Going it Alone

The glamour of doing professional shoots soon got thrown straight back at me in my sheer determination to succeed in this new career of mine.

Jody had given me the name of a couple of online modelling websites I could join free of charge. All I had to do was send them some pictures of me and fill in the form with all my contact details, stats and modelling info and voila! I was out there for all the world and his dog to see and book.

Proper agents took a commission for booking you. Some took it out of your fee and some took from the producer on top of your fee which was always a bonus. Producers and photographers usually preferred to book you away from agents for this reason. If anyone ever shot you they usually took your contact no. on the model release form anyway but if a model release wasn’t required they made sure they took it anyway. That way they could call you direct next time they wanted to book you or get you to fill in for some other girl who hadn’t shown up.

Agents knew it happened so they always tried to milk new girls for all they were worth as fast as they could. This is why you can be shot to death in this business within a matter of weeks. Some producers and photographers are chummy and share the details of new girls between them thus losing the need for an agent even more so.
An agent will push you to as many contacts as he can as quickly as he can before your no. starts getting out there on its own.

As I say the agents knew this practice went on but they never did anything about it. Bad business sense and laziness I guess. There saving graces were that they had a large catalogue of girls on their books so should a girl no show for a shoot, which was a regular occurrence, the agent could easily replace her. These were the times the producer was more than willing to pay a commission.

These online sites were like virtual agencies without the agent. The customer, the producer or photographer emailed the model directly and negotiated rates or whatever. There was no physical agent to pay a commission to.
However with no physical agent at hand to vet people claiming to be photographers or movie producers and production companies it was down to the model to ensure her own safety and that’s not as simple as it looks.
Its very easy for a guy to email saying he is Hugh Heffner and give a link to the playboy site. He just makes up an email like hugh_playboy @ hotmail.com and he’s away.
The sad thing is alot of girls are thick. Thick and lazy and ignorant to their own welfare and safety.

I found that most professional companies would call me direct either through an agent or by having been given my no. by another industry insider.
Emails were nine times out of ten from amateurs and wannabes and dodgy blokes trying their luck.

When my profile initially went up on the first modelling site I was delighted and excited to see a list of emails as long as my arm after just half a day. I read them all with gusto and thought about how popular I was and how much money I was going to make. I had no reason to distrust these people. So far id had a good and honest ride in porn.

I learnt to “read” peoples emails pretty damn quickly though. There are tell tale signs as well as switching on your common sense which as I say so many girls in porn lack.