Questions about the money this site earns

[Deleted User]Verbena (deleted user)
in General

(Forum newbie here: I'm posting this in general due to the master post about price being located there, but please redirect me if I'm in the wrong spot)

I have a couple observations that I suppose is more of an admin thing, but why not have a discussion about it. This is my very first forum and I don't even think I've really commented in any, so please be gentle with me as I mean no harm nor am I trying to troll or cause any disrespect.

I've thought about the money this site must make; They get 15% of all the money pros make here.
Now someone put the time and money into starting this site and maintaining it. However, given that it did start as a way for enthusiasts to connect, I'm under the impression that it didn't need a lot of money initially and it wasn't until after they could make money off of it that they did, which is still all fine with me.

I suppose my qualms come in over the fact that there doesn't seem to be any paid admins. They all seem to do a wonderful job and put in a lot of time, effort, and energy and yet the site makes a lot of money and paying them a little bit seems like it would very much work in the site's favor.
It also just seems kind of unfair, I had someone tell me a while back that they thought charging just a single cost per session versus taking a percentage of every hour per session would be a more fair gain for the site. I've even turned down proposals for longer sessions just due to that fact before.

One more thing for context: I will take this sites percentage over any other site I've seen🙏. I love this site. It has benefited my life greatly and I love everyone I've met. Comparatively the percentage the site takes isn't bad.

Anyway, just my thoughts on the matter.

Comments

  • [Deleted User]WriterGF (deleted user)

    Not an expert, but I believe there are costs associated with running a site beyond paying staff. And a lot of that was probably being absorbed by the site owners the last couple years, since COVID probably ate into the pro business quite a bit. I honestly have no idea how much money the site makes, because I don't know how many pros are doing a steady business here. But I doubt anyone is getting rich off CC, somehow.

  • [Deleted User]Verbena (deleted user)

    @WriterGF that's a very good point! Maybe so. I actually started using this site during the pandemic and got the impression that people were utilizing these avenues much more than before as society starts to shine more of a light on our lack of touch. People are talking about avenues like this more and with less stigma than they used to.

    However, this is my main source of income. I might not have the same financial needs as other people, And I have had clients from other sites or just from out in the world. But I can tell you people are making money.

  • [Deleted User]WriterGF (deleted user)

    @Verbena How would a single charge per session system work? Would it be on a sliding scale so that, say, a pro having a one hour session would be paying less than someone doing a four hour session? If not, wouldn't the pro with the one hour session be getting screwed, since they would be paying a higher percentage of their fee than the person with the longer session?

  • CuddleDuncanCuddleDuncan Mod
    edited March 2022

    @Verbena, wow! For your first ever post on a forum that's pretty amazing! Welcome, very glad to have you here.

    The site was created and is owned by a guy called @Mark. The chief coder is @Gary. As you say, they have done a fine job.

    15% is unbelievably low for an introduction of this kind. In the wider world, rates of 40%-60% are more usual. I work in a similar model and I pay north of 40%.

    The trouble with a flat rate per session booked, rather than a percentage, is that it hurts the shorter sessions. This does not sit well with the site's ethos, which is that cuddling is a good thing and the world would be a better place if there was more of it. Making shorter sessions more expensive - an inevitable result of a flat fee - is not consistent with that since there are so many people (like me) who struggle to afford sessions at all.

    I don't see why you'd turn down longer sessions, that's how the nearly-full-time professionals make their money. I may have misunderstood your comment.

    the site makes a lot of money

    Nobody knows if that's true except Mark and Gary. The finances are opaque, which is normal for a business of this size. We do know that nobody anywhere is making a fortune out of cuddling, and that only a handful of professionals are genuinely doing this as their only or main source of income. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that Mark and Gary can't possibly have more than two or three superyachts each.

    Running a site of this quality is expensive.
    How often is the site down? (Basically never.)
    How often does it defeat a serious hacking attempt? (I would guess at least once a week.)
    How many bot-created accounts are there? (Virtually none, and none more than a day or two old.)
    How often do banned people make it back in properly? (Virtually never, I know a couple who have tried and failed. You have to be a proper techie to have any chance at all.)
    How many adverts are there? (I'll leave that one as an exercise for the reader.)

    I did once try to work out how much the site makes, but I gave up. It would take some combo of time/energy/technical skills that I don't have. However, as far as I can tell for the first several years the owners wore the cost, and even after the professional structure was established it probably took a year or two before the place broke even. My feeling is that it has only been turning a gross profit for perhaps the last three or four years, after seven or eight years of loss.

  • CuddleDuncanCuddleDuncan Mod

    A second thought. Hiring your first member of staff is a huge step for a business. Aside from all the usual difficulties of hiring, it means opening the business up to potentially huge costs and huge risk, relative to the size of the business. It's something you don't do unless you are very sure it's going to bring in plenty of additional revenue. Being the chief admin here isn't going to be a full time job, which means you still need a volunteer admin team to cover holidays and the different time zones. In other words it's a lot of investment (of various kinds, including money) for very little benefit.

    As a business, if you're going to make an investment of that size you want to be sure it will bring in some kind of return. A paid admin will bring in very little, over and above a volunteer. It's just not a good use of the business's resources. Note that this is much more a comment about business in general, than about this particular site. (I have watched a forum go from community-moderated to paid-admin led. It was an interesting process, and the benefits to the business took a while to appear. When they did, they were very hard to value but clearly were worthwhile. The business was much bigger than this, already employing maybe 40 or 50 people.)

    Third thought - we don't know how much the site spends on marketing. We do know there is a constant stream of new members, and they must be coming from somewhere.

  • TheFunCartelTheFunCartel

    We do know there is a constant stream of new members, and they must be coming from somewhere.

    Planet Earth if I was wagering a guess.

  • CuddleDuncanCuddleDuncan Mod

    Planet Earth if I was wagering a guess.

    The majority, sure, but when hearing the stories sometimes I wonder about a few of them ...... 🙄

  • Nature_Lover_Nature_Lover_
    edited March 2022

    .

  • [Deleted User]Verbena (deleted user)
    edited March 2022

    @WriterGF and @CuddleDuncan . You know I didn't even consider that. It wouldn't quite be fair for the shorter sessions. And given that yes 15% is very low compared to other sites, I guess it's a lot more fair than I assumed.

    And CuddleDuncan thank you so much for the welcome (I do really want to be in the forums more and communicate and connect with people this way so that gives me a little more encouragement to do so 💕) and thank you for all of that info to consider, that really does help guide my perspective and give me a lot of things to think about. Because really I was asking all of this out of inquiry and not to judge.

    @FunCartel I think the best of us and the worst of us may in fact be from elsewhere 😂💫

  • nature700nature700
    edited March 2022

    @Verbena Welcome to the thread-world. :) Good points, which others have raised on occasion.
    Here are some (abbreviated) thoughts that may help:
    Admins: paying staff (ie: admins, etc) will come in time (& level of success).
    Revenue model: I'm sure the owners evaluated a variety of models before landing on the current one. They needed to create a model that was acceptable across the spectrum of users as well as be competitive. Revenue models aren't easy to work-out. You have to weigh a lot of pros & cons. Don't fret - this is something that can be adjusted and may very well adjust over time.
    Tech/costs/growth: Creating and maintaining technology is what I've done most of my life. It takes a lot of work behind-the-scenes. Sure, a small team of a few can do this and maintain it, especially if the few have broad & deep skills. But, there's a point, at a level of success, where growth forces the need to hire full-time staff in various roles (ie: admins/support). Each area of CC has deep tech needs - especially forums. Forums take a Lot of work and resource time. But, starting simple and bootstrapping growth has advantages, including low-cost that can be passed to the community. And I haven't even touched on sales & marketing topics. :)
    As this site continues to grow, there will be a point where full-time/paid staff will help not only in support and sales-growth, but also in development (features). As most of us using this site already know, there is a long list of (valid) features to be added that will provide a better user experience and greater opportunities (for all users). One of the more challenging aspects of a site like this is doing your best to design it best as you grow. By design, I'm referring to not only the tech stack, but all the other factors including base features, revenue model, scalability, usability, support, and of course: performance and security. Technology decisions (including individual features) takes careful thought and planning. As for hosting, yes, it's easier and more affordable over the past decade, but that resource time is now heavily spent on security and performance.
    Are the owners making a lot of money? Maybe, maybe not, but they are working hard. At some successful point, there will be more paid staff added and more growth to come.
    Hope this helps.

  • netrunnernetrunner Mod

    @Verbena Welcome to the forums! Yes, the admins of the site, Mark and Gary, are the ones who run the site and take a percentage of money collected from Pro's having sessions to maintain and continue development of the site while they get paid. What those numbers looks like to anyone other than them is pure speculation. While I'm sure COVID made things take a hit and there's a probability still much to recover from compared to where things were at 2-3 years ago, but the fact the site is still up when so many other businesses were forced to close should say something.

    The moderators of the site (myself, Sideon, SuperManCuddles, and Babichev), some of use having done this for years, simply volunteer our time to help with reports site members make for others and keeping the forums from going into chaos. Would it be nice to be paid something for our time? Sure, but only speaking for myself, it hasn't really been an issue or at the forefront when I was offered the role to help; I think it'd end up being more of a pleasant surprise if it ever did happen. Some have made comments in the past about the mods posting their Venmo or PayPal links to directly send us tips as a way to say thanks, but I think our general response has been more if you live in our area or are visiting to just reach out to meet up and have a coffee or something :)

  • RezzRezz

    @reurbo
    I'd love to tip the mods and if you guys ever wanted to post your pay apps I'd donate in a heartbeat. You guys help keep us all safe and that is priceless.

  • [Deleted User]Verbena (deleted user)

    @nature700 very good points to consider. Thank you! I myself and not extremely tech savvy, so I can't even begin to speculate what goes into this site.

    @reurbo I really appreciate the moderator perspective! We are all very lucky to have people like you helping us continue to have access to a site like this, thank you!

    And trust me my intent was not to say that I don't want the admins to make money off of this. I hope they do really well for themselves! All this information you guys have given me has been super helpful in answering my questions and expanding my own perspective.

    Thanks for contributing to an awesome cuddling community!!!

  • [Deleted User]Verbena (deleted user)

    @Rezz I second that!!

  • CuddleDuncanCuddleDuncan Mod

    @Verbena I think it was perfectly clear you just wanted to have a conversation, not gripe or have a go. Glad to have you aboard.

    It's also worth saying that some similar sites did not survive the pandemic. This one is robust, and robustness costs money.

  • [Deleted User]Verbena (deleted user)

    @CuddleDuncan thank you for the reassurance!

    Very true! Time, energy, risk, and sacrifice cost a lot for people to expend. Exactly why I ended up being a pro and not an enthusiast.

  • Sheena123Sheena123

    @Verbena welcome!! (Btw your teal hair is bombin!!!😻😻😻)

  • quixotic_lifequixotic_life

    Given the nature of humans and challenges some seem to face in acting with even a shred of decency towards others, it would be pretty smart for them to be squirreling away funds to pay any legal fees that arrise outside of costs associated with keeping someone on retainer (to ensure everything remains on the up and up and that they're free of any liability should the worse happen to one of their members...).

    IDK, but there are things lacking in the gen TOS that could protect them in certain scenarios, which is another reason why stockpiling makes a lot of sense.

    To me anyway...

  • Bella_SeraBella_Sera

    I appreciate the sentiment of celebrating mods for all the work that they do, but let's be real--a tipping system is just inviting corruption.

    Don't mistake me. I am not casting aspersions toward any of our current moderators. They are all good eggs, in my experience. But proper employees get paid wages and wages help to protect impartiality and fair play.

    Allowing members to tip mods is tantamount to allowing members to bribe mods. We have already witnessed suspect behavior when a former mod stepped down after the revelation that he was getting kickbacks in the form of the website subsidizing his pro cuddling fees. It was alleged that that same moderator was abusing his position and pressuring women to do things they were uncomfortable doing.

    Again, all the present mods I know seem like good people, but there is an inherent conflict of interest when the leadership is mixing with the hoi polloi. The site should hire impartial moderators who are not enmeshed in the community and pay them a fair wage.

    But barring that, we have to at least gesture at fairness.

  • TheFunCartelTheFunCartel

    @BellaSera Spot on as usual.

    They pay me to go away. Obviously I haven’t received a check this month.

  • SashamcgeeSashamcgee

    Post your venmo @FunCartel we'll get ya paid 😂🤣😂

    Welcome to the forums @Verbena

  • BabichevBabichev

    @Verbena - Regarding the claim that the site makes “a lot of money,” do you have any statistics to back that up? Do you have any numbers about how long this site has been in existence, how did they get any income when it was an enthusiasts-only site, what kind of hit did the site take over the last two years, what percentage of pros do more than a handful of appointments (if any) per month, etc.? In other words, what evidence do you have to support your claim?

    It’s my understanding that other cuddle sites take double what this site charges pros.

    While there are a lot of people with pro accounts, I’m in a position to see how many appointments they actually complete. The vast majority of them do very, very few appointments. Then there are those who circumvent the booking system. The number of pros who are booking clients consistently are very few compared to the number of pro accounts listed. I can’t give you numbers, but if you want to verify this for yourself, go through a list of pro accounts and check when they were last online. An active pro should be on here daily. You’ll probably find that a large percentage have not logged on for days, weeks, months, and in some cases over a year. Of those who have logged on, not all of them are getting appointments.

    If the site is making a lot of money, then that means the pros working through this site are successful and that should not be something pros should complain about.

  • quincyq03quincyq03

    “A lot of money” is a subjective statement, but I decided to do some very quick math…

    Search for pro cuddlers within 80 miles of NYC, who were active today. Add up all of the karma from those cuddlers (not counting cuddlers with no karma) and that’s 665. Note that I will assume each karma corresponds to a single cuddle session of one hour, when we can be sure is extremely low balling. Suppose the average rate is $150/hour and we’re assuming one single, one hour session per karma.

    ($150 x 0.15) x 665 = $14,962 raw revenue

    NYC is a large city (in comparison to most US cities), but there are several other large cities and we can be sure that several sessions are repeat and longer than one hour.

  • BabichevBabichev
    edited March 2022

    @quincyq03 - over what period of time?

    I just did the same for my city, St. Louis, MO. Within a 50 mile radius there are 24 pro cuddlers listed that have been on the site during the last year. The average rate appears to be about $80. Of those 24 only 2 have a star which means all the rest of them have less than 5 Karma. One pro has 54 and one has 13. Regarding the pro with 54 karma - 13 are from repeat clients. The oldest karma is 1 year old. Five are from deleted users.

    Of the remaining pros, sixteen have zero karma and the others have an aggregate total of 16 Karma. So 16 + 13 + 54 = 83 total out of 24 pros listed. Over half have zero karma.
    83 x $80 x .15 = $996.

    I suspect there are a lot more St. Louises than NYCs. No one is getting rich off of St. Louis metropolitan area.

  • quincyq03quincyq03

    @Babichev it’s probably over the course of several years, it’s not defined. Just picked a random city with a few random parameters. How much money has this site made over the years? $100,000? $250,000? There’s no way of knowing since there are so many variables to consider. The amount of revenue may be a lot of money to some people, but in terms of someone who pays often to cuddle, maybe it’s not a lot.

  • [Deleted User]Verbena (deleted user)

    @Babichev I suppose it's just my speculation, but a lot of the previous comments had given me a lot to consider to rethink some of that.

    And that's a good point, the amount of pros there appear to be and the amount actively seeing clients.

  • SideonSideon

    I'm in agreement with @BellaSera - please don't offer me tips. I am a lucky moderator bastard that 1) has time and means to do so 2) loves this community and 3) doesn't want to ever be tempted or swayed with even the hint of compensation or quid pro quo.

    Remember Galadriel in LOTR?

    Yeah. That's not me.

  • BabichevBabichev
    edited March 2022

    @Verbena, your comment probably missed mine but in case you didn’t see it, check my comment above for the number of pros listed within 50 miles of St. Louis. 24 pro accounts, only 2 of them have 5 karma or more, over half the pros listed have zero karma.

    @quincyq03 - Agreed that “a lot” is vague and means different things to different people. Whatever income the site is generating at any point is not a true reflection of what it has generated over time.

    In general: any pro coming onto this site at this point benefits from all the cumulative work and presence that has gone into this site until now. IF the site is generating considerable profit, that means the pros who gain clients through this site are doing well and are benefitting from the presence this site has created over time.

    As for tipping the mods - I will agree with what @Sideon and @reurbo - it’s a nice thought that some might want to show appreciation but I’d rather not, thank you very much. We do this because we care about this community and it keeps it clean. Kind words are sufficient.

  • netrunnernetrunner Mod
    edited March 2022

    Say we're going to take a stab at how much money the site makes in a single year or could make, here are just some of the variables to consider which can drastically sway the amount you'd need to account for:

    • You would need the total number of active Pros for every day throughout the entire year
    • You would need to know how many sessions each Client was booking daily/weekly/monthly and with which Pro because of their different rates
    • You would need to know the rates for every Pro, including discounted rates, for every session duration along with their price increases throughout the year

    We'll leave off site maintenance and feature update fees along with what the admins take out as their income. Then to figure out how much the site could be making you would need to account for:

    • How many sessions are booked through on-site communications, but aren't made through the site booking system?
    • How many sessions are booked off-site and aren't logged at all through the site booking system?
    • How many sessions go longer than reported and aren't properly logged?
    • How many sessions are listed as canceled in the system yet still occur?
    • How many repeat sessions are booked off the site because the Pro and Client exchanged contact info after the first session?

    Saying there are 24 active Pros in a city with say 150 active Clients who have logged in within a year doesn't mean sessions are happening or with what frequency. A new Pro can join the site and have 50 messages from possible Clients within the first 48 hours of joining, but many of those messages are copy/paste introduction messages sent to them, many from people in cities no where near them who will never have a session, some are time wasters, and a small few will be legitimate Clients looking to book but even then, they would need to pass the Pro filtering out those who might not be good people, might not be seeking platonic cuddling, might not be able to afford their rates, and so on.
    Taking all that into account, without being able to see the actual numbers on the backend, yearly profits could be $100k, $500k or over 1 million... we will never know.

    Doing a search of all site members listed as women or other, who are marked as Pros, were last online within the last 30 days and with no distance limits came to roughly 1,020 Pros. If you wanted to say each Pro charged the exact same amount of $100/hour and hypothetically each Pro had 3 sessions per week, each session was for 1 hour, and with 4 weeks in a month you'd have $1,224,000 earned collectively by Pros. Now from those earnings take out the sites fee of 15% and the site makes $183,600/month which would come to $2,203,200/year.

    Showing my work:
    1,020 Pros * ($100/hour * 3 hours) = $306,000/week
    $306,000/week * 4 weeks = $1,224,000/month
    $1,224,000/month * 15% fee = $183,600/month the site would make from the fee which comes to $2,203,200/year.

    Now all my sessions counts and the hourly rates all being the same are all hypothetical because no one but Mark and Gary know what the numbers really looks like, but thought I'd weigh in on what it would take to guess at what the site makes.

    UPDATE:
    Also wanted to add, Karma should never be expected to reflect how many sessions a Pro has had. Doesn't matter if it's a single session or multiple, not every Client leaves Karma and neither does every Pro. Also, we've had to ban some site members for making multiple accounts, pretending to have a session, and exchanging fake positive Karma on each profile to appear to be legitimate and vetted site members with some even going as far as creating a fake Pro account to sell the lie of seeing multiple people.

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