Most of you don’t know this, but when we first started out we had both a community side and a directory side. The directory side was very basic. We thought we knew what it meant to have our own directory, but we were wrong. Soon after putting it up, we shut it down, because we thought having a directory was just putting up a woman’s picture and letting things go from there. There’s so much more to it, and now I understand how wrong we were. After seeing what some directories do right and what they do very wrong it makes sense why we fell short. A lot of them make providers their priority, which from a business standpoint anyone can see works. My thought process is: how can we prioritize us as clients while also giving providers the exposure and safety they’re looking for?
The idea came after reading about the problems providers were having with other directories. One after another, providers spoke about them on social media some asking for help, others just venting their frustration dealing with particular sites. With so many coming out back-to-back, I couldn’t help but write them down and think about how the opposite approach might work if built by someone like us. Obviously, you have to take into account a lot of things: positioning, security, onboarding, scale, and above all, the client side. Your point of view is the most important part of the entire thing.
The client side is what I’m most passionate about to begin with. It helps us get around a lot of the problems we’re facing right now in the hobby, the biggest being scams. I’ve done what I can with my little posts here and there, but the reality is I’m not doing nearly as much as I could be to actually help us. Writing a couple of threads and adding to the Fake Escort Pages can only do so much. For every one or two scammers I call out, ten to twenty more pop up. It doesn’t help that they’re also on the popular sites we all go to for finding legitimate providers. Still, I understand that as clients, we’re going to flock to where the providers are.
Then there’s the provider side. As I mentioned, providers voice their opinions on directories often, hoping to get the attention of those sites. In doing so, they unintentionally create small movements with others who’ve had the same problems. I’ve written down a lot of different inquiries, but they all seem to center on infrastructure, verification, and exposure. A common complaint is that providers pay for exposure, only to be overtaken by OnlyFans models promoting their accounts. That doesn’t help us find the providers we’re interested in, and it doesn’t help the providers who paid to be on the front page but end up buried on the fifth.
All of this is something we’re trying to fix and bring into Florican. Being realistic, I don’t know how far we’ll get with this. The community already helps so much, but many of us are still getting scammed regularly. Is it happening a little less now that the community exists? Maybe I honestly don’t know. What I do know is that this could help us a lot more while keeping money in the right providers’ pockets and giving them more of what they deserve.
I could run down the entire plan of what we’re going to do, but I wrote this to get input from the community. I have no doubt our ideas line up with yours, but making sure we’re not missing anything and getting a fresh perspective is important if this is going to work. Whether you’re a client or a provider, I’d love to hear thoughts on how to make this directory as real and friendly as possible.
What you like about certain directories?
What you don't like about them?
What's needed to make them better?
What you'd rather have?
