Welcome to our end-of-year recap! Let’s kick back by the fire with a glass of eggnog or two and review all that’s passed… so we can get down to tearing the wrapping paper off a shiny, exciting new year.
As always, we’re here to give you an overview of what’s happened with Tryst.link and share some really awesome stats showing our growth in 2023 and how it’s helped us assist sex worker orgs worldwide.
The theme for this year’s wrap up is ‘bigger and better’ because that’s exactly what’s happened. As the platform has grown we’ve been privileged to work with a whole lot more providers and welcome tons more visitors (and potential clients) to the site. All of this means that we’ve been able to make some awesome improvements to the site and contribute to the sex work community.
What was new in 2023?
Here’s a recap of some of the most exciting changes and new features that have launched on the site in the past twelve months.
Better visibility controls
To help you be discovered by as many potential clients as possible, we show profiles in a variety of categories. For example, providers with tattoos, blonde providers, and providers who are 420-friendly might appear on specific pages when a visitor is browsing the site.
We received feedback from some providers that it would be helpful to have more control over which categories your profile appears in. For example, you may not want to appear in the ‘busty’ category but still want to list that attribute on your profile. This level of control can help you zero in on the types of clients you want, as well as ensure you're being presented the way you want to be on your profile.
We also made it possible for trans providers to opt to only appear in searches that explicitly select the trans-only filter, rather than relying only on gender for results. We’d like to say a huge ‘thanks’ to the providers who reached out and asked for this!
Mandatory 2-step login
Well know that hackers and scammers are a huge problem for everyone on the internet. In particular, scammers love to target sex industry websites! This has been a problem in the past, with some of our users being targeted by phishing attacks. If your account is compromised, you risk losing income while you work with us to get it back, or your reputation might be damaged if a scammer uses your account to interact with potential clients. That’s something we’d like to help you avoid.
The best way to protect your Tryst.link account from hackers and scammers is 2-step login: Using a password AND another way of proving who you are when you sign in. In particular, using a passkey (a verification method that uses the built-in security features of your smartphone, tablet, or computer) in combination with your usual password will make it very difficult for a hacker to access your account.
In October this year, Tryst.link made 2-step login mandatory for all providers.
Although some of our users were a little worried about getting this set up due to their unfamiliarity with this way of doing things, our friendly Customer Support folks were happy to assist. Here’s a lovely comment from a provider:
I have never had an easier time doing this! I finally understand the 2-step process and I truly can’t express my heartfelt gratitude for your patience, interest, understanding and problem solving skills (and people skills). I know this may have been a simple thing for you.To me this was a very huge deal.
Thanks to the support team’s hard work, we were able to introduce 2-step login to all providers on the platform and it made a HUGE difference – it’s helping keep scammers at bay! If you need a hand with 2-step login or have concerns about your account security, you can send Customer Support a ticket here.
Flexible membership upgrade control
Over the course of this year, we’ve added some extra features to the site that allow you to have even more control over your membership selection and choice of membership renewals.
- Optional auto-renewal - You now have the option to choose whether or not we deduct TLC monthly to renew your membership automatically, or whether your membership should return to Lite at the end of the current period. This can be turned on or off at any time.
- Manual renewal - Allows you to manually ‘buy another month in advance’ ahead of your membership expiring, without having to enable auto-renewal. You can do this using the ‘renew’ button. If you have a non-auto-renewing membership, you’ll also be notified via email and an in-app notification when the membership is coming to its end, so you can choose whether to let it lapse, or manually renew.
- Membership downgrades can be cancelled or changed before they happen - Previously, once you’d opted to downgrade, this change would take place at the end of the current cycle and there was no way to change your mind. But now you can modify future scheduled downgrades and even cancel them completely!
Donations and Donation Matching TLC
As a collective, we care a lot about our community and for us it’s important that we continue to support these orgs, whether that be through direct financial sponsorship, free consulting, or through our donation matching program. All of which is made possible by each and every one of you.
In 2020 we launched the TLC donation matching program in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and it’s one of the most incredible things we’ve been able to date. Not only does this mean our users are forming relationships and connections, it also means that instead of us giving donations to just a few places, support is going to a diverse range of sex-worker-led efforts.
In 2023 we matched eligible donations of more than US$135,000 in TLC.
Direct Donations
Contributing to our community is SO important to us. In addition to the donation matching program, we’ve also donated more than €200,000 to a range of organisations, including:
- Decolonise Sex Work - an organisation working to decolonise and destigmatize Indigenous sex work in so-called Australia
- SWOP USA - a national social justice network dedicated to the fundamental human rights of people involved in the sex industry and their communities, focusing on ending violence and stigma through education and advocacy
- Free Speech Coalition - the nonprofit, non-partisan trade association for the adult industry
- Digital Rights Watch Australia - Digital Rights Watch exists to ensure fairness, freedoms and fundamental rights for all people who engage in the digital world
We also sponsored:
- RubyConf Australia - a conference to share knowledge about the Ruby programming language amongst like-minded Rubyists
- ASSFest - a yearly event hosted by the Australian School of Sexuality, a collective of affiliated sexuality educators
- Old Pros - a non-profit media organization creating conditions to change the status of sex workers in society (check out their ‘Historical Whores’ articles on our blog!)
- Beyond the Whorizon - A podcast about what’s on the whorizon for sex workers, and how to navigate it
Web traffic and platform stats
Here are some facts and figures to show how our traffic has improved this year. We hit a big milestone number this year, serving up pages more than 1 BILLION times! This is an increase of 19% compared to last year! This figure includes more than 100 million unique visits, which was an increase of 23% compared to 2022.
- We had 1,065 million page views and 109.7 million unique visits
- We showed provider thumbnails 6.7 billion times, resulting in 491.4 million clicks through to profiles
- We served 711.7 terabytes of images - that’s a LOT of photos!
- Tryst was shown in Google search results 397 million times and we saw 48.9 million clicks through to the site (a huge increase of 27%)
Here’s a bit more about your activity on the platform over the last 12 months:
- There are more than 143,000 new accounts - of which 61,000 are providers, and 82,000 are clients
- More than 139,000 new conversations started on the platform, with over 371,000 messages exchanged.
- More than 420,000 photos uploaded to profiles - , that’s more than eight thousand photos every day!
Highlights from the blog
Our amazing writers came up with pages and pages of excellent blogs this year, for both Tryst.link and the Good Client Guide. In the past 12 months, the Tryst.link blog received over 788k visits, and the Good Client Guide received 31k visits.
Here are some articles and interviews we recommend, if you haven’t seen them already!
Tryst.link blog
- Thoughts on Class Drag, Active Length, Square French Tips, and Red (Spray Paint) Bottoms by Adrie Rose
- Ten Reasons Not to Date a Sex Worker by Amelia Swann
- May I Have Your Attention Please by Mia Walsch
Blog interviews
Good Client Guide
- How to Book a Transmasc Sex Worker by Jack Parker
- Ask Andre: What’s the Etiquette Around Tipping and Gifting? by Andre Shakti
- How to Explore Your Queerness With a Sex Worker by Charlie Bear
Wrapping up
That’s a wrap for 2023! We’ve loved having you along on this journey with us…and we can’t wait to serve up more features, support more sex worker causes, and spread the word about sex worker rights worldwide in 2024. To finish up, here are some of the nice comments and feedback you’ve sent through that has kept us pumped over the past year…
“I’ve been a provider and have had a profile here on tryst link for quite a while now, 5+ years, and your support and service has always been phenomenal.”
“You guys have the BEST customer service and best site. Thank you sooo much for existing ;)”
“5 STARS 10’s ACROSS THE BOARD PURRR 👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿”
“Thank you all so much! I'm very grateful for Tryst being a safe, reputable, verified ho-ho-home for me to be. I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season and a happy new year!”
“I wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year. I want to have good relations with owners and administrators of sites on which I have presence. Hence I thank you very much for all the help and support that you gave me this year and all years past and hope that we will continue good relations in future.”
