The Great Rate Debate---- Aka, my study on pricing in the DFW market

Ok ladies--- let the pie charts go

Sorry.....lol, I need colors to keep my attention going.

Im joking sweetie.

December, this seems in line with what I suggested in my last thread on value. Price is important but only part of the equation. Changing price within a specific segment has only a small impact. Moving outside the range for your segment can have a big impact. There are better ways to increase value.

I guess, for a stupid guy, I was not so far off after all.

Unfortunately there are some flaws with your research study. Here's what I see:

1) You only have on batch of data upon which to draw your conclusions. To be statistically significant, then you need additional samples from other ladies performing the same exact thing with (roughly) the same exact rates.

2) Because of the type of business that you are in, it's highly judgemental, and therefore any survey is problematical at best. ALL providers are NOT the same. You have to factor in tangible things like breast size, body type, hair color, tattoos, clothing choices, etc. Then you have to factor into the intangibles like "holy shiite! she could suck the chrome off a hitch!" or "I had more fun eating frito pie with my pet chimp than I did banging (insert silly stripper name here)". Therefore the datasets you will collect will be highly variable, thus you'll need to have enven MORE data.

3) Customers will base (ok, SOME customers will) their choices off reviews, pictures, etc. Where you as equivalently reviewed (and received equivalent ratings and ROS feedback as your peers) during the time you were running the specials?

I could go on, you are getting my point I hope. What you have is interesting, though its not statiscially relevant. Virtually every study in a capitalistic market says that the customer picks the price for a good/service. And... virtually every study is full of shit because we rarely have textbook fairness in the marketplace. So one needs to take these things with a grain of salt.

Still, I applaud your effort. If you could convice some other ladies across the market who are both the same and dissimilar to you and what you offer, and then combine the data, you would have a better model upon which to base your estimates upon.

I have to admit that I think specials or discounts do attract attention, especially those for p411 or existing clients. Everyone always likes to think they are getting a deal.

Excellent study in statistical design of experiments, DL. You could throw in one more factor - the time of the day - to see the effect on customers who show up in the morning, early/late afternoons and early/late nights.

Hugh--

My study agrees that yes, specials do get attention. But only to a certain point. Fall below your "breakline" and you are worse for the wear, so to speak. Going by a straight linear assumption, I thought that my best weeks in terms of client count would be the $125 weeks. In fact, those were the worst. By pure volume, my $140 weeks were the best--- good enough to where I did not even have to advertise in the weekend forum as I was already booked for the week.

Agood--- I did fiddle a little with availability factors

During the $200 weeks, I was only available bankers hours plus Saturdays. 9-5.
During the $175 and $140 weeks, I was available until 10PM each day. It had no impact at $175, and low impact at $140. Most of my appointments were still daytime visits.
During the $125 week, I maintained the same hours as during the $200 week, minus the Saturday. I had made a false assumption that the seriously low rate would balance out the lesser availability. Not only are my actual appointments low, my requests were far lower than expected.

One thing that pops in my head is that I would be willing to bet that if you were to run the $125 rate for a longer time and allow guys to post reviews that show you are providing the same stellar services at a much lower rate you will be bombarded with new clients. But at the same time I think you may lose a small amount of your clients or interest of new clients because some don't like seeing a high volume provider.

Because I for one would to see a provider on a regular basis of 1 to 2 times a month for $125. Maybe offer that for repeat clients and charge your regular rate for first timers or guys that don't come around as often.

After reading how you discount your regulars I think I need to pay you a visit

The time span was way too short to draw conclusions on the study, but since you did draw some, one that wasn't mentioned is that at $140/hr you made at least 15% more per week than at any other rate, either higher or lower. Based on the earnings per week you listed, if you worked between 40-50 weeks a year, that would be an additional $8,000-$10,000 per year on top of the $48,000-$60,000 you would have made at the $200/75 minute rate.

Of course, who knows if the trends would hold up. You could end up making more at $200/75 minutes, and you certainly would work fewer hours, but when you look at a monthly or yearly basis, the data you provided doesn't support the thesis that there isn't much difference in what you would make at the $140 vs. $200 price points.

Please don't take this as any advice on what you should or shouldn't charge (frankly, at $140 per hour your donation was significantly lower than any other reputable provider that I know of). It's simply a longer term view of the data you provided. But I doubt the trends you mentioned would stay the same over time.

Low rates motivate me to hobby more. In fact, I think providers should take a page out of the hotel chain playbook with regards to loyalty and repeat business. Give me points towards discounts or other perks with every booking I will see you regularly.

How sure are we of the stats posted by the OP? Something seems off on those results. I can guarantee you that if you dropped your rates down to $125.00 per hour in my region (and had decent reviews), you would get more than four clients in a week. Hell that is low enough for me to consider airfare just see her, take in the local sights, if she is good see her again the next day, and then fly out. That is better than 2 for 1 up here. Are you sure those figures are correct?

You skewed your study a little I think.

1. Your sessions times differed, 200/75 and 175/60. In my mind they are the same.

2. Some of your repeat customers were allowed to return at a rate lower than the current rate advertised, if I read that correctly.

3. How many new customers showed up? I would think you'd pull in more new ones while on the lower rates. If they had a most excellent time, they might return at the higher rate. Of course, they might not and would need to be grandfathered.

4. I would like to know what time of the month each price test started. Was the 140 during the end of the month, middle or end. Or even around typical pay times for customers. Time of year has to be taken in to account. Was it at the end of summer when vacations have taken away spending funds?

Since we need a larger dataset to have a meaningful analysis, I propose that all providers on ECCIE test their rate plans until December, and we can all participate in the study.

DL - I missed your ads during your experiment times. Did you advertise $xxx/hr or did show $xx off regular rate?

If I saw a $125/hr rate like ppl have said it would be a red flag. but if I saw an ad with $50 off current rate (and the current rate is listed)... I would think that is cool I should schedule an appointment.

This is very interesting and much of what you have said makes sense.

The things I think would make the study even better would be:

1) As mentioned, you need a longer period per rate. The sample size is somewhat small for concrete conclusions, and the reaction to reviews on each rate limited because, by the time people see them, you're on to the next rate.

2) It's important for a fair comparison to keep all other variables even (session length and availability)

3) I think value would be added to have a few girls of varying types in the study to see ho they are impacted.

I have to say I am impressed at the effort you went through.