Investigating the Upstate New York Female Sex Worker Market
February 7, 2022
February 7, 2022
The current state of the sex worker market is far from efficient. As a black market, participants act discretely and record keeping is avoided, all of which hinders the flow of information and decreases efficiency. The recent emergence of platforms like tryst.link offer a trove of data from which national and regional sex worker markets can be studied. Among other things, a typical tryst.link profile includes information on incall/outcall price, provider age, gender, body type, height, ethnicity, cup size, hair color, etc. Using widely available web scraping tools, this information can be organized into a data set from which one can begin to answer interesting questions: What is the average incall price in a region? Do race based rate discrepancies exist? Do certain physical characteristics, e.g. bust size, correlate with higher prices? Answering these questions will prove useful to both clients and providers.
In this inaugural report, we analyze the one hour incall price for the Upstate New York female identified sex worker market comprised of Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo. A comparison is made to the Philadelphia market. Key findings are given as a set of five histogram plots as well as a table of statistics summarizing each plot. Links to the histograms hosted on ImgBB are provided below.
Figure 1:Syracuse Price Distribution Link:https://ibb.co/WP3CXrT
Figure 2:Rochester Price Distribution Link:https://ibb.co/NWksNF9
Figure 3:Buffalo Price Distribution Link:https://ibb.co/JCL38BG
Figure 4:SRB Price Distribution Link:https://ibb.co/D85YSn1
Figure 5:Philadelphia Price Distribution Link:https://ibb.co/sKpnBqq
Distribution Statistics:https://ibb.co/v34yBqR
It is our intention to track the growth of the Upstate New York sex worker market by repeating this study monthly, progressively including more comprehensive analyses. Doing so will allow us to understand how the market changes in response to the U.S. economy at large. As temporal trends emerge we can answer even more questions: Is the market expanding or contracting? Are rates keeping up with inflation and cost of living? When new providers enter the market, where do they price themselves?
Before discussing these results, it is important to understand where the underlying data comes from. All data were scraped from tryst.link by entering the desired city into the “Location” box and constraining the search to a 50 km (31 mi) radius. Each search was filtered to only include providers who identify as female. All service types options are included: Escort, BDSM, FBSM, and Online Services. No other filters were applied. Care has been taken to remove any duplicate profiles from the Syracuse-Rochester-Buffalo combined area plot.
Starting with the Syracuse market (Figure 1) we see a staircase distribution in which the number of providers decreases almost linearly with increasing rates. A somewhat similar pattern is found in the Rochester market (Figure 2), except the distribution is much more pronounced around the median rate of $300. We break from this pattern when moving to the Buffalo market (Figure 3). In this histogram we begin to see a noticeable feature in the $400-$600 range emerge.
Because each of these markets is in close proximity to each other, we might expect them to have similar distributions, and indeed this trend is reflected in the data. For the sake of comparison, we analyze the Philadelphia market (Figure 5) against the combined Syracuse-Rochester-Buffalo (SRB) market (Figure 4) and look for deviations from the SRB distribution. We immediately see from the histograms that Philadelphia’s rate distribution is very different than SRB's. Rates in Philadelphia appear to follow a conventional Gaussian, or “bell-curve”, distribution with a skew toward higher prices. The average incall price jumps from $296 in SRB to $431 in Philadelphia and the most common price for incall jumps from $300 in SRB to $500 to Philadelphia.
As a final measure, we estimate the annual value of the SRB market. Multiplying the SRB provider population (145) by the average one hour incall rate ($296) gives $42,920 per one hour of incall work. Suppose in one month the average provider works H incall hours. Then, the Estimated Annual Value (EAV) of the SRB market is given as EAV = 12 x H x $42,920. Unfortunately, without data readily available, the best we can do is guess H. As a lower bound, suppose H = 1 hour per month, or each provider works exactly one hour per month. Then, EAV = $515,040. As an upper bound, suppose H = 30 hours per month, or one 1-hour incall session per day. Then, EAV = $15,451,200. From this estimation we conclude that the annual income generated from female identified sex workers in the Syracuse-Rochester-Buffalo market is several millions of dollars with a possible upper bound around $15.5M.
This initial report is the first in a series that will track the health and growth of the Upstate New York sex worker market. Using simple data science techniques, we hope to uncover market trends and better understand the exciting yet historically illusive realm of the world’s oldest profession.
In this inaugural report, we analyze the one hour incall price for the Upstate New York female identified sex worker market comprised of Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo. A comparison is made to the Philadelphia market. Key findings are given as a set of five histogram plots as well as a table of statistics summarizing each plot. Links to the histograms hosted on ImgBB are provided below.
Figure 1:Syracuse Price Distribution Link:https://ibb.co/WP3CXrT
Figure 2:Rochester Price Distribution Link:https://ibb.co/NWksNF9
Figure 3:Buffalo Price Distribution Link:https://ibb.co/JCL38BG
Figure 4:SRB Price Distribution Link:https://ibb.co/D85YSn1
Figure 5:Philadelphia Price Distribution Link:https://ibb.co/sKpnBqq
Distribution Statistics:https://ibb.co/v34yBqR
It is our intention to track the growth of the Upstate New York sex worker market by repeating this study monthly, progressively including more comprehensive analyses. Doing so will allow us to understand how the market changes in response to the U.S. economy at large. As temporal trends emerge we can answer even more questions: Is the market expanding or contracting? Are rates keeping up with inflation and cost of living? When new providers enter the market, where do they price themselves?
Before discussing these results, it is important to understand where the underlying data comes from. All data were scraped from tryst.link by entering the desired city into the “Location” box and constraining the search to a 50 km (31 mi) radius. Each search was filtered to only include providers who identify as female. All service types options are included: Escort, BDSM, FBSM, and Online Services. No other filters were applied. Care has been taken to remove any duplicate profiles from the Syracuse-Rochester-Buffalo combined area plot.
Starting with the Syracuse market (Figure 1) we see a staircase distribution in which the number of providers decreases almost linearly with increasing rates. A somewhat similar pattern is found in the Rochester market (Figure 2), except the distribution is much more pronounced around the median rate of $300. We break from this pattern when moving to the Buffalo market (Figure 3). In this histogram we begin to see a noticeable feature in the $400-$600 range emerge.
Because each of these markets is in close proximity to each other, we might expect them to have similar distributions, and indeed this trend is reflected in the data. For the sake of comparison, we analyze the Philadelphia market (Figure 5) against the combined Syracuse-Rochester-Buffalo (SRB) market (Figure 4) and look for deviations from the SRB distribution. We immediately see from the histograms that Philadelphia’s rate distribution is very different than SRB's. Rates in Philadelphia appear to follow a conventional Gaussian, or “bell-curve”, distribution with a skew toward higher prices. The average incall price jumps from $296 in SRB to $431 in Philadelphia and the most common price for incall jumps from $300 in SRB to $500 to Philadelphia.
As a final measure, we estimate the annual value of the SRB market. Multiplying the SRB provider population (145) by the average one hour incall rate ($296) gives $42,920 per one hour of incall work. Suppose in one month the average provider works H incall hours. Then, the Estimated Annual Value (EAV) of the SRB market is given as EAV = 12 x H x $42,920. Unfortunately, without data readily available, the best we can do is guess H. As a lower bound, suppose H = 1 hour per month, or each provider works exactly one hour per month. Then, EAV = $515,040. As an upper bound, suppose H = 30 hours per month, or one 1-hour incall session per day. Then, EAV = $15,451,200. From this estimation we conclude that the annual income generated from female identified sex workers in the Syracuse-Rochester-Buffalo market is several millions of dollars with a possible upper bound around $15.5M.
This initial report is the first in a series that will track the health and growth of the Upstate New York sex worker market. Using simple data science techniques, we hope to uncover market trends and better understand the exciting yet historically illusive realm of the world’s oldest profession.
