My Story into Sexwork

Honestly I never saw myself in sexwork before I chose to enter the field. It most certainly wasn’t my first career choice and yet here I am.

Growing up in West Palm Beach, Florida I came from a typical working class American family, one parent a school teacher and the other a postal worker. Some miltary background on both sides so it wasn’t a surprise when I decided to join the Navy outta high school. SHIT PAY but I couldn’t beat those benefits.

After what seemed like forever but in reality only five short years I got out the Navy, came back to America( I lived in Okinawa, Japan for my enlistment), moved to San Antonio, Texas and begun my journey of acclimatization back into a unknowingly brutal american society.

Intially tried to live life navigating through the workforce living with a friend holding two jobs also going to school for dental hygiene falling into the typical working class belief that degrees meant I can get a better job and make more money funnel system. I was doing all that and trying to strip three to four nights out the week, still not able to make ends meet.

Things didn’t work out like Id planned it too, after school didn’t get the job like I had foreseen. Had to continue working those two dead end jobs and dancing which was taking an incredible toll on me. Completely burnt myself out and ran myself to ground physically and mentally. Literally had a mental breakdown. Just gave up on life and became homeless.

After four months of being extremely down on myself and severely depressed living in my car having friends send me money for food and gas and the occasional motel I made a decision that would change the trajectory of my life forever. I borrowed $30 from a friend, just enough to by a throw away visa for an Ad on Backpage found some “close enough“ body pictures on google and a pack of 3 condoms so I could prepare to do what I had to do to no longer be living in my car. That night I made like $300 and it completely changed my whole entire outlook on everything. I remember working my ass off, enduring misogyny/racism/sexual harassment to make $300 after two weeks of work and I made that shit within a night. I’m sure there’s someone asking themselves well you could’ve did that dancing since you were already doing that before homelessness....so the thing about dancing is this it can be a gamble when your already desperate. Sometimes I would pay these healthy ass house fees and not make a dollar in the club. I couldn’t take that risk with my last $30 dollars.

Sex workers are the only folks of middle/lower class society that has the ability of upward financial momentum. Ive come a long way in this business, been blessed to have experienced more positive than negative. I’ve met some lifetime friends and some people whom I would never want within my presence again if I could help it. Navigating through sexwork has become the most vital aspect of my emotional maturity as a woman and person. At first it was just a means to get by but I realized if I focused and developed a brand/vision I could create something extremely profitable with longevity. I could create my own small business. Which is exactly what I did. Already being a people person with tons of experience from the Navy made it a lot easier. Sexwork opened doors for me and continues to open doors. It was one of the hardest decisions to make but definitely one of the better decisions Ive made in my life.

Learning how to see through the smoke and mirrors of online Escorts

I had been a FSSW for 3 years before I decided to build an online presence. In those 3 years most of the knowledge I obtained about the business I bartered from pimps (even in homelessness I had a car so I used it to barter for knowledge by giving the pimps girls rides to calls or the store). In those survival Sexwork years I don’t even remember meeting any independent sex workers really, just tried to keep to myself for the most part and keep my head above water.

So I remember how excited I was at the opportunity to be a part or feel like I’m apart of a community when I came on Twitter. Spent my first year observing and interacting so I could get the hang of how escort twitter operated and I also didn’t have a solid online business model so the observation was really me just tryin to soak up game. After observing the online community I saw a pattern in most online escorts business models, it seemed like most of the online escorts were adopting a “high end” online business model.

Being new to the online escort community it’s very easy to become glamorized by the pictures of gifts and trips, you can easily becoming romanticized at the thought of an extremely wealthy client booking you for this extravagant weekend of expensive champagne, shopping sprees and Michelin star restaurant experiences.

Because this is what you’re looking at every day it’s very easy to fall into that mindframe and want to emulate that business model.

I won’t sit up and pretend that I wasn’t one of those people when I first came on escort Twitter who wanted to be able to emulate that business model and be considered “high end” and have some the same experiences I saw these other escorts having. But it wasn’t until I did a whole high end persona rebrand and took the advice of a couple “self-proclaimed” high end black escorts and almost went broke attempting to emulate the business model that I came to realize that I didn’t want to tie myself to such a generically curated conventional and in my opinion unrealistic business model I wanted my business model to have more flexibility, more creativity that also showcased my personality.

I specifically remember after my “high end” rebrand and bombing on my first out-of-state tour which was to Tampa, I got on Twitter and posted about it. I remember receiving so much advice afterward, honestly if it wasn’t for me actually taking this advice and attempting to apply it I would’ve never figured out my real path in this game because I would’ve been too busy trying to copy a very conventional cookie-cutter business model.

I remember being advised by other black escorts as a black escort to go to specific markets that there wasn’t any diversity in to help me to stand out and not have as much competition. That’s when I took the advice of a black escort out of Las Vegas whom told me she tours Montana, Wyoming, Dakotas frequently, so much she got an apartment in Bozemen‼

I remember being very skeptical at the lack of diversity in these markets but since it was always a dream of mine to see those mountains in the NW I gave Montana try. I stayed an entire week and only made $2000 and that wasn’t after the tour deductions. After bombing in Tampa I specifically remember so many escorts scolding me for not taking deposits and basing my tour on that, but in the beginning of my traveling companion days no one knew me in these other locations so it was very difficult to base if I was going to show up or not strictly on deposits I had to get out there and make myself known.

After my second trip to the NW and barely breaking even then hit me like a ton of bricks, what if I do the opposite of what these other black escorts have told me. Instead of going to markets with little to no diversity I started scouting markets with ALOT of diversity. That’s when I went online and looked for the blackest place in America and decided to try my hand in a market that is so heavily diverse and after I made what I made in Montana in less than 24hours it seemed like it all made sense. Being a dark skinned black escort there are things I noticed that I dealt with in markets that lacked diversity that I never deal with in markets that actually have a healthy amount of diversity. Racism being the number one element that can really stunt my income potential, but when I started focusing on markets that were heavily diverse it finally seemed like I put myself in positions to combat the element so it can no longer affect my money making abilities within my business model. Because naturally if I’m going to locations that have little to no diversity that heavily affects my money making potential…thats just how racism was designed to work.

When I think back to the advice those black escorts gave me it upsets me that I couldn’t see it then but they were essentially giving me advice on how to build a business model on just being fetishized by non-black men.

Unfortunately a business model built on fetishization doesn’t actually pay as well as a lot of black escorts think it does nor was it a healthy business model to adopt for me mentally as a black woman. And that was the beginning of me actually tapping into the business model I’ve adopted now, which is heavily personality based and I combined it with my porn brand to STAND OUT even more( was advised by escorts to not blend my porn and escort brand together to separate it) and it worked like a charm.

Porn helped me to become easily verifiable and consistency is what helped me get established in all my markets today, it’s why I barely have issues with deposits or bookings now but I’ve put in the work and built trust online and off

Things are very different now than they were when I bombed in Tampa, I couldn’t be happier too🥰

The Origin of SweetThroat

When I think of all that I’ve built as SweetThroat, I sometimes laugh at myself of how I originated the brand.

I started SW in 2015 as a survival SW navigating escorting. In 2018 I began to explore online SW after Fosta/Sesta as a way to diversify my income. At the time my name was AshleySweets, when I finally got serious about my porn brand brainstorming I decided that due to some insecurities I didn’t want film full body scenes. So I decided to focus on a niche which also happen to be a passion of mine and that was sensual sloppy deepthroating.

Once I decided that I was gonna focus my branding on my oral abilities I needed the perfect name that not only represented me, but also stood me out from the other oralist in the porn world. Since my name was AshleySweets at the time I came up with a couple of very awkward names for example CandyMouth, ChocolateThroat. I remember being frustrated because I wanted it to be original and not sound generic and forced.

FUN FACT: I ❤️ Blaxploitation‼️

Examples of some ICONIC blaxploitation films: SuperFly, Foxy Brown, Cleopatra Jones, Dolemite, Black Caesar, Coffy, Trouble Man, and Shaft.

While watching one of my favorite adult cartoon shows Black Dynamite, a blaxploitation animated series that came on Adult Swim I actually got the idea of my porn name watching an episode called “Bullhorn Nights or Murder she Throats” where a character named BullHorn go’s undercover in the porn industry as the smooth talking rhyming “Sweet Throat” to investigate a string of murders involving black porn stars.

When I heard them call Bullhorn “Sweet Throat” it’s almost like a lightbulb went off in my brain and I said to myself…. I am SweetThroat that’s my name‼️

I thought about if I heard of anyone else in the porn industry utilizing that name I made sure to do a lot of research as well and just my luck no one had actually branded the name, so I took it upon myself to not only utilize the name but actually brand it.

Once I had finally found an original name I was ready to step into the porn world…with a brand to start building