When you look at escort posts, it is obvious that the girls are not at all reticent. The same thing is true on their websites, blogs and social media. Which is wonderful if you are the sort of girl who is comfortable being on display. But what if you aren't? What if you are shy?

For a whole variety of reasons, young women are often socialized to avoid promoting themselves. For every girl who was a cheerleader there were dozens who weren't or didn't feel comfortable with the attention. Shyness can become a problem whether a girl is escorting or simply trying to get ahead in the business world.

What to do? First of all, understand that being a bit shy, avoiding the spotlight, is not always a detriment. For all the talk of alpha males wanting to date – or hire – women who are confident and self-assertive, here's a little secret about them–they are often very happy to see a quiet, gentle and somewhat shy girl.

Making a virtue of a necessity is always advantageous. In the escorting profession, it gives a girl a marketing hook that is light years away from the others who are desperately seeking the spotlight.

Standing Out in the Market

Sounds like a contradiction doesn't it: a shy girl standing out? Although writing about herself is sometimes difficult, a post which highlights her quiet nature can be very effective:

Shy Girl for You
I'm really not quite sure what to say. I am more than a little shy. But I like to get out of my shell with kind generous men. I take a little knowing but I'm passionate and a little naughty under my quiet exterior. Brunette with a pretty face and a slim body.

This is a post which whispers and it will stand out amidst the shouting.

A similar reserve, a basic tentativeness, can work equally well with your photographs, videos and website. Emphasizing who you actually are, is a great way to gain attention.

Shy girls can tend to be rather demure. Not for them the neon-coloured thong photograph. Instead, something simple and seductive such as a crisp white shirt with just that one extra button undone to reveal the pretty lace of a white bra will captivate a certain sort of client.

Carrying that theme over to your website and videos is fairly easy. Try to set a mood where you are not the focus of attention. After all, you client is coming to see you to have his needs met, not yours.

We learned about what it's like to be a shy escorts from Leah, who works in a university library in a smaller city on the West Coast during the day and escorts several evenings a week.

"I've always been a bit shy, which is why I love my day job. I get to take a cart of books and disappear for two hours into the stacks. The problem was that while it paid fairly well, it was not a job where I could really afford to do much more than pay my rent and buy a few clothes. I have to admit I pay more rent than most girls my age because I have this wonderful little house that I love. Great location, but it costs a lot. I live alone and value my privacy and solitude. I can't imagine anything worse than a roommate!"

"I'm not the sort of girl who most people would think of as escort material. I never thought of myself as escort material either!" I guess I'm pretty, and I walk and bike a lot, so I'm fit; but I'm a bit of a dreamy romantic. Probably from reading too many novels."

"I got into escorting in an odd way; I've always liked to read the forum posts (don't ask me why), and I always read the personals (you know, "M4F" which are hilarious). But one day there was a post that caught my attention. I remember it so well, "Gentleman seeking enchanting woman as a muse/mistress."

Although I had never thought of such a thing, the idea intrigued me. So I wrote and we met. He was a wonderful man who was looking for exactly what I was – an intelligent, twenty- something girl who could see him a couple of times a week. He paid me an allowance and it was all very civilized. So civilized that I kept reading the classifieds hoping to find other nice men."

"They didn't seem to turn up so I thought I would try my hand at writing my own ad:

Make Me Your Mistress
Lovely young woman seeks a generous gentleman for conversation and pleasure.

I put the post up and prepared for nothing, or worse, a hundred pictures of penises. Nothing would have been fine, my original patron was still very much in the picture. The response was gratifying, if not overwhelming. Ten men responded and I arranged to meet all but one.

Because I am shy, I found the meetings a bit nerve wracking, but it was just as awkward for some of them. As it turned out, most of them had never really thought of having a mistress and were just responding to my post out of curiosity. And it soon became clear what they really wanted. The only one who was actually interested in having a mistress had the charm of a frog (and not the princely variety, either). So when one of the others suggested that he would like to see me "from time to time" and asked what I would charge, I really was taken by surprise. Since I had no intention of being an escort, I thus had no clue about the going rate for such services. So I named a price which I thought would put him right off.

He booked the next night.

I don't think I ever thought to myself, "So now I am an escort". He arrived with flowers and a very nice bottle of wine and we sat and chatted for an hour before anything really happened. I just treated him like I treated my patron and he was delighted. So delighted he left a tip and wanted to see me a couple of weeks later.

My escorting business just grew from there. I had my two regulars who saw me one night a week each, and then I tried to have a couple of other "dates" a week.

Even after five years I still don't really see myself as an escort. But I am a lot more confident than I was, and I have more money. A lot more.

I do a certain amount of what might be called "social dating" where my client wants to take me to dinner or maybe to the theatre. I'm fine with that, but I don't do cocktail or corporate parties where I have to talk to strangers. I'm still not that confident."

Tricia

Tricia, a twenty nine year old escort in the Middle West, takes a totally different approach

I got into the business through a friend who thought that I'd be great at it. I suppose I was. My friend introduced me to her agency, so for the first year all I had to do was show up for dates. Which was easy but the agency was taking way too much of the money. My friend thought so too.

"We decided to go independent. We sometimes would do duos but she is a very different sort of escort than I am. I like to be a low volume provider. Working for the agency I saw a lot of out of town business guys on an out-call basis. I didn't like out-call at all. Knocking on the hotel room door freaked me out every time. Luckily though, I never had any problems."

"I thought it would be a lot easier to work from my apartment. I had a few regulars who came into town pretty much every month. I didn't feel bad taking them from the agency. I'd paid for them, I thought."

"But there was one issue. The agency had done all the advertising. They had a photographer who shot all their girls. They even had a website where each girl had her own page which the agency set up for her."

"I'm not shy in person. Just the opposite really. I can talk on the phone with clients, but I have a difficult time talking about myself, especially in writing. So I asked my friend to write me a post which she did. I got responses, but not from the business guys I prefer. Which made sense because my friend wrote the sort of post she uses for herself. I am pretty nicely put together and the post was all about my measurements and my long blonde hair. So were the new photographs she chose."

"I really didn't know what to do because I was getting dates with young guys who wanted to get all athletic and pay as little as possible. Not my thing, and not what I am good at."

"I was pretty unhappy and I guess I unloaded a bit with one of my regulars. Jessie – not his real name – is a sales guy. He comes to my city at the end of a sales line and he likes to spend a night before heading home. That's when he sees me. He likes my place because it's private, and it gets him out of the hotel."

"I told him about how I was getting too many of the wrong sort of clients and not enough businessmen. He looked at it as a marketing problem. Who was my market? What were they looking for? In no time he'd written a short post which didn't mention my measurements at all and described me as a «pretty, blonde, business student». He got out his smart phone and, in five minutes had taken a dozen really classy shots of me just wearing his white shirt. Which he thought was very sexy. Then he used some apps he had to turn the pictures into something which looked a bit vintage. It only took half an hour. He added the words, "discreet, discerning, businessmen" and that was it. I wanted to thank him but he said that I could thank him next time he was in town and I knew whether or not his efforts worked."

"So I created the post he wrote and three of the pictures. Now, the funny thing was I posted on a Friday and had the slowest weekend ever. But Monday the phone started ringing and it rang all week. From just the sort of clients I was looking for. Then Friday came around again and the phone stopped ringing."

I tried to figure out the busy week, the dead weekends. I thought about Jessie as the typical business traveller. He always arrived Monday morning and left as early as he could on Friday. Home for the week-end. Suddenly it made total sense. And I didn't like working on the weekends all that much anyway."

"The same pattern repeated itself the next week. Most of the clients were great. A few wanted me to do out-calls and I did a few, but most were really happy to come to my space."

"When Jessie came back a couple of weeks later he had a present for me. He'd built a simple but fabulous website using the pictures he'd taken. He also wanted to take some more, this time with some pretty lingerie he'd bought. He likes really nice lingerie and has really good taste. I looked wonderful and I felt fabulous. The black lace with my blonde hair was stunning. He took a lot of pictures – and some he took in black and white which were so, well, elegant."

"As you might guess, I took quite a while thanking Jessie and he said he was having a wonderful time doing my marketing. And that was all it took. He sort of invented an escort personality for me which was pretty true to life. But his real gift was knowing how to create an escort post which attracted the clients I wanted."

"I guess the main thing I learned from the experience is that as an independent escort you really do have to do marketing…but you don't have to do it yourself. If I'd known that and Jessie had not come along, I could have put a post up on Craigslist and hired someone who could have done the same thing."

Overcoming a shy disposition isn't critical, but finding a way to work around or work with your shyness is. Leah and Tricia each found ways to escort without making huge changes in their personalities.

At the same time, they adapted their escorting styles to match their temperaments. For many clients, an evening with a calm, gentle girl is much more relaxing than an encounter with an ubër confident escort. Using advertising and a website to project a somewhat demure escort persona can be a beneficial and effective marketing exercise.

Most importantly, every escort can and should develop an escort persona which is right for her. Trying to be someone you are not will create stress for you, and a disappointing encounter for your client. Just be yourself, shy or not.