Nykayla says she earns $1500 a week on average from Snapchat alone. That’s about $40,000 in less than a year of being in the business. How does she do it? “I’ve just got my Tinder bio and at the bottom ‘ask about my premium Snapchat’,” she said.

I found Nykayla through two friends who matched with her on Tinder. They tell me she’s built up a bit of a name for herself around Gippsland.

Nykayla is a nineteen-year-old who sells conversations and nude pictures on a Snapchat subscription. “I normally go $20 a month, $35 for two months, or $50 one off payment for lifetime,” Nykayla said. She also does topless waitressing and occasionally dances at a strip club, but the online scheme pays most. She says the majority of customers are found on Tinder.

Nykayla pays for professional photoshoots to advertise on Instagram and seeking arrangement, a sugar daddy dating website. Photo supplied by Nykayla.

Nykayla says she charges up to $15 per ten minutes in private sessions. This is her big money maker, with $500 for five hours being the most received in one hit. This can be “anything from just talking to them, like a girlfriend experience,” Nykayla said. “Or if they want certain content, I can do that.” This involves sexting, where she trades naked videos and pictures. “It’s a lot more personal for them,” she says a lot of guys prefer it over porn because of the intimacy.

I asked her about the weirdest things she’s experienced.

“There’s a lot of fetishes that get involved. There’s a lot of mummy kinks, and I’ve got boys who like to dress up for me,” Nykayla said. She told me about the “pay-pig” fetish where she had a guy beg for his bank account to be drained. “I felt horrible. Because that is two grand that I have just taken off this innocent, poor guy that goes to work every day.” But she also says “it’s part of the job”.

When asked if there was anything she wouldn’t do, Nykayla laughed and said “I had a guy book a private. He booked half an hour, paid $50 for it. And then he asked within it if he could ejaculate and then, um, drink it for me. And I sort of thought he was joking. And I was like ‘yeah that’s fine’ and then two minutes later I had a video of it.” She said that crossed the line into never-again territory.

Nykayla says she’s never met with anyone for money and never will. One reason being “the fact people call me and find out my personal details”. She says that someone found her at a nightclub and Snapchatted her about it, and that some girls from high school refuse to speak to her. “I wasn’t really an overly liked person in high school, and a lot of the people that do cause trouble are those people from high school,” Nykayla said. She told me her mother supports her “as much as a mother could”. Even with the scary moments, Nykayla says she still enjoys doing the work. She couldn’t see herself in any other job.

Nykayla’s profile photo on her business Instagram. Photo supplied by Nykayla.

An ex-thief.

All it took for Nykayla to steal money was to forego her side of the deal after receiving payment. There’s no safeguard for transactions on Tinder. “I would just take everything,” she said. “I wouldn’t even block them, I’d give them the account that I’ve got right now.” In the real world she would face fines and possibly jail. However, she says everyone got what they paid for when she became serious about it.

Nykayla’s been banned three times on Tinder and has a warning on her Snapchat. “I had a meltdown over that. Because it was like $3000 worth of customers,” she said. Soliciting and scamming goes against Tinder’s community guidelines, but she says she can simply create another Tinder account with a new phone number.

Besides violating Snapchat’s no pornography guideline she tries to play by the rules, using an ABN to pay taxes.

Then I matched with Kate (who has asked me to change her name to protect privacy).

Her bio read “taking requests for $30”. Kate isn’t as serious as Nykayla about selling content. In fact, she hasn’t sold a single nude photo. We spoke over Messenger about what she achieves with Tinder. “All I have actually sold is photos of my face to prove to a couple of people that I’m a real person. And some guys have asked for videos of me saying some funny stuff. One man paid me $50 to say I love you.”

Screenshot taken from Kate’s Tinder account.

“I don’t want to send a nude and then it get leaked around the internet,” Kate said. Despite this, she said she still makes about $150 a week by fulfilling non-sexual tasks. “My work is currently unable to give me hours and it was just money on the side,” she said.

Kate said it started out as a joke. But she still believes she gets hate for it behind her back. “If you want to slave all day in 40°C heat as a tradie for $11 an hour, suit yourself. It’s personal preference and I’m doing fine,” Kate said. Despite the hate, she says there are still genuinely good people out there. “Someone wanted to send me $50 the other day to get myself dinner.” Personally, I wasn’t sure if I found this to be a nice gesture or creepy.

Some of the hate Kate has received on Tinder. Courtesy of Kate.

I’m a broke uni student. Paying a random Tinder girl doesn’t even cross my mind. I asked Nykayla to put me in touch with one of her clients. She put me onto 42-year-old warehouse worker Rick (who, like Kate, asked me to change his name to protect his privacy).

All up, Rick has paid Nykayla more than $200.

“Basically, I pay her a lifetime subscription,” Rick said. “$40 is the most I’ve paid for a private session,” he added. Rick said they’ve been talking for about six months, and he classes her as a friend. He doesn’t pay any other girls, with Nykayla being the first girl he’s ever paid for pornography. “She doesn’t look at me as sort of a 42-year-old guy. She looks at me as a person,” Rick said.

Rick’s never had a relationship with a girl in his life, so that personal connection goes a long way. “I’ve been going through a few issues recently with confidence and all that sort of stuff. And sort of had a few issues with females. And she just was a person that was a very good listener,” Rick said.

Although they’ve never met, they’re planning on doing so at the strip club. “We’ve built up a level of trust where she knows I’m not stalking her and I’m not going to put her in any physical harm,” he said. I asked if they would still be friends if he didn’t pay her, he told me “It’s a tough question. I’d like to think so”.

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