There are a LOT of questions everywhere all the time from new submissives asking whether paying a tribute is a normal thing when looking for a personal or love-based F/m relationship.
Why do they ask this?
Often it’s because they’ve already handed over some money to someone and instead of it leading to a meeting and the start of a beautiful relationship, it led to, you guessed it, a request for more money. Or they’ve talked to any number of dominant women and at some point in the conversation, they all asked for money.
When it’s raised in discussions, some respondents to the question get all “well pro-dommes are a thing!” and “findom is a thing!”, and sure they are, but just hold on a minute.
Ethical pro-dommes and findoms are up-front and clear about what they’re doing. They NEVER randomly hit up submissive men for chit chat and then go ‘surprise, pay me!’
Ethical pro-dommes offering play-for-pay are professionals running a business. As such, they have a website, they have a professional presentation, they clearly state their session rates, they may require a deposit, and they go from there.
Ethical findoms offering more nebulous, less defined pay-for-interaction arrangements are also fully up-front about what they’re doing, with ‘findom’ displayed right on their profile.
Ethical dominants for whom findom is a kink (this as opposed to ‘pay-for-interaction’ findoms) will NEVER get into a conversation with a potential submissive and then just… demand money. Never.
With any ethical interactions of this kind, there’s no confusion about what’s going on, none of this bafflement that I see over and over from new submissive men.
And yes, I know I’ve used the word ‘ethical’ about 20 times now :P.
So what we’re left with is:
- Unethical pros or findoms
- Newbie Dommes who think this is ‘how it works’
- Jaded lifestylers who have decided this is a way to weed people out, or
- Scammers
The issue is that those that fall into the categories above are often hard to tell apart. Impossible even. And of course scammers rely on that, and trust me when I tell you that when it comes to asking for money, you are much more likely to be paying a scammer than you are to be paying a legit lifestyle dominant woman.
My advice to any newbie submissives is this:
If you’re looking for a personal or love-based F/m relationship, don’t give anyone on the internet any money.
Just don’t.
There are a lot more unethical people and scammers out there on the internet looking for you to pay them than there are genuine lifestyle dominants, and they rely on you wishing and hoping that you’ve struck that one lifestyler who really is-for-real-genuine and who just happens to want a tribute.
But trust me, 99.9% of the time, you haven’t.
PSA: Some ways that requests for money are presented include: a tribute to show respect, a gift card to show sincerity, $600-$800 to pay for ‘equipment for training’ (and they will tantalisingly list out fun toys in detail), money to book a hotel room (and they will point to a legit-looking BDSM hotel that has properties all over the world (it’s not, and they don’t)), a fee for putting together a contract, cost for training, as proof you’re not a time-waster.
More posts on spotting a scam: Click here for the spam category.
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18 comments
Nice educational post! Be careful because scammers are everywhere, not even in the internet
True enough :/.
Ferns
Excellent post and I hope it will be widely read. I’ve interacted with pros online who have assisted with my preferred kink, and have always happily tributed them. They were well deserving of payment for their time and expertise.
What gets me are the so-called “professionals” you see at every turn on Twitter these days who demand a tribute before they will even consider talking with you. That’s ridiculous in my estimation, and I avoid them like the Bubonic plague as I’m sure many men do. They may be dominants, but they aren’t my dominant and aren’t entitled to demand payment for discussing the possibility of a arrangement by which they would get paid. That’s simply part of the business model.
Findom is not a kink of mine, though I know it is for others. While I wouldn’t think of kink shaming anyone, I admit the motivation behind Findom is not something I remotely understand. All I know is the “Findommes” of Twitter are the worst offenders of all. They seem to believe every submissive guy is the same which to me only reveals how little they know.
Anyway, keep up the good work, Sweet As. :D
Thanks JK.
The folks asking for money may annoy you, but mentioning those who present their terms clearly up-font in the same breath as scammers is common and inaccurate. The former is behaving ethically (even if you don’t like it), the latter is not.
Ferns
Love this post! It’s crazy that scammers will invest so much time to groom someone into the perfect victim.
But, I also wonder if you have any thoughts on when this happens in the “opposite” direction. I’ve had pro-domme friends that turned out to really liked a client, and their client seemingly fell hard for them too. So pay for play continues for several weeks until the client asks, “What is this? What are we doing? Am I not special? Aren’t we something more?”.
To the pro-domme who genuinely enjoys this client, she’s only doing a disservice to herself if her interactions with the client are limited by how much the client chooses to spend and what specific services he requests.
So, she agrees to move forward in the dynamic, less the transactional parts. Or in other words, she’s working for free now. Everything is all fine and good for a while, but then the “sub” gets bored and moves onto someone else, to work the same scheme. This may not exactly qualify as “scammer” activity, but it sure is a mind fuck when it happens.
If scammers get a good mark, the payoff is worth it, I imagine. I also imagine that scam organisations have standard scripts that are really not much trouble to slightly customise and send out to engage men’s dicks so that they’ll pay for more :/.
“So, she agrees to move forward in the dynamic, less the transactional parts. Or in other words, she’s working for free now. Everything is all fine and good for a while, but then the “sub” gets bored and moves onto someone else, to work the same scheme. This may not exactly qualify as “scammer” activity, but it sure is a mind fuck when it happens.”
I’m sure there are some awful people who do this solely to get free service, but I also think moving from pro/client to dom/sub would be challenging on many levels that could cause this to happen.
Not least is the fact that no matter how well they get on, the bottom line for professional interactions is that it’s the pro-domme’s literal job to behave in ways that make her client happy, and obviously in for-real not-paid interactions, that’s not how D/s (or any relationship) works.
Clients fall in love with perfection, some version of their ideal domme, always ready to play, to be pleasing while pretending to be in charge, to be delighted by ‘whatever sexy fun times’ their client enjoys, and they do this really well every single time they see each other.
I can imagine that when reality hits and she has her own actual life, with needs and wants and desires, that’s a huge adjustment and suddenly she’s no longer ‘the perfect woman’. Now suddenly she doesn’t want to play every time they get together, or she’s moody because that’s who she is, or stressed because she has shit to deal with in her life, or she wants things that aren’t catering to his desires all the time, and probably plenty of times she just wants to chill on the couch and watch Netflix in her fluffy slippers when they get together.
That’s a HUGE shift in the relationship: Multiply that by all the normal life hours vs the time they were spending in sessions before and you have a huge adjustment to make.
So yeah, I’d guess then we’re in the realm of ‘relationships are complicated, shifting from pro/client to gf/bf is hard, and often things don’t work out’ as much as the more cynical ‘he’s running a scheme’.
Also for clarity: I have ZERO experience with this, I’ve just seen enough clients fall in love with their pro-dommes to know exactly how they experience those interactions, and it’s easy to see the challenges that a change out of paid sessions into real life poses.
Ferns
What I’ve been seeing a lot with, well what I would call scammers on instinct anyway, is that at least those approaching me often say after a brief introduction, something about if I want the person to be my Mistress/ Goddess, and after another couple exchanges suddenly that they need a tribute for a “BDSM Council” to “register my slave contract”, without me ever agreeing to the terms, getting a closer definition of anything, getting a say on the “terms”, etc. Often mentioned in conjunction with getting into contact with other Mistresses to verify my “enslavement”. Usually within 50 to 100$/ Euro, depending on where they claim to be from.
In my opinion its quite clearly a scam, or at least a very, very unethical findom. Most times if put under a bit of scrutiny/ asking for a fakecheck (picture of face + username of whichever site and date on a piece of paper in the picture), they often go the “You can’t command your mistress” route.
Now, I dont have anything against Dominas, or even Findoms for that matter. But this is quite shady in my experience. Proving you are who you say you are and demanding age, clear name, relationship status, current living arrangements, where you live, and private telephone number, yet claiming to be from germany and claiming a name like “Joy Loveth” to be the birth name is very… audacious.
That said, I appreciate all legit Professional people, and their work.
Yeah payments to ‘the BDSM council’ or some other BDSM organisation for pretend-legitimacy is a popular scam tactic.
No such thing.
Ferns
I’ve been an ethical ProDomme for over 15 years and your article by far gives the best explanation of why bois should and should not tribute. Thank you for taking the time to write about a subject that is oftentimes a sensitive topic to broach. It’s true these instadommes and unethical fem/findommes have diluted this industry terribly. I have noticed their presence on social medial less and less. I trust their departures from the scene can be attributed to these bois being more well informed regarding their choice of which luxury service provider to serve. Thank you again! CD
I’m so glad it resonated with you.
And you’re so right, it can be a sensitive subject. Not least because a lot of people throw every paid dominant under the ‘scammer’ bus without discrimination, and navigating the not-even-very-nuanced difference between ethical and unethical for-pay providers can be fraught because the internet is very bad at any level of nuance.
Ferns
Thank you for this. I am literally the guy which was asked for money by every domme I tried online. It’s unbelievably frustrating and heartbreaking. Guess I’ll keep trying, and thank you again
Unfortunately, one must assume that there are many scammers online.
If in doubt, back away. If you feel unsure about a situation, definitely don’t send money.
I have to ask. I have a Mistress who I started with that demanded 100$ to be her sub. I have paid that plus more $ ten here and 20 there for nothing. She asked today for my SSN which I replied no that was not happening. I then said I was leaving and wished her good luck. Boy that was a hard pill I guess for her to swallow! You think she is a scammer?
Yes. Probably not a woman, and 100% a scammer.
Ferns
As a pro-Domme, I’ve had a huge problem with people, almost always men, stealing my photos then using them to try to scam people.
Next time you find yourself in what looks like a scam situation, picture some big, ugly, smelly dude who thinks you’re an idiot and wants to rip you off and waste your time. Now imagine him holding up a photo of a woman he’s never met. He holds this photo in front of his face and tells you to give him loads of cash so you can be his slave. If your answer would be ‘NO’ in that scenario, then make sure it’s your answer when it happens online, because that’s really what’s actually going on.
Even if your answer would be yes, say NO, because its a scam and you wont meet the guy anyhow!
You deserve better and I wish you the best of luck.
Very nearly fell for a (non-Femdom related) scam last year, when I tried to use Map Quest. The basic strategy in this case was to cause the victim to panic. Person on the phone who was supposedly trying to help me, while demanding secrecy, and money.
Earlier in the year, a friend told me that his brother fell for a scam, and lost a lot of money.
People in general need to become wary of anonymous strangers on the Internet.
And Steve, I’m glad that you refused to hand over your Social Security Number. In general, don’t hand over pass words or account numbers, or financial information, to anonymous strangers on the Internet.