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?

Getting there...

We've been reviewing all the feedback from you all from the last months. Thank you so much for all of the comments and suggestions.

We know we still have a lot more to do, but just to know that so many people are getting results is a real boost to the team!

When we hear 'independents' tell us we are generating them enough new customers so they don't have to look elsewhere, it's a great result. When we get feedback from users that we have helped them find better providers, we know we are making a small difference. When we hear agencies telling us that they prefer Massage Republic to others, that makes a big difference.

So, thanks to all of you all. We started this a year and a half ago. We didn't expect to get where we are by now. We will carry on working hard to build on the trust you have given to us and bring new improvements to the site.

We are listening! Get in touch if you have comments or suggestions.

Staying safe online

If you regularly reuse the same password in different places, you could be at real risk!

Over the last weeks, we have some pretty nasty people messing up profiles on the site. After working to trace what was happening and talking to the people who were affected, we are pretty sure we know how it is happening.

We have positively identified that the bad guys have access to passwords which have been used to set up accounts on other escort sites (your data at Massage Republic is safe, we encrypt all passwords so we can't even see what you entered and no-one else can either). 

They are then trying these same email/password combinations on Massage Republic until they find ones which are the same. They then steal the profile and change it with their own information, new phone number (mostly in the Philippines) and in several cases pointing the website link to expatescort.com. We don't know whether this activity is coming from that site directly, they have been hacked or it is someone else just causing trouble and looking for phone bookings. We would strongly urge you to be cautious with some of the sites out there! 

Massage Republic recommends:

• Don't reuse the same password online for different services
• If you have done this in the past, go change your Massage Republic password now and think about any other places you want to keep safe as they may be at risk

If you have any doubts about security or questions please get in touch.

Tribute to Summertime

It's hot, people are away. Those in hot places run from air conditioner to another. Time to reflect. Time to think.



It's a perfect time to send a tribute to a beautiful woman, and an immense singer. She lived life on the edge, then fell off at the untimely age of 27. Loved by many, she destroyed herself.

If you ever lost a friend in this very hard industry, take a couple of minutes to listen to Janis Joplin sing with Jimi Hendrix playing guitar. We will always remember those we have lost, especially those who never got famous.

How depressing! Must be the heat!

Getting back to work. In July, we increased the number of enquiries for our much-loved members by 30%. Shocked? We were. Working to keep it up (not literally) and make sure August and September work out even better.

One million visits

We just passed one million visits to the website. We don't really know how many individual people that means have visited, probably half of that. If we get conservative, it's might be a third of that - 330,000...

That's: 770 Fully loaded Jumbo Jets, or 110,000 threesomes, or more than the population of Iceland!

Thanks for all the compliments many of you have sent, also for the massive amount of suggestions and complaints about stuff not working. We have done a lot of work to make things as smooth as possible for users and advertisers and most of that came from you. We really do appreciate it.

We will hit one million contact actions (messages, clicks on phone number and clicks to website) for our advertisers in the next couple of months, so we do know we have generated a lot of usefulness to both advertisers and users. We are looking forward to the next steps where we will bring more functionality and value to everyone.

March madness

Massage Republic just had its first anniversary - the service has been online for a year! Some stats:

• Since we launched we have achieved over 500,000 contact actions for our advertisers
• Over 70,000 people will visit the site this month

All of us here would like to say thanks to both our users and advertisers - for hopefully getting some satisfaction from the service and for all of the great feedback and comments you have made over the last months. We worked hard to make a good place for all of you to find each other online. We are really happy we have been able to help lots of working girls and boys make a better living! 

If you have any comments or suggestions, please get in touch! Here's a quick update on some of the things we've done over the last weeks:

For users

We upgraded your account page so you can see what matters to you in one place: your favourites, reviews and questions.

For advertisers

• Limits on free accounts: As the number of users has increased, we have had to introduce a limit on the number of enquiries a free listing can get. If you reach the limit in a 30 day period you will get an email and your profile will not be visible in search results for a couple of weeks - it will always remain available on the site and people will still be able to contact you. We have done this to make it fairer for all of our free members as this will distribute the enquires more fairly. If you upgrade the limits don't apply and we have introduced a 'low cost' basic package and lowered prices on the other subscriptions.
• We improved the account page to make it easier to get to information on how your profile is performing and make improvements to it.
• Upgrading payments: Many of you got in touch over the last months to tell us about payment problems. Our payment provider has been declining an increasing number of transactions; for reasons like using a card in one one country from another or trying to pay from a high risk country (which for them seems to be an ever growing list with most of the Middle East on it, Malta, Cyprus, most of Africa, etc). We have just plugged in an alternate provider which has a wide range of funding options including: bank transfer, Western Union and credit cards (registration required unless paying with Bitcoins). We hope it works for you and let us know if there are any problems.

Thanks again and a big kiss to all of you, Claire

What we did in Feb

Been a busy couple of months. We have been working hard trying to make sure that Massage Republic works for as many people as possible. This has meant a lot of small changes fixing things that didn't work in different browsers and trying to make using the site easier.

For advertisers

We have completely upgraded the part of the site where advertisers manage their listings. We have also added in a page where you can see all of the statistics for the number of people who have seen and interacted with your profile.

You can now use the photo verification service for free (this is a limited trial at the moment, so take advantage of the opportunity if you have not verified your photos yet!)

We have heard many people are having problems with payments, so are working on providing some alternatives in the very new future.

For users

We have improved the way questions and reviews work based on your comments. We hope that more of you will get involved and share your experiences on the site.

For everyone!

Thanks for all of the feedback and support. We appreciate this a lot and will carry on working hard to make the site a useful place for all of you.

2012 - we're happy

If you're reading this you either just got here or you want to keep up with what we're doing. Either way, we hope this post gives some context.

Massage Republic launched in Feb 2012 (sort of), we managed a decent site by May 2012, then busted our guts to get somewhere towards a cool site over the last months.

The feedback we got from users and advertisers has been fantastic. We have taken those comments and pushed them into the development of the site. What happened next was even better, stuff like this:

Thanks for the note, I have checked it out and use your site regularly. If I am honest I thought when you said "We will remove all the fake listings", in your last mail, that you were pulling my leg (so to speak..!!). But hey you have done pretty much what you said, and the site is greatly improved. Do you know how much your site has improved in Dubai........You cannot find a forum here now which does not talk about Massage Republic and the verified profiles being real.

We are really happy we have provided a bunch of working girls and guys with over 120,000 contact actions (messages+clicks on phone number+clicks on website) in the last three months. We think you are great and look forward to doing so much more in 2013.

September Success

In September we concentrated on some of the 'small stuff' that makes a difference. Most of that was behind the scenes improvements to make some of the processes work better. The presentation of search results was improved and we added a new section called 'What's happening' so users can see the latest reviews, questions and listings for a specific city.  We also made some changes to make the site work better on mobile devices - we still have some work to do in that area, but we made a good step forward.

Last month, we reached an important milestone for us (and our advertisers) - since we launched in February we have generated over half a million of what we call 'contact actions' - this is a user sending a message, clicking to see a phone number or clicking through to see an advertiser's website. We know it is sometimes difficult for service providers to evaluate how useful their marketing is, so we are sending a summary out on a monthly basis to each advertiser.

We are trying to do something different and better for providers and thanks for all the great feedback we got from some of you directly. You are all beautiful and thanks for your support so far.

I would like to ask that you get in touch in the forums here if you have something to say (good or bad) as we really love feedback!

What did you do this summer ;) ?

Whatever it was, we hope you had fun doing it!

In between a little R&R, the Massage Republic team has been busy pimping up the site to make the hard return to work more fun for our users and more profitable for our advertisers.

A few days ago we launched a new look for the pages where we show results for user searches. We already got some positive user feedback and the stats show people are viewing more pages and contacting more advertisers. The only downside of this change is that it does mean that paying advertisers will get more visibility on the site than before (only fair for them and we do have to make a living somehow ;). Having said that, the increase in contact actions from the redesign also means people with free listings are also getting more leads than before. Looks like this is a win-win for everyone! But if you want more customers, you should definitely consider upgrading.

Last month we started building in more features for users to be able to share their favourites, reviews and a little bit about themselves. We will add to this start over the next months based on feedback and how people use the site and hope this will add value to the user experience for those looking for a little more.

Kisses, Claire

Progress in July

For advertisers

We've now finished all of the changes for listings moderation. Current process is producing a fairer environment for everyone as the quality of the listings has improved and the 'fake listing problem' is resolved. Thanks for all your feedback as we have progressed through these changes.

For users

We now have more consistently reliable listings on the site. We have also upgraded the reviews and questions functionality so you get give your opinion and get feedback from an advertiser. We have a new design coming soon which we hope will make the site easier to use.

What we did in June

Busy month and we have made some great progress in delivering some new stuff.

For everyone

Advertisers can now place their Twitter feeds on their listing. Over the last few weeks over 50 feeds have been added, a real surprise - some faves:

• Sasha's getting fit while having fun in LA
• Saule's adventures in Bishkek

Advertisers can also include a YouTube video (if you have a video hosted elsewhere and want to get it on the site, ask in the forums). This went live yesterday and several videos went straight up, including: Bella Amore in Auckland. Update: now deleted, but this one's better ;) https://massagerepublic.com/female-escorts-in-lisbon/sahra-s-cort

For users 

We have changed the layout for the listings and search to present information more clearly and help people get around the site.

For advertisers

We have changed the process for new and existing listings as we were getting swamped with fake ones. We know this is a bit of a pain for some people, but believe this is important for us to be able to deliver a viable service.

Fighting Fake Photos

One of the main complaints from users of the site is that there are too many advertisers using photos that don't represent the individual on a listing. We have also had complaints from advertisers about it not being fair is someone else is using photoshoots of famous film stars or models. For Massage Republic to provide a useful service to users and results for advertisers, this is obviously not a great situation to be in.

Over the last couple of weeks we have put in place a new process for dealing with fake photos. This is now live and over the next weeks we will be proactively going through listings and evaluating them alongside all of the user reports we have.

This means advertisers who post fake photos will get their listings blocked and persistent offenders will get their accounts blocked. You have been warned!

What we did in May

First, thanks to all of you who have got in touch to send comments and positive feedback. Equal thanks go to those who complained something didn't work as expected - we love to hear about any problems as this helps us get better for everyone.

For everyone 

We have added in questions and improved reviews. Questions mean users can get in touch to ask individual questions about the services advertisers provide and everyone can see the answers (if they are useful) or they can be answered privately.

For users 

You now get a page where you can see all of your reviews, questions and favourites on a single page. When you make a review or question, it is now linked to your page so others can see this info. This is the first step we are making to creating a space you can share with others on the site.

For advertisers

We just launched a new individual listing view. This layout gives us more space to present listings better and we hope you like it. At the beginning of June you will also receive your first performance report. This will tell you about the activity on your listing in terms of views, messages and other contact actions.

I have to take this opportunity to ask the small amount of advertisers who are: posting fake photos, making multiple user accounts and generally trying to get better results by cheating to please stop. We are having to get really tough on blocking accounts and moderating listings; none of this will help you get better results in the long-run. Please get in touch if you have needs which are not covered today and we will try to help.

What next?

We're working hard to make Massage Republic a place where users and advertisers both get benefit from the site. Suggestions are welcome here. To keep updated, subscribe by RSS below or by email in 'Follow by email' on the right.

Verified photos & new galleries

Many users have been complaining about fake photos on the site (and reporting them, thanks!). We know this is a real concern and have just made a feature so that advertisers can verify their photos - you can find this from your listings page. This is a paid service because of the time involved in processing requests, but you do get priority in the listings, whether basic or paid, so we know this will pay back very quickly.

We also just launched a new photo gallery. As well as looking better on a normal browser it will produce better results on mobile devices, so users will be able to get a better view of your photos.

Payments

We heard a few people were having payment problems for multiple payments. Our current payment provider CCBill has made a change and this should work now. Please get in touch if you are having any problems.

We are looking into making available other payment providers. If you have any suggestions on what payments gateways you would like to see, please send us a mail or comment on this post.

More services

Tonight, for advertisers we added a bunch of new services you can define on your listing. We hope this will mean you can provide a more accurate list of all the services you are happy to provide.

For users, we have provided links to special pages for each service type to help them find what they are looking for more quickly.

Any feedback on the changes welcome.

New features on Massage Republic

We've been working hard for the last few weeks on a lot of improvements to the site.

For users 

We are happy to say we have just added a review feature, so you can share feedback about the services you have enjoyed, help others find good services or avoid less enjoyable experiences.

In a few days we will add a 'questions' feature so you will be able to ask questions to an advertiser and see questions and answers from others.

For advertisers 

A few users requested nationality, so we added this in and so you can put your nationality on your listing.

We will add in a feature so you can add a video in the next week or so. 

As a few people have been posting fake photos we have added in a moderation process to flag these up. They are nor useful for users and its unfair for real working girls and boys. If this happens to you, we will send an email and you will see a notice on the page of your listing. Upload real photos or prove they are yours and get in touch with us so we can take the notice off.

Thanks for all the positive feedback you have sent in. We're really happy that we are producing so many leads for you all.