Help each other out

We have just released a feature for our advertisers which we hope will be useful.

When you receive a message sent through Massage Republic you get a special link at the bottom of the email. You can use this link to report a person for bad behaviour: by email, SMS, or in person. Please do so!

These reports will be shared with other advertisers when they receive a contact from the person.

We hope this helps everyone share information about problem customers and makes everyone a little safer.

Back to school

A big shout out to those of our advertisers that are working mums. The oldest and - at times - one of the hardest professions in the World is even tougher if you have kids. Oh, yeah, it's already really hard having kids in the first place...

Opinion seems to be split between when or even whether you should tell your kids what you do for a living.

There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of good advice out there, a quick Google got these:

• A very frank confession from an Australian
• Random madness on Yahoo Answers
• A reasonably balanced piece from the Daily Beast

When we tried to work out what advice to give, we realised we can't. There is no single answer. It makes sense that the best outcome is probably that your kids never know. For many people, this is the same as 'no-one' should ever know. But if your situation means that they might end up finding out, then this is something which you might want to manage in advance or at least work out how to do so.

The only thing that is probably seriously good advice is don't get caught in a lie: if you are confronted by one of your kids with the question and lie, there is a good chance you can seriously damage both your authority and the relationship. If they are asking the question, you are already probably in deep shi*... Most of those outcomes are worse than either working out how you will react in advance or having your answers ready for them. Even if it is true, you can't tell them that 'I have done this for you'. You need to explain much more about how you made your choices - or ended up without choices - to make them understand; and none of that is 'their fault'.

A new face for Massage Republic

We have recently launched a new look for Massage Republic. One of the main goals was making the site work better on mobile phones and tablets. We also took the opportunity to make the user experience better.  People are viewing more pages each visit, so we think it's working well.

We hope you like it! Any feedback is always welcome.

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In other news, we have carried on growing visits and enquires to advertisers. We have added an icon on listings for videos so users can see there is one there. It seems this is quite popular, so if you don't have a video on your listing consider adding one. We have some new 'stuff' coming in the next months - will keep you posted.

What can we do for you?

We're happy that we have been generating more and more business for our advertisers. Our stats show we have increased enquiries by 50% in the last 6 months. If you are not seeing more enquiries, think about improving the quality of your listing (title, description and services offered), don't use CAPS and make sure you answer questions.

Users are also giving us positive feedback. More people are asking questions on the site and leaving reviews. Great for everyone.

So, what next?

We want to hear from you! What do you want?

Some of you have already provided some great feedback, but we want to hear more. We're here for you - as an advertiser or user of the service - so we want to know what we're doing wrong, what we could do better or what you would love to have on the site.

Leave feedback here us or drop a comment below.

Thanks! We will really appreciate every comment.

April Fools (bit late :)

Got a new mobile version coming soon! We know so many users access the site on mobile so hope this will be a big help.

We're really happy to welcome onboard another 500 people who listed in the last couple of months. You're all beautiful (TS, guys and gals) and we hope you get the enquiries. We're working for you!

Thanks for all the feedback in the last weeks. We know photo verification can be a real pain, but happy most of you put the time in to make it happen. At the end of the day, we need to make sure customers stay happy, right?

Been busy, sorry!

Has been too long since we posted an update. Sorry, we have been working hard on dealing with too many silly things...

So, where are we? Overall, the number of contact actions for our lovely friends with profiles on Massage Republic has increased by 28% in the last 6 months. Visitors to the site increased by 60% in the last 6 months vs. the previous 6 months. All great news, but we still have a lot to do.

We will soon have a more mobile-friendly website, which will make it easier for users to find you.

We have some other improvements coming for users, so keep tuned.

Isn't this business hard enough already?

Providing personal services is one of the most dangerous professions on the planet. Violence, arrest, disease and robbery are among the various risks a working girl or boy has to deal with on a regular basis.

You would think that this would mean that people in the industry would always stick together and support each other. Unfortunately, this doesn't always seem to be the case. Over many, many months we have been in the situation of trying to deal with a vendetta between several individuals who advertise on Massage Republic.

Some of the accusations flying around include the following:

• She reported me to the police as a drug smuggler so I got arrested at the airport
• She is posting fake reviews on your site and others
• She posted my real name and a profile on another site
• She is posting about me all over the Internet and bitching about me everywhere 
• Look what she did to this other girl ...

There is one girl who is so angry with another that she is actively trying to find out where she is so she can report her to the police (in a country where that can have really nasty consequences). We got this, "I know where she is staying the room the lot, I think she is going to be kicked out the country that is if she does not get off your site - simple really" Pretty evil, but who knows? Maybe it's justified revenge? We don't know and we don't want to know. We think all of this kind of behaviour is really, really dumb. No-one will earn any more money and it makes the world a more dangerous place for all people working in the industry.

We are also on the receiving end of some very rude emails with loads of abuse in them. We prefer to use our time to help the people who are very happy with what we are doing and play by our rules, which are:

• Advertisers are not permitted to use the platform to contact other advertisers, post questions/review to others. We will block accounts and refuse future new accounts.
• Advertisers are not permitted to link from a profile to a webpage talking about other advertisers in any way.
• We will not enter into discussion with any advertiser about the rights of any other advertiser to list on the site. We will only consider submissions which report activity which is not permitted on site.

Yes, this might mean that a person who has done something nasty to someone else in the past is allowed to list on the site. However, we are not going to play judge and jury to evaluate an individual's behaviour. Aside from this being completely impossible to do well - it is not our place to do so. If you don't like our rules, it's simple - don't use the site.

To end with some advice: in our experience, you should avoid talking about other girls with clients and never try and get into a fight. Be nice with others, play fair and if you get screwed over - move on. Otherwise, the results seem to be a zero-sum game where everyone involved really gets damaged and put at risk. And, no-one wants that, right?