender.

    I like being a pro to be able to help others. The biggest draw back is when some of them tell me about problems that I can’t help with such as physical pain. At times this weighs heavy on my heart as the vast majority of my clients have been really good people.

    Not sure if the pay wall has stopped anyone or not but I also offer free virtuals. I offer that free and or tip basis because I can not judge how much benefit they receive and I don’t want to charge if they ended the call feeling like it was a waste of time.

    Not sure how much money I have made. I have not really kept up with it to be honest.

    As far as why a pro was hired instead of a non pro that really depends on the person but the general response I get is that more than likely the pro is going to be better and has more to lose if they do anything against site policy. In short we lose a job versus just being kicked off. Now obviously this is not always the case but generally speaking.

    As far as training, I have not received any formal training. What I have done is used the money that I have made to hire other pros. I learn and take this things I like into account. I have cuddled with some amazing professionals, some of which have been doing it a long time. Hands down I feel like I am a far better cuddler now than I was when I first started.

  • [Deleted User]BryanScorpio7 (deleted user)
    edited September 2021

    Hey @nurturingman I’m just replying to a response you gave me 😎.


    Q: Have you gotten more cuddles as a pro, or has the "pay wall" stopped people from cuddling with you?

    A: I found out about this website by a random stranger at a gym 😂. I was skeptical at first, but as soon as I signed up on 6/25/21 I immediately opted for the pro route and the rest was history. My cuddle count right now is at 14 so far as of 9/17/21.
    ______________________[______________________
    Q: How much money have you made as a professional male cuddler? (I'm not looking to get rich; I'm just curious.)

    A: $7,430. Keep in mind that when I first started my hourly rate was only $50 and an overnight with me was $420.


    Q: What is the percentage breakdown of your clientele by gender (e.g., 80% men, 15% women, and 5% non-binary)?

    A: 100% women ( 95% over 35 yrs old )


    Q: What training have you taken in cuddling (e.g., Cuddlist, Cuddle Sanctuary)?

    A: None


    Q: What have your clients told you about why they hired a pro (i.e., why you and not a man who is not a pro)?

    A: Too many personal reasons to list here.


    Q: What have you liked/disliked about being a male pro cuddler?

    A: Likes - Everything
    Dislikes - Nothing on my end

  • edited September 2021

    Thanks, @Nahi and @cuddler5617 !

    @BryanScorpio7 Wow. So you’ve done 14 cuddle sessions at an average of $531 per session. I notice you have two Karma reviews, one of which was from a repeat client. I don’t know if you’ve had clients that haven’t left Karma, but it seems like maybe you haven’t had to attract many clients to make good money. Have you done any publicity other than listing here as a pro?

    Oh, and another question: I see you can be host, guest, or public. Have you hosted? (I ask because for some clients, it’s either I host or they don’t book.)

  • [Deleted User]CharlesThePoet (deleted user)

    @BryanScorpio7

    Presumably you are booking from a different site as well, yes?

  • [Deleted User]BryanScorpio7 (deleted user)

    @nurturingman When I host it’s just me getting a comfy hotel room :) I honestly promote to potential clients within the company gyms I work for within the sandiego region (LA Fitness). The first time I mentions this to women in public they give me the same response everytime… they laugh and say seriously what’s your side job that you do? 😂. I help them make an account and they book! They don’t need to leave a karma review and some don’t really want to because they don’t stick around with this site too long. I prefer the reviews to be with clients I’ve met on the website.

  • [Deleted User]BryanScorpio7 (deleted user)

    @nurturingman remember when I first started my overnights was around 400 bucks and out of the 14 I only did an overnight with 8 of them.

  • [Deleted User]BryanScorpio7 (deleted user)

    @CharlesThePoet negative sir. This is the only website I know about and am not interested in getting into another site. This site is already perfect if done right.

  • @BryanScorpio7, that math doesn’t really check out. If you did 8 overnights @ $420 each, thats $3,360.

    With the remainder of your earnings ($4,070) split between 6 women, you would have averaged $678 per session. With a rate of $50/hr, that’s 13.5 hours each.

    In fact, with a rate of $50/hr, you would have had to cuddle 14 women an average of 10.6 hours each to make $7,430 in that number of sessions.

    Something is off here. Not to mention the fact that booking 1-2 overnights per week from a card on a gym bulletin board just seems highly improbable to me when most women interested in cuddling would balk at the idea of staying overnight with a stranger on first meeting. Most pros won’t even do an overnight on a first appointment, it seems unlikely to me that women for whom the concept of pro-cuddling is brand new would book an overnight as their first session…

  • @BellaSera I didn’t want to judge him but it seemed off to me as well. He said he isn’t on any other sites either. And if male pros have a bit of success, from what I’ve seen, it’s mostly with cuddling men, but he only cuddled women. I’m honestly curious how this money materialized.

  • [Deleted User]Moxytocin (deleted user)

    I'm also extremely skeptical. Just saw a thread a bit ago about "faking it till you make it." Maybe...

  • Yeah, the math isn’t adding up.

  • edited September 2021

    A couple years ago I had a conversation over messages with a male pro who had an even more improbable story. He was new on this site but claimed to have been doing pro cuddling for a couple months and to have made something like $25,000 already. I asked him, given that he had not previously been on the site, how he had promoted himself. He said through word of mouth. He literally said that previous clients just spread the good news of his cuddles so much that he was regularly receiving texts from random women asking for cuddle sessions. No web site, no CuddleComfort account, he just got texts asking to cuddle. Multiple new clients texting him every day, keeping him with sessions booked like a full time job.

    He said he heard about pro cuddling through his brother, who had been doing it for a while, who used the same method, and who had an even higher level of success.

    Of course I can't say for sure what this person's motivation to be dishonest may have been, but I suspect he just didn't want to say "I've never had a client", and that he was naive enough to not realize how far-fetched this story would sound.

  • [Deleted User]Moxytocin (deleted user)
    edited September 2021

    Deleted my comment. I watch too many shows like Breaking Bad, Ozark, and Good Girls. 😛

  • edited September 2021

    I’m not in the business of accusing people of being deceitful— @BryanScorpio7’s business is none of my business—but I think there is a large potential for damage when saying to people, “this is really easy” or “it’s not hard when you’re doing it right.”

    I think when reading successful stats like the ones Bryan details, there is an impulse to clam up, even if the numbers seem fishy, thinking, “oh, I’m not doing THAT well, there must be something wrong with me.” I feel like this is partially what @nurturingman was trying to tackle with this thread—the lack of information about male pros and their potential for success.

    I’m probably the most active pro cuddler in my region, and it’s most certainly not easy. Bryan is suggesting he averaged $700-800 dollars per week which (@$50/hr) would equate to around 15 hours of cuddling—that’s 7-8 regular sessions or an overnight + 3-4 regular sessions. This is doable, but it’s a very good and very busy week that would require a near full time commitment to putting yourself out there and responding to messages, screening, cleaning commuting, rescheduling, etc. There’s real hustle involved. When you’re either very new or very established, it’s easy to have good weeks like this, but the work is not consistent. This is why many established pros travel frequently to new markets.

    For reference, in addition to my other regular sessions, I’ve booked 4 overnights this month across 2 websites, which is a lot for me when I’m not traveling. 1 of those overnights rescheduled 3x and another canceled same day, leaving me with hours of wasted prep and wasted time slots where I was unable to book replacement appointments on short notice. This is frustrating, but I’d say it is pretty par for the course in this type of business. It’s hard to imagine booking 8 overnights in 10 weeks without accompanying stories of the other 6 who canceled or turned out to be scammers or people misrepresenting their identity, etc.

    To be fair, I’m in a small city in the middle of flyover country, so I don’t have the reach of folks in a place like San Diego with access to the LA market. There are some young women who live in cities and travel between two markets and hustle hard to book good appointments and make full time money doing this, but all the odds are in their favor, so to speak. Even then, they often get burnt out and struggle to work consistently.

    Many thanks to pros like @Sheena123 and @xandriarain who will speak candidly about the business of cuddling and share some details about their own earnings.

    Running a business is hard in the best conditions and the emotional taxation of cuddling adds to that. Men will always be swimming upstream in this business. Let’s not delude them or ourselves and make their journey even more difficult.

  • That's a really excellent post @BellaSera, thank you.

  • Thank you for understanding my motives and for encouraging honest discussion of the cuddling business, @BellaSera !

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