Commercial Phone Sex

Phone sex operators are sex workers1 who pretend to be another person over the phone in order to fulfill a client’s sexual fantasy. The transactions are usually anonymous on both sides.

Phone sex operators go by many titles including “phone actress,” “phone entertainer” and “audiotext performer,” and the “most valued attributes of a phone sex operator are his/her voice, acting and roleplay skills, as well as knowing how to respond appropriately to a wide range of customer requests,” according to sexyjobs.com.2

Most clients are male and some clients “wish to explore fantasies they may be reluctant to expose, such as various forms of fetishism, bondage and discipline, transvestism, coprophilia, homosexuality, or incest, and there are those who wish to play sexually stimulating roles or fantasize that their phone partner comes from a specific group or profession.”3

Some phone sex operators work in an office and others work from home. Like any expert in a profession, phone sex operators have their own unique work issues like pay disputes and client stories, both enlightening and frightening.

The articles below provide more information on phone sex operators and the commercial phone sex industry.

Footnotes: 1. “Everything You Were Afraid To Ask About Phone Sex Workers — In One Class-Action Lawsuit,” washingtonpost.com, 6/30/2017; 2. “Jobs For Phone Sex Operators,” sexyjobs.com, accessed 7/24/2018; 3. encyclopedia.com, accessed 7/24/2018

  1. Jobs For Phone Sex Operators

    “What is a Phone Sex Operator?
    A phone sex operator talks to paying customers over the telephone about a wide range of topics, including but not limited to sex. Phone sex operators are also referred to as phone actors/actresses, adult phone entertainers, and audiotext performers. The most valued attributes of a phone sex operator are his/her voice, acting and roleplay skills, as well as knowing how to respond appropriately to a wide range of customer requests. Most phone sex operators take their calls out of their homes, as it is cheaper for companies to route calls to operators at their homes rather than pay for office space. This means you will need to minimize any noise distractions and have a place where you can speak freely and candidly without worrying about others who might get offended listening in. Some companies also require that you use a dedicated land line rather than a cell phone.”

    Online Job Posting Resource, sexyjobs.com, accessed on 7/24/2018

  2. Sex Workers Explain What SESTA-FOSTA Means To You, Just A Regular John

    “Bianca Alba is a phone sex worker and sex educator with a master’s degree in public health. … ‘Negotiating sex commerce online is beneficial for consumers as well as providers,’ says Alba. ‘Prior to this bill, a client would be able to do some research regarding a provider, what they offer, read reviews and find the provider best suited to their needs. If a consumer is forced to go through a brothel or hire a street worker, they have much less choice in what type of provider they encounter, and no guarantee that the provider isn’t being exploited by their working circumstances, as opposed to being able to negotiate directly with an independent provider via the internet.'”

    Tierney Finster, melmagazine.com, 4/16/2018

  3. Top 5 Craziest Fetishes In Phone Sex

    “You’d be pleasantly surprised to learn that just like in ordinary sex, phone sex too has its own fair share of wild fetishes. In fact, some of the most thrilling, rare sexual fetishes aren’t done in the bedroom by a couple; there are done online via phone sex. … Financial domination; getting a client with a fetish for financial domination is the dream of every phone sex operator! Depending on your skills and ability to seduce the man, you can make him send money to your account promptly, send you expensive gifts, etc. In some cases, he even sends you passwords to his account.”

    Total Lip Service Resource, totallipservice.org, 3/29/2018; (Broken link removed 11/2022)

  4. “Men Masturbate To My Voice Eight Hours A Day”: My Life As A Phone Sex Operator

    “Mostly, callers are just looking for human interaction, and don’t even want to talk about sex. ‘I would say about 60% just want that emotional connection, and to talk about their day because they have no one else to talk to,’ Angelica tells me. ‘I do have women callers, but they’re mostly men.’ When the conversation isn’t sexual, they’ll talk about politics, work and sports. ‘Sometimes it makes me sad thinking they don’t have anyone to speak to, but if you’re going to do this job you have to separate the two worlds.'”

    Paisley Gilmour, cosmopolitan.com, 2/13/2018

  5. New Tech Thrives At AVN, But Phone Sex Remains Strong

    “Which all makes Lovejoy’s appearance so unusual. She is a ‘sex phone artist,’ as she described herself. She doesn’t see her clients and they don’t see her. It’s all verbal contact, but not the kind one may typically associate with phone sex. She doesn’t moan or ask them to make love as was common when the service first appeared en mass in the 1980s. Rather, she berates them and insults them.”

    Todd Prince, reviewjournal.com, 2/2/2018

  6. Everything You Were Afraid To Ask About Phone Sex Workers — In One Class-Action Lawsuit

    “Phone sex advertisements have long been a staple of overnight television, airing in the wee hours between reruns and infomercials when few people are tuned in. …
    In reality, those calls are fielded by a small army of contract actors, many of whom work from home and are paid based on how long they keep customers on the phone. That’s the case with Tele Pay USA, a nationwide phone sex purveyor, hit with a class-action lawsuit in federal court this week alleging it cheated one employee and potentially hundreds of others out of compensation. On Tuesday, a Tele Pay phone sex worker named Anne Cannon filed a complaint on behalf of herself and her counterparts in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. She says the company, which is based in Glendale, Calif., engaged in a “pattern of intentional manipulation and exploitation” to siphon off workers’ earnings, paying them as little as $4.20 per hour, in violation of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act.”

    Derek Hawkins, washingtonpost.com, 6/30/2017

  7. Exclusive: Gabourey Sidibe Writes About Her Time As A Phone-Sex Operator In This Is Just My Face

    “Honestly, I thought I’d be walking into a dungeon with girls in ripped underwear chained to radiators, moaning into receivers. I was surprised to see a normal-looking office with pictures of employees on the wall. … We also learned what we shouldn’t say to a caller. There were FCC regulations that meant we couldn’t discuss certain things on the phone: drugs, weapons, blood, or anything of a sexual nature pertaining to anyone under the age of 18.”

    Gabourey Sidibe, glamour.com, 4/5/2017

  8. What It’s Like To Be A Phone Sex Operator In 2016

    “And I would say [a number] of callers are disabled in some way. One of my favorite callers is this gentleman who calls out of Chicago. He calls and we chat for at least half an hour when he does call. But he has the greatest possible fantasy of passionately fucking a girl in her ass. He’s got MS and physical limitations that would not in a million years enable that to happen. But you can do that on the phone. You can do a lot of things that you could not do—for one reason or another—talking out a fantasy. I like that part of it. You’re helping someone.”

    Tiffy Thompson, vice.com, 9/8/2016

  9. Adventures Of A Sex Phone Operator: The Surprising Highs, The Grossest Lows, And The Lesson I Took Away From It All

    “The only component that turned out to be complicated was getting paid. As a phone sex operator, you don’t get paid per call, or even per hour. You get paid per minute at a rate based on how *long* you keep callers on the phone. The longer your average call lasts, the higher your per-minute rate. The rate topped out at 15-minute calls—at that level, you made what worked out to about $35 an hour. And that’s good money for a college student working at night out of her studio apartment. The problem, of course, is keeping your callers on the phone. … I had intended to exploit them for cash, but I felt more and more like I was the one being exploited. I listened to guy after guy make these sad little climax sounds and hang up—and I was paid mere pennies for doing it. Between these 90-second calls and pranks from pubescent kids, keeping up my rate got a lot more difficult. So I began to lie.”

    Lea Glover, marieclaire.com, 4/26/2016

  10. Prostitution

    “What is prostitution? … Sex worker is the broadest term and includes not only sex traders but also phone sex operators, exotic dancers, people producing pornography, and other work in related fields. … Phone sex is defined as erotic conversations over the telephone, which usually involves payment. Typically, a customer calls an operator who engages in erotic conversation with the customer while the customer fantasizes or masturbates. … In the United States it is legal to work as a phone sex operator as long as both parties are over the age of 18.”

    UCSB SexInfo Resource, soc.ucsb.edu, 3/10/2016

  11. Remember Naughty 1-900 Numbers? Lines Are Still Open

    “‘It’s an extremely competitive business,’ said Holly Smith, Jet Doll’s chief operating officer. After keeping the charge a constant $2 per minute for more than 30 years, the company raised it to $2.98 per minute roughly two years ago, to help it pay for online ads and the late-night commercial spots. The demographic breakdown of users is fairly widespread, but the average caller is about 40 years old, Grainger said. As always, the job of the actress is to keep clients on the phone for as long as possible. The length of paid phone calls at the company, Grainger noted, averages around 14 minutes. Some users pay significantly more, opting for the $5-$10 per minute rate to speak with a person in the Jet Doll offices.”

    Chris Morris, cnbc.com, 1/25/2016

  12. The Worst Thing About Being A Phone Sex Operator

    “The rules for doing phone sex were more complicated than I had expected. I was allowed to pretend to be just about anybody or anything, but for the things I wasn’t allowed to pretend to be, I was allowed to pretend to be a person pretending to be that thing. Confused? For example, a guy might call in wanting to have phone sex with a poodle. I could tell him I could pretend to be a poodle, and he could have phone sex with a girl pretending to be a poodle. There are a lot of semantics that go into enacting taboo fantasies.”

    Lea Grover, cosmopolitan.com, 11/6/2015

  13. The Disenchanting Reality Of Being A Phone-Sex Operator

    “But a recent Reddit AMA with an unnamed phone-sex operator reveals that, unless you truly love what you do, this job is not as rewarding as you’d hope. The 25-year-old mother and wife writes that she holds an office job by day and works from home as a dispatch phone-sex operator by night. While she says she loves what she does most nights, she also acknowledges that it is unlikely that she could fully support herself with this job alone. Here are some of the questions and answers from her AMA that shed more light on what it’s really like to be a phone-sex operator. …
    [1.] How did you get hired? …
    [2.] What was the phone interview like? …
    [3.] How much does it pay? …
    [4.] How are the call times structured? …
    [5.] How long does the average call last? …”

    Rachel Gillett, businessinsider.com, 5/15/2015