Inside the Murky World of Seeking Arrangement Amid the Cost of Living Crisis

Words: Kate O’Kelly

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One of the most lucrative side hustles amid the cost of living crisis, if you believe social media, is being a sugar baby. Social media platforms like TikTok are filled with videos from young women bragging that they are getting paid thousands of pounds for nothing more than their company by much older men. As someone who has worked as a sugar baby and sex worker, I can tell you that this couldn’t be further from the truth.  

Sugar baby website Seeking Arrangement, which has over 46 million members, bills itself as a way to “date up” - a system of being able to filter men by their net worth and and choose potential matches accordingly. But few people are there for dating in a traditional sense. At most, they are there for a form of dating that comes without any expectations of genuine connection or feeling, called sugar dating. 

Sugar baby Scarlett, 37, who began sugaring - the official term for working as a sugar baby - after losing her job as a personal assistant during the pandemic, defines sugar dating as different from traditional sex work. “Sugar dating is always about sex and that’s made very clear [by the guys]. You have to be super up for having sex, but the men also want someone who they can show pictures from their recent holiday to and things like that,” she explains. “I preferred sugar dating to traditional sex work purely because it meant I could be a bit more real and not feel the pressure to act like a porn star.” Scarlett admits that while she could get paid more for escorting, which she has done previously, sugar dating was comparatively an easier world for her to access. Seeking Arrangement requires no identity or age verifications unlike popular sex work websites like AdultWork – and that’s also why she’s stuck to it.
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Ally, 26, who briefly used the site after losing her job in sales, disagreed. She found the site to be “full of men expecting to be scammed or not wanting to spend anything.” As someone who has also used Seeking Arrangement because of financial problems - but never entered into an arrangement as I resolved my financial problems with webcam work (in layman's terms, online stripping) - I found the site problematic. I see Seeking Arrangement as a platform for wealthy men – or men pretending to be wealthy – to exploit young, cash-strapped women and get away with paying them a fraction of what a sex worker would charge for the same service. 

This is partially because Seeking Arrangement insists that it is not a platform for sex work but “mutually beneficial relationships”, as it is described by its founder Brandon Wade. Yet these relationships are still transactional, by sitting in the grey area between sex work and dating, Seeking Arrangement becomes a space for opportunists to take advantage. Without a set rate for a service that takes a set amount of time - as would be the case in any other industry - people can try and get more for their money at the expense of the women involved. 

“Sleep with me for a month and your overdraft will be gone,” promised one man in his mid-fifties during my stint on the site, before adding, “I will date you.” While I never met this man, who promised me £1,000 a month to date him - and, notably, sleep with him on an exclusive basis - I was curious about his behaviour. 

“I see Seeking Arrangement as a platform for wealthy men – or men pretending to be wealthy – to exploit young, cash-strapped women and get away with paying them a fraction of what a sex worker would charge for the same service.” 

I questioned him on his lifestyle and learned that he had dated a string of women from the site, all while he was married, in exchange for the £1000 per month. The requirements of his sugar baby included hours-long dates and sex every time they met, as well as texting throughout the month.
Independent escorts in the UK, especially in London where this man was based, in my experience typically charge between £150 and £300 an hour. Sex workers take precautions before accepting their clients too, asking to see proof of identity before a session and references from other escorts when possible. Sex work is a job and needs to be treated with a level of professionalism that prioritises keeping the client and the sex worker safe and from what I have seen, these precautions typically don’t exist in the murky world of sugar dating. It gives married men in particular the benefit of the relative anonymity of not having to verify their identity and potentially risk bribery. 
Scarlett told me that she recently tried to up her rate in light of the rising cost of living but received pushback from her clients. While previously she never accepted less than £250 a date, she tells me she is “now trying to charge between £400 and £500 a date, depending on how much time someone wants to spend with me. It’s definitely not worth £250 anymore, especially if I’m staying over.” 

Scarlett continued, “I had someone say, ‘I’d prefer to stay at the normal rate.’ Well, of course, he would! I just politely said I’m going to leave things here then and then he messaged to say he missed me. Then someone else agreed when I told them I was raising the price but I haven’t seen this person since that conversation – he’s cancelled twice now.” 

Both Scarlett and Ally agreed that Seeking Arrangement is not only potentially damaging for its users, but sex workers are the ones getting the worst deal out of its shady business practices. “There are a lot of women trying to make a quick buck for doing the bare minimum, meaning sex workers are finding it harder. Yet it also might help sex workers end up with more loyal, repeat customers when men realise the difference,” Ally said. 

If I was to give anyone advice from my personal experiences on Seeking Arrangement and my more successful stint as an online sex worker, it would be to avoid sugar daddy websites altogether. There is a lot of truth in the saying, “Call a spade a spade”, and when sex work sits in this bizarre grey area, an already stigmatised and risky job becomes that bit more dangerous. While I am sure there is the rare case of a woman getting paid for nothing more than her company, the risk of exploitation is far too high, especially if you are in a financially vulnerable situation. Instead, I’d recommend speaking to actual sex workers and finding out more about the industry itself and the many forms the work can legitimately take before knocking on this risky backdoor.