By Peter Berton

MISSISSAUGA, Ontario – The internet has been a godsend for adult service providers, especially escorts and dommes. Still, the quality of online marketing venues varies widely, leaving consumers somewhat leery of booking online.

That’s why Lee Ann Jennings founded Slixa, a classy adult services directory that also provides topical blogs aimed at private entertainers and their clients.

According to Jennings, Slixa provides “a brand new platform for gentlemen to connect with the escorts, erotic massage providers and BDSM practitioners they admire.”

YNOT: What is the concept behind the site?

Lee Ann Jennings: Our goal since the beginning was to create an advertising platform for the private adult entertainer that portrayed them beautifully, with respect, and kept the focus entirely on them. That was the biggest thing for us. So many of the other directories just didn’t offer that.

We also wanted a platform where the entertainers could truly market themselves, and we think we’ve accomplished that through our entertainer profiles. We continue to strive to bring the highest technology and newest concepts in internet advertising to the private entertainment industry.

What marketing services do you provide?

We offer an advertising platform that uses beautiful centerfold-model layouts for our entertainer profiles. It’s something we developed from scratch, and it’s completely unique to the industry. An entertainer can display all of the marketing tools they have available, including their professionally shot photos, personal websites, outside reviews, verification services, Twitter accounts, tour dates and more.

What we’ve done with these profiles, besides making them beautiful, is to give a gentleman everything he needs to decide if he wants to meet face-to-face. We really make it simple for him to find the perfect companion.

Who is your client base?

The entertainers and agencies who advertise on Slixa — we call them “Slixa Girls” — are a diverse group of escorts, erotic massage and Tantric providers, and BDSM/fetish practitioners. We’ve been thrilled to watch as some of the best VIP escorts, [girlfriend experiences], [porn star experiences], BDSM mistresses and pro dommes join our site.

We always hoped our profile layouts would attract high-end talent, but the speed at which we’ve grown has surprised even us. We have a great deal of luxury travel companions and high-end providers, and we attract a certain clientele as a result. Our typical user demographic is an affluent, professional gentleman whose time is valuable and needs are exact.

Why is Slixa an effective way to promote and manage escort business relationships?

Well, for one thing, no one gets buried in a stream of endless text links or tiny thumbnails on Slixa. They also don’t get overlooked in favor of cam girls or adult dating sites, as we don’t accept outside advertising. In addition to all of the aesthetic and functional reasons why Slixa is better, we also offer a much better opportunity for an entertainer to be in control of their advertising.

Slixa allows an entertainer to create an unlimited number of visiting ads to accommodate their tour schedule. They can pause ads during a time off and get real-time performance stats on how many profile views and contact requests they’ve had. An entertainer can even see the source of their traffic, whether it be directly from a city ad page on Slixa or from an outside source such as a search engine or another advertising venue.

Escort agencies have huge flexibility in the management of their entertainers and have their own agency profile to promote themselves and all their models in one place. Advertising options range from a large standard image ad to a double-wide standout — over twice the width of a standard ad — to billboard ads that dominate the page.
All these things together is what we think makes Slixa a better promotional tool for professional entertainers.

You’ve just launched two new blogs. Why? What do they cover?

Mainstream coverage of sex news and the private entertainment industry is typically very one-note. Even some of the best coverage implicitly relies on negative stereotypes of private entertainers, painting them as shallow and unintelligent at best.

Looking at that and realizing there was a missed opportunity there, we decided to offer a space for the many brainy people we work with. It gives them an opportunity to offer their perspectives on the sex industry, the entertainment industry and everything in between.
It’s turned out even better than we could’ve imagined and gives the public an inside look at how the adult entertainment industry works.

Quite a bit of your blog content is produced by escorts for escorts. Why is that?

Private entertainment is, first and foremost, a job, and it is a job that comes with a specific set of challenges and stigmas associated with it. So we wanted to provide a separate space that was more entertainer-centric, which is why we have two blogs. Slixa Late Night targets the gentlemen who hire entertainers, and Slixa Under Cover allows entertainers to share the wisdom and knowledge they have picked up from their experiences in the industry with other entertainers.

We want their voices to be heard, to have a way for them to share their experiences freely and to help them improve their businesses.

What sort of response have you had to Slixa, both from clients and escorts?

It’s been amazing. Both entertainers and clients alike have overwhelmingly embraced us. We hear repeatedly how refreshing and overdue it is to have a site such as Slixa on the scene, which is really great to hear after privately working on it for so long.

A good percentage of our entertainers are such huge fans they consider themselves to be Slixa evangelists, which of course we are so grateful for and love to hear.

What are your future plans?

The biggest thing at the moment for us is to continually improve Slixa with truly useful new features. In the big picture, when a client thinks of hiring an escort or private companion or adult provider, we want them to think of Slixa. That’s our end goal.