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Phone sex co. expands beyond voice

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Andy Ellenberger, co-owner of Jezebel Entertainment, a phone sex company that has expanded into the business of 3-D cybersex via a virtual establishment inside Red Light Center. The business is housed inside a place called the Bareback Bordello, which boasts a spa-type atmosphere and is staffed by several Jezebel Entertainment Working Girls.

Bareback Bordello Interestingly, the working girls not only are attracting male clients, but an increasing amount of females also are paying for simulated sex and adult chat, Ellenberger said. What’s also interesting about Ellenberger’s venture is the fact that clients are actually choosing to pay for something they can get for free anywhere else in RLC. Ellenberger speaks to these points and more in the following transcript from our interview via e-mail:

Noche Kandora: How long has the Jezebel Entertainment Working Girls had a presence in RedLightCenter?

Andy Ellenberger: We’ve been in the RLC since around mid-May. I first heard about it via an article on avn.com. I downloaded it to check it out, and noticed inside some of the buildings there were signs for “business proposals.” I clicked on one, filled out the form and we began setting up in there the next day. It actually happened a lot faster than I expected.

NK: Where is Jezebel Entertainment based out of?

AE: Jayme and myself are in Pennsylvania, our partners Jez and Mike are in the New York area. Our business address is here in PA, as I deal with a lot of the paperwork.

NK: Is the Jezebel Entertainment Working Girls its own company, or is that just what it’s known as in RLC?

AE: That’s just what we refer to ourselves and our girls inside the RLC. That should actually be modified, since we do have a Working Guy.

NK: How many Jezebel Entertainment employees work inside RLC, and how often? Are they there for a set amount of hours per week?

AE: We have roughly 15 girls in RLC at the moment, but that number is very subject to change. Though they aren’t employees, per se, but independent contractors. Being independent contractors, we allow the girls to set their own hours as opposed to forcing them to a strict schedule. We’ve found that this makes work more enjoyable for the girl, resulting in a better experience for the client. You can usually find at least one working girl in the Bordello at most times of the day, though I’m sure there’s probably some downtime where there aren’t any. We’re working on finding girls to fill in those gaps, but without requiring set schedules, it’s just a matter of hiring enough girls that it sort of fixes itself. To this point, we haven’t received any complaints that someone was looking for a working girl and there wasn’t one available, so our coverage must be pretty good. Hopefully we’ll have those slight gaps covered before we encounter a client with such a problem.

NK: Are the [contractors] who work inside RLC also phone sex operators for Jezebel Entertainment?

Working Girls AE: Most of the girls started out solely as phone sex operators, and then we expanded them into the RLC. We have hired a few girls from within the RLC. Lydia started out strictly as an RLC girl, but she has branched into both aspects. Christy on the other hand is strictly RLC; she doesn’t want to do the phone sex aspect.

NK: Do the working girls use text chat, or Voice Over Internet Protocol, (or both) to communicate with their clients inside RLC?

AE: It really depends on the girl and what the client wants. The text chat is almost always used in some manner. I think the VoIP has been used the least actually. Our girls, with the exception of Christy at this point, also offer phone sex along with the avatar sex once you’re in a room with them.

NK: What exactly does a client get for his/her money? Dirty talk and virtual sex? Or just virtual sex?

AE: We offer avatar only sex, phone only, or avatar and phone (or VoIP in place of phone). It’s really been pretty even as to which is most popular. I thought the concept of being able to talk to the girl while having avatar sex would be the big selling point, but there’s quite a few clients who just want avatar sex.

NK: How much does it cost to hire one of the girls? Is there a price list?

AE: Rates vary with the service you request. The basic price list is: Avatar only sex - $1/min. Phone Only - $2.10/min. Phone w/avatar $2.50/min. International rates are slightly higher, plus there’s the option of working a second girl (or guy) into the mix, too. Our RLC online pay form (with all the rates) can be found [here.] Also, if you go into one of the first floor rooms in the bordello, walk up to the nightstand next to the bed, and click on the white envelope, that payment form will open in your browser window.

NK: How’s business inside RLC? Are the girls handling many clients?

AE: Business is doing pretty well. As the weeks go by, the sales from RLC are increasing, so we’re pleased with that. Sometimes it’s sporadic, though. RLC sales still don’t really compete with our regular sales, but there are some days when we make more from RLC than we do our normal process. I only see a positive future though.

NK: What specifically made you, Jezebel and Jayme [and Mike] decide to get into the business of simulated sex via Jezebel Entertainment?

Bareback Bordello Inside AE: As I mentioned earlier, I had filled out the business proposal form inside the RLC. I had initially thought that we would just be renting a storefront, like the drug store or lingerie shop, if anything at all. In all honesty, when filling the form out, I felt that the RLC owners had probably gotten proposals from companies like ours all the time, and I didn’t really expect a response. To my surprise, I received a call from Brian Shuster, the CEO of Utherverse, within an hour of submitting my proposal! It turned out that the RLC had originally made an agreement with a webcam company to have working girls in the bordello. Something came up with that company and they had to back out. I submitted my proposal shortly after that. So Brian suggested we jump in and take their place in the Bordello. It was really one of those “right place, right time” things. Had I waited to send my proposal, it could be another company in there right now.

NK: Is RLC currently the only virtual environment that the company is involved in, or does it also have a presence in other online 3-D environments?

AE: We are currently only in the RLC.

NK: Is the company planning to get involved in other MMOEGs and virtual spaces in the future?

AE: It’s not something we’ve put much thought into, really. We like the RLC, and we see great things happening with it in the future. I briefly checked out Second Life, but it was really slow on my pc so my lack of patience caused me to give up on it. From what I saw though, I liked the RLC better; I could be wrong, but it seemed like Second Life was more for the fantasy roleplay than just interacting with people.

NK: In your opinion, is sex inside a 3-D simulated space more evocative than phone sex? Or is it just different? What does one offer that the other doesn’t have?

AE: I think they compliment each other. Inside the RLC, we’re pushing the phone as an add-on to the avatar sex, whereas with our non-RLC customers, we are trying to encourage them to join RLC to take their phone experience with their favorite girls to the “next level.” For them, it’s getting that much closer to really being with a Jezebel Girl. I couldn’t really say whether the avatar sex is better than the phone sex, or vice versa. It’s really a matter of opinion, and we have plenty of clients that could argue either side. As for me personally, I don’t think I really have an opinion. I think my role on the inside of the business has really warped my perception of the whole thing. I used to be a big phone sex client, back in my single days. Now, it doesn’t even interest me that much. The avatar thing right now for me seems appealing, but I know as time passes, I’ll probably become indifferent to that, too.

NK: What is the business arrangement as far as the virtual structure (the Bareback Bordello) where the working girls are housed inside RLC? Does the company rent it from Utherverse, for example?

Bareback Bordello Pool AE: We pay a percentage of our sales to the RLC. I guess it could be viewed as renting the Bordello from the RLC, since if we were to leave they would find another company to replace us. But they’ve given us complete control over the Bordello, to the point where they’ve told us the bordello is ours. We have our own set of rules in the Bordello, as opposed to general RLC rules that apply elsewhere. The owners of the RLC have been very gracious and welcoming to us. They allowed us to set up the payment schedule for commission payments, so I could synchronize it with our normal payroll, making it easier for me. They haven’t demanded anything from us, and they are always there for us when we need assistance or have a request. Utherverse did not request any upfront advance payments from us, because they were understanding enough to give us the opportunity to try it out to make sure our arrangement in the Bordello would even work. We truly couldn’t ask for nicer people to work with.

NK: Could you estimate how many female clients the Jezebel Entertainment Working Girls have, versus male clients? Is it a 60 percent-40 percent ratio, for example, with the clients predominantly male?

AE: I would probably estimate it to be around 75%-25% male. I have noticed a lot of women inquiring about our services though. More and more express an interest in calling as time goes by. And there are some male users who call and have their female significant other with them when they call.

NK: So, of the 25 percent of women, what percentage is paying for lesbian encounters with the female working girls, versus paying for a hetero session with the sole male who works at the Bordello?

AE: Of that 25%, 100% has paid for lesbian encounters. To this point, no female has paid for an experience with either our “labeled” Working Guy or myself. One of our recent female clients was discussing adding me to the call with her working girl of choice, but that hasn’t materialized yet. For the most part, I’m not even sure that a woman would pay for a working guy. Guys looking for a sexual experience are a dime a dozen. Granted, we offer a degree of quality over the average guy (or girl) as our workers are professionals, but I’m not sure that any of that matters when its a girl looking for a guy. On the other hand, I think that a female client will pay for a working girl. I feel that some of the female clients are really bi-curious, and when looking for an experience with another girl, a female will consider a professional to make her feel comfortable and at ease during her experience. They know they can get that with our girls.

NK: In your opinion, why are the men paying for sex with the working girls when they can get it for free inside RLC? Is it because there is a disproportionate male-to-female ratio in RLC, for example? Or is it because they simply want to experience simulated sex with a “pro” who does it for a living, like you alluded to regarding female clients?

AE: I don’t think that the ratio of male-to-female RLC members really has anything to do with it. I think it’s more because of the fact that men are horny more often than women, lol. There are plenty of women in RLC that will have sex with a guy. But from what I’ve experienced, many of the women want to just hang out and chat and have fun. There’s lots of guys who want to do that, too, but when the guy gets in the mood for sex, he’s got to work his magic on the girl. And sometimes that involves wandering around propositioning many girls, frequently getting rejected. When guys want sex, they don’t have the patience for that (most anyway!). So that’s where our working girls come in….they’re in the Bordello, ready to go, whenever the client wants them. There’s times when the courting and flirting is suitable for the guy, and then there’s times when he just needs it. Well, that doesn’t just apply to guys, lol. I do think the concept of being with a “pro” does add to it, but I’m not sure how much of an impact that has. Also, many of the girls in RLC won’t add phone to the experience, so there’s another selling point for the majority of our working girls. I really think the first part of my answer is the main reason for clients paying to be with a working girl as opposed to prowling the streets. I know when we were first started to get set up in RLC, many of the women I talked to were excited that we were coming in, as it would “take the heat off of them.” Many of the guys don’t like the lack of a personal touch of being with a bot, and until we were in there, many would approach girls and straight out ask, “Wanna go have sex?” Many of the women were becoming frustrated and annoyed at the constant, dare I say harassment, from some of the guys.