Fee

I don't mean any disrespect to any of the professionals but how did you come about on your pricing? I see between $80 and $100 an hour. I work a very physical job and I get a massage at least once a month which is around $60 an hour. I paid a serviceman to work on my washing machine he charges $45 an hour. I saw one lady she was very sweet but we cuddled for an hour. Technically we just layed there.

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Comments

  • If she "just laid there" she's not very good at the craft. There is a lot more to professional cuddling than that :-)

    There are a lot of threads on this subject. Read all the comments on the high price of cuddling.

    Personally, I started at $50/hr and worked my way up. There are a lot of hours spent on this job outside of my paid hours. That's the main motivation/need to charge higher rates than some might expect.

  • I understand it's your time and you want to be paid for your time but I'm not seeing any technical skills and that's why I asked I know I'm not going to get just anybody to meet up with me and cuddle who doesn't know me.

  • [Deleted User]MoonlightSonata (deleted user)
    edited May 2018

    @MaxCuddle Pros usually charge based on their level of experience. And also what they are doing during a cuddle. For example, many cuddlers also do massage, or reiki, or another service in addition to their cuddling. If you read the profiles of pros, many of them have these additional services that are packaged with a cuddle. So it is just like going to a massage therapist or something; you just happen to also be getting cuddles too.

    This is not the case with every cuddler though. Some cuddlers offer cuddling exclusively. But that is still time, effort, and energy that they are putting into a cuddling assignment. It is a service being offered like anything else.

    It's also important to note that on most cuddling sites, pros have a percentage taken by the site out of whatever they make. You might have someone who does cuddling part time. It wouldn't matter if they charged a low fee (even if a percentage is taken out) because they are doing other jobs as well. However, there are many cuddling pros who do this as a full time job.

    The struggle with doing freelance or independent contract work is you never know the amount of people who are going to be interested in buying your services. There is freedom in doing your own thing but also a lot of time and effort into promoting yourself, getting the word out about what you offer, and doing your job all at the same time.

    Of course most cuddlers are here because they genuinely want to cuddle with other people. The money is usually in place to account for time, extra services, and other things that go into be an effective cuddler.

    There are emotional aspects of the job too. You are giving a lot of time and energy to one person. It might seem easy but interacting with people, while rewarding and fun, still takes a lot of energy and effort. The price is often based in part off of this as well.

    Anyway, there are a lot of factors that go into calculating the price of a cuddling session.

    It's perfectly fine if the pro thing is not for you. There are also people on the site who offer cuddling for free (like a cuddle buddy type of thing). So you could always try to search for the non-pros in your area. :)

  • edited May 2018

    Someone should sticky a half-dozen or so of the myriad "why does this cost so much?" threads. Might cut down on new ones. ;-)

    As for how prices are arrived at, it's probably safe to say that the earliest cuddle agencies to establish a nationwide presence set the bar at $80 years ago. Newer independent pros do their homework and choose a strategy of pricing themselves at, below, or above this average as a form of market positioning.

    My two cents:
    1. It's futile to compare prices between differing fields of work. Why does my attorney charge X for an hour when my psychiatrist only charges Y? Cuddling is not the same as massage therapy (though there are obvious areas of overlap), and definitely not much like washing machine repair. You can't infer a correct price for one line of work by comparing it to another.
    2. People in all lines of work get understandably defensive when you ask them to justify their fees.
    3. Fair market value for any product or service is defined as what a willing buyer will pay a willing seller when neither person is under compulsion to buy or sell, and both have knowledge of the relevant facts. There is often a difference between fair market value and asking price. Some people here are asking several times more than the average --- but the fact that they are asking that doesn't necessarily mean any clients are buying. The most powerful way to affect pricing is to vote with your wallet; if what is offered seems unfairly priced, don't buy.
    4. If your cuddle pro just lay there, I feel your pain. Few things will give a client buyer's remorse faster than an uninspiring cuddle with someone who is as inert as a sofa bolster. You'd rightly feel buyer's remorse regardless of the amount paid. On the other hand, I've found that a session with a truly awesome cuddle pro feels totally worth it to me. It may take a little trial and error to find the awesome ones, but they are definitely out there. Best of luck.

    Edit: Just checked out your profile. I notice you did give a positive review to a pro you saw. So maybe yours isn't a case of buyer's remorse from a session where she "just lay there," but just a sort of philosophical stance that for $80 per hour, it ought to be rocket science? Cuddling doesn't involve technical skills in that sense, but as someone who has cuddled 32 pros in nine states (and counting) I can tell you it's not a skill set everyone has. When I meet someone who has it, it's worth the price to me. but that's a determination every client has to make for himself. I'd say try a diverse selection of pros who have great reviews, and then you'll have enough of a statistical sample to make an informed judgment about whether the price of cuddling is worth it to you. And if it's not, then there are always enthusiast (unpaid) cuddlers. At least, for the very patient. ;-)

  • @MoonlightSonata I know you're not intending to, but I feel like your response is really misrepresenting cuddling and the answer to his question.

    When someone is paying for professional cuddling, the justification for that charge is not that you're also getting a massage or other treatments. That is another service entirely. Some people package the two together, but that is not what "professional cuddling" is.

    Also, if you don't get a lot of clients each month, that's not justification. The justification in relation to this is that you CAN'T cuddle 40 hours a week. It is a very emotionally demanding job, and in order to provide your best self to each individual client, you simply must limit yourself, even if the clients are available. Different pros might have different limits, but no one can cuddle 40 hours a week.

    On the same notion, since it takes so much energy, if you are doing this "full-time", it doesn't work with another job. For me, if I have another job, then I would either be VERY limited in how much cuddling I could provide, or I wouldn't be able to do it at all. In order to provide this service, it has to have a long-term plan of being able to pay the bills. Thus, the number of hours a week that I could feasibly cuddle (while being 100% emotionally present and at the top of my game for each cuddle) has to make the amount of money I need to pay the bills. If it didn't, I couldn't do it at all.

    You are right though, in that there is a LOT of time put into this business which is not paid. That's one explanation I give people. The hourly rate you see is not the hourly rate I'm effectively being paid, after you consider all the time put into the work and the business.

    @MaxCuddle Anyone who has been to an in-person cuddle training will say that providing this service takes skill. Anyone who has seen a GOOD professional cuddler will say that providing this service takes skill. I will tell you that most of my sessions end in the person requesting an extension that day, if I'm available (30 minutes - 1 hour), and EVERY one of my clients has rebooked. So I like to think that the all see the value =) *Granted, I started out at $50/hr and have been working my way up $10 at a time, only just this week bumping to the average of $80/hr after completing my Cuddlist training.

    This is why people coming here (and other places) thinking this is easy money and just intend to take money for people to lie with them is so frustrating to me. For every pro who provides this level of service to someone, it's alienating someone who might actually really enjoy or appreciate this service. It turns someone into someone like you who just don't get what the big deal is. And the more people who feel that way, the more difficulty we will have in getting society to accept this as a real service. Word spreads, and other people who haven't even heard of professional cuddling will take on the view point of that person who told them the story of paying $80 for someone to just lie there with them. Argh. It is SO frustrating.

    @quietman775 is right in a lot of ways.

    We really need to sticky the primary thread on this subject, lol. And he is right that people in any profession can get defensive when their rates get called into question ;-) If you don't like the rates, then don't pay for the service. I get frustrated that people come here with no experience or knowledge or anything and charge the average or higher, but there are clients paying it, so that says all that needs to be said.

    I think you can tell quite a bit about a pro from the conversation before the session, what's on their profile, and the quality of karma on their page. Even a "good" pro isn't for everyone though, and you have to work to find the one who is the right fit for you. Same with psychologists. They are each qualified, but each has a slightly different style and personality which may fit some people more than others.

  • edited May 2018

    @quietman775 - "Someone should sticky a half-dozen or so of the myriad "why does this cost so much?" threads. Might cut down on new ones. ;-)" I don't think it will. Look at all the resources that have been indexed under the Cuddling Resources thread, and check how many new posts wouldn't have been necessary had they read that thread first.

    I appreciate the multitude of salient points you made above. But it seems no matter how many times pro cuddlers explain what goes into cuddling or why they price the way they do, there are always going to be some people who are going to be unhappy about it.

    One often overlooked point is that there aren't a large amount of women who have the courage to meet virtual strangers and let them touch them right away. That and the safety factor make this a vastly different line of work. Female enthusiasts are not that easy to find or connect with, which you know well by your remark about the patience that it takes.

  • @quietman775 just because he gave a "positive" review doesn't necessarily mean it was a great session. She says she likes being the little spoon. That tells me she's a more passive pro. Which may be what some people are looking for, but that's not what I feel brings the real value to sessions for my clients. My favorite thing is giving guys the opportunity to be held. A lot of men haven't experienced it since they were a child and don't default to that when cuddling, as it's the man's "job" to hold and be the caretaker. They can hold me, but that's not what I'm there for. I want to hold, caress, get them to completely relax, not worry about me and my needs at all. I am "active" virtually the entire session, unless they say they want something different or I get the vibe that they want to just lie for a minute. I have had a client who has given a pretty plain positive review to another pro, yet he told me that she was fine, but was pretty apparently just there to make the money and go. So you can't just look at whether a review is positive or not, but what exactly was said about the session.

  • [Deleted User]MoonlightSonata (deleted user)

    @ubergigglefritz It wasn't my intention to misrepresent things. I'm sorry if it came off that way. I was just trying to say that there are a lot of pros on the site if you read their profiles who do offer other services like massage, reiki, and so on along with the cuddle. The reason I bring it up is because when you think about cuddle services that are grouped with other things, that's actually like getting two or more services for just one price.

    Even if you are offering cuddles exclusively with no bundled package, that is still a lot of cuddling, time, and attention to give to a client. Like someone else mentioned, you can't compare apples to oranges. For example you can't compare an attorney price to a cuddling price because they are two very different things.

    The reason I brought up the fees taken out is that I don't think a lot of people on the site realize that pros have to pay fees for their sessions. They just look at the amount they charge and think that the cuddler is getting all of it. So understandably they might be confused about the high price. Helping a client understand that fees do get taken out is I believe good at explaining the price point. Especially if, like I mentioned, someone if doing cuddling as a profession, and not just something they are doing along with other jobs (as a side gig).

    You are absolutely right when you bring up the emotional aspect of the job. I am so glad you mentioned it. Because that is another factor in the pricing. Giving attention to each person is very emotionally demanding. It is rewarding, of course. But it does take a lot of time and energy.

    Cuddling may seem like a simple thing but there is actually A LOT that goes into it. It's work like everything else. It's a great job and it is rewarding. But it is still work. It's just in a different specialized field.

  • @BlueIris I agree with much of what you wrote as well (except the "resources" thread being stickied isn't the same as this would be, since that's pretty generic. If you're looking for something specific, you're not going to hunt in a generic thread first. It's hard enough to get people to read specific threads before starting their own new one, lol; in that regard, you may still be right, haha).

    You are right in the affect of supply vs demand. There is a relatively high supply of women who come here thinking this is easy money, but there's a reason why most people don't stick around. It's not easy, and most people aren't going to be comfortable with it. Personally, I love strangers, so this is almost perfect for me, lol.

  • @ubergigglefritz - My point re supply and demand was less about whether the job was easy or difficult and more about that it takes guts for women to meet virtual strangers and allow themselves to be touched by them right away. More women than men are more apt to be fearful about that. Women are usually more afraid for their physical safety; men are more afraid of getting ripped off by a scammer. Guys who complain about prices don't usually think about the safety factor and the fact that women put themselves at risk much more than men by doing this.

  • Right. "It's not easy" = "it takes guts for women to meet virtual strangers and allow themselves to be touched by them right away." Most people come here thinking it's easy, but then quickly realize they're not comfortable with providing this service, and leave.

  • [Deleted User]MoonlightSonata (deleted user)

    @BlueIris I hadn't thought about the meet up aspect but you are right. There is a safety factor involved.

    I usually talk to potential clients a long time to really get to know them and find out what they are looking for in a cuddle session.

    I have found that asking people what their cuddling preferences are often allows for a nice discussion about boundaries, preferred cuddle positions, and other details.

    It also helps to meet with a client before anything is officially scheduled to get to know them a little more.

  • @quietman775 If it does get stickied, i say they should also sticky the myriad but what if i get a boner threads

  • [Deleted User]MoonlightSonata (deleted user)

    @pmvines I haven't seen those particular threads yet. But I haven't really been on Cuddle Comfort too long.

  • @MoonlightSonata Oh believe me, they are there lol

  • [Deleted User]MoonlightSonata (deleted user)

    @pmvines Are the threads usually started by people new to the cuddling community? Just curious.

  • I feel really bad now. My intenion was just to get feedback on the fee. I wasn't trying to bad mouth my session. My pro cuddler was very sweet. And saying we 'just layed there" came off worse than intended. I would gladly repeat everything we did the first time. And I apologized to her in a message that the comments came out wrong. She took in a stranger to her home who she just met. And prob part of my thing is, is that fee is a little high for me because of my own financial situation.

  • edited May 2018

    .

  • @MaxCuddle I apologize for my contribution if that was not your intent. Us pros can definitely get defensive sometimes when people claim that we "just lie there", as the serious of us really do way more than that in a session. And there are "pros" out there who do just that, giving us a bad reputation, so it can get a little frustrating.

    I still stand by my assessment though, and her statement of preferring to be the little spoon (but not minding being the big spoon on occasion) makes her come across as one of those more passive cuddlers. If I were someone looking for a professional (given how expensive we are), it would turn me off. That's just my honest feedback to change the wording in her profile. It looks like she blocked me, or I would just have sent this directly to her.

  • [Deleted User]MoonlightSonata (deleted user)

    @MaxCuddle I've actually interacted with your cuddler a lot on the forum (I read the mutual reviews). She is a very nice person. :) I am glad that you were able to send her a message. I hope that the two of you can work things out.

  • I'm sure we will she has offered a free hour and I will take her up on that as well as sending some money her way
    And I did write her a good review on the karma page.

  • [Deleted User]MoonlightSonata (deleted user)

    @MaxCuddle That was very nice of her to do.

    You might want to tell her the specific type of cuddling you want.

    I find that it helps to discuss cuddling positions and other things you like to do during a cuddle session. :)

    It also helps to communicate things you don't like so the cuddler can give you the best experience possible.

  • edited May 2018

    The way I see it is quite simple. A pro can charge what they want and a customer is either willing to pay it or not. The more a pro charges, the fewer customers they will get (this is a universal economic principle) because they are competing with other pros in their area. However, perhaps they have enough customers and don't want any more, or perhaps they set a high fee in the hope of attracting a 'better class' of customer. But it all comes down to supply and demand. Fortunately for pros, there appear to be far more men wanting a cuddle partner than there are non-pro women available.

  • [Deleted User]MoonlightSonata (deleted user)
    edited May 2018

    @UKGuy Thinking about it from an economic standpoint is valuable as well.

    I think in any business it is good to offer discounts to loyal customers. For example, I worked for many years selling crafts I made (and other art) online. If I had repeated business, I would offer a discount of some kind to show that I appreciated the loyalty of certain customers.

    Building trust with people who use your services in any field is important. Any way you can think of to build trust such as offering discounts or going the extra mile in some way is always great to consider when maintaining a customer base.

  • edited May 2018

    Thanks Max! Looking forward to next week or sometime soon in the future :) My new kitty is a cuddler as well, so she may snuggle up with us lol

    @ubergigglefritz fortunately, I have not asked for your feedback on my profile. Please stop tearing down others to build yourself up, it’s become so constant that I’m more surprised when it’s not in every comment you leave. It’s unbecoming and turns the forum into an unwelcoming situation.

    If I was a newbie pro cuddler, I would be turned off by your posts and not want to be part of the community, but instead I ignore you. I ignore you but don’t feel the need to block you because you are irrelevant no matter how important you seem to think of yourself as. This holier than thou attitude doesn’t actually add much to the conversation and it sure as hell doesn’t make other women feel that they can post on this forum without some useless snarky remark from you.

  • Lol, has Scarlette hijacked my profile? Seriously though... I'm sorry this forum thread turned into this, but I'm not sure where else I have given off this tone. I do generally come to the defense of clients over other pros, since they tend to be the ones being attacked with all the pros banding together, so it's definitely possible. I just don't recall... It's my nature to be vocal and stand up for people who are alone. It has definitely made me stand out in many situations, and often not in the best light for the masses. But again, I'm sorry for what was said in this thread.

  • edited May 2018

    You can defend the clients, you can have their back, I have done that but just with tact and try to be uplifting in the process. But until this point, I have never felt the need to personally and/or publically put down or attack another pro.

    I like my business, but I enjoy people (pros and enthusiasts) and making connections more than I like free advertisement, how you advertise yourself is not what I would chose to do. Not all publicity is good, but do what you gotta do. I just hope that you are putting the energy out there that that you hope to receive.

  • I have felt myself getting a little sour in the forums the past month or two. Regardless of how the pros felt about me, I felt happier about my presentation before then. I'm pretty good at admitting when I have done wrong O:-) In this case, I do apologize.

  • I appreciate the apology. Keep working on the improvement, that’s all anyone can ask for. You’ll get there eventually.

  • Ugh. You had to add the "You'll get there eventually." Lol. That's like something a teacher would say to a student struggling in math. ;-) But maybe it just comes across that way when written.

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