Dancer's annual income

29 comments

• Clubber

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  10 years ago

  I know my ATF did quite well. Actual figures, cant say. Lets leave it at, she was very frugal, invested wisely, and is quite comfortable being retired in her early 30's.
• jackslash

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  10 years ago

  I think strippers in the Detroit area can make $60K to $120K easily. But they waste so much money that they live like they are poor rather than middle class.
• Dolfan

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  10 years ago

  I think it really depends on the girl, the area, the club, etc. One girl in particular, who works 5-6 days a week, every week, says she makes an of average around 300/day - around 85k. I'm pretty confident she was honest with me & as accurate as she could be. I've talked to others who work 1-2 nights a week and claim an average around 2k/night - around 150k. One of those I'm fairly confident in, but the others could have been full of shit. There's girls I haven't really talked to, but I see every time I'm in the club & I can't imagine they take home more than 100/day. They are in shitty clubs known for high mileage and aren't really attractive. There's others I've seen who can't get 10ft out on the floor without being immediately pulled away to do a dance or room that have to be bringing in more than 2k/shift. In other words, I think the statistics on stripper income are going to be all over the road.
• steve229

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  10 years ago

  Thank you, John Smith, your dancer gives a glimpse of the near future once the Greatest Economic Boom in the History of the World really starts to kick in over the next few months. By the time the roaring economy lifts President-elect Hilary Clinton and her VP running mate, Beyonce, to a sweeping 50-state electorcal landside in 2016, clubs like Follies and those black dives Papi_Chulo loves so much will be extinct, mere memories replaced by upscale, non-extras gentlemen clubs where $124K will represent the lower bound of stripper earnings.
• Otto22

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  10 years ago

  I have known a number of dancers over the years and few ever made anything over $40K. I know this because I have done some financial planning for them. Most only worked 3-4 days per week and danced at "dive" clubs. I suspect Jackslash is correct about some dancers at Detroit area high end clubs, but I am only guessing.
• impala

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  10 years ago

  The real question isn't how much they make, but how much they have when its all said and done. As we all know, some of these girls are really smart, and some are really dumb. Some save their money, invest properly, pay their bills, take care of their kids, don't waisted their money, work regularly, and have an exit strategy to quit dancing eventually (wether by choice or age). Others party hard, drink a lot, do drugs, buy expensive things they don't need (clothes, jewelry, tattoos, cars, etc.), support a dead beat boyfriend or husband, and only show up to work when they are broke. I have know and even dated several dancers, the smart ones only dance a few years and have a good nest egg when done. The dumb ones are still trying to dance well beyond when they should and don't have a pot to piss in.
• ime

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  10 years ago

  I think the range has to be wide. I would think the top girls who do extras in nicer clubs can make over $100K but there are plenty of not so hard working or great looking girls that probably bring the average down to more around 50K but I could be way off. I feel like I see too many girls just sitting around playing on there phones when they could be doing something more to earn.
• rickdugan

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  10 years ago

  I doubt that the vast majority of them are making $600 on a weekday and $1500 on a weekend, other than hotter girls with sales skills who work in high money areas. Maybe that is the case for your ATF, idk, but I know plenty of dancers who would be happy with $200-300 on a weekday and $500 on a weekend. If dancers routinely made that kind of money, then I suspect that OTC at the rates that most of us pay would likely be much harder to source.
• PhantomGeek

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  10 years ago

  One ATF back in the mid-90s said she reported that she made $140k -- and I think I saw her at the club maybe only about six months that year. After close at that same club, I asked another if she had a good night. She shrugged nonchalantly. "About $600."
• trixxi

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  10 years ago

  Many of the "older" dancers in Portland tell me of days in the late 90's where they barely did any dancing and they still walked away with $5000 / night. These same dancers are still dancing, but they dance in the dives and they tell me how they are ecstatic to leave with almost $300 a shift. Rickdugan is absolutely correct with these figures "I know plenty of dancers who would be happy with $200-300 on a weekday and $500 on a weekend," it seems at least that in Portland there are much fewer dancers leaving the club with more than $400-500. Even for myself, I have danced typically 4 or 5 days a week and I know that I have only made over $400 twice in one entire year. These are all things to consider in regards to dancer income: regional differences, age of dancer, physical appearance of dancer, dancer's attitude towards customers, time that dancer has been dancing, general regional customer assumptions / expectations. Also keep in mind the dancer's relationship with money, money management and time management. As mentioned earlier, some dancers are better with their money than others. So the dancer with bad money management could potentially make more in a night than the dancer with good money management skills, however, it is the dancer who knows how to save the money that will have more to show at the end of the year.
• san_jose_guy

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  10 years ago

  In my experience most dancers are not even straight with themselves about such things. When they talk about it, they extrapolate from their best night and from situations where it was mainly just one guy who was showering them with money. So it is very hard to even know how much they make. Some of them spend it so quickly. I don't think any of them report it to the IRS. I've known of one who was in serious trouble with the IRS; they were threatening to take her house away. Some of them, in my humble opinion, court trouble by just depositing it in the bank. They have no means of hiding it, and they lack sophistication when it comes to such things. In some places the dancers work more on and off, rather than steady. So it will be less. Usually the ones who seem like they are being straight are the ones who don't make that much. One wanted me to provide all sorts of information about minimum income for filing and about how far deliqunint you could be on estimated tax and final tax before being penalized. I got all the info for her, Federal and State, and wrote it out in tables. Then she wanted me to do her taxes. On that I declined. She was trying to do right. She was asking me if when she deposited money in the bank each week it always had to be the same amount? Of course this sounded very strange. I explained that what the tax people want is to know that they are being told the truth. They will know that you don't make the same amount of money each week. So she asked about keeping records and getting the Sunnyvale Hip Hugger to vouch for her by keeping their own records. I told her that that doesn't help, and that most people who work in cash businesses don't want there to be records like that. I told that the real issue was when your lifestyle and documented holdings exceeded you reported income. Then there could be trouble. She was trying to do right, and she was a smart girl. She just wasn't used to thinking about things like this. [view link] SJG Minh Tuyet [view link]
• Papi_Chulo

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  10 years ago

  “ime’s” #s seem more plausible to me – I’d guesstimate the average dancer probably pulls b/w $40 - $60k per yr with the avg perhaps being $50k/yr as “ime” mentioned. But as in any career – there are those that are top earners – kinda like the 1% in their field – so def some dancers can make $100k/yr but I think these are the exception. Perhaps in the go-go skyrocketing financial times of the late 90s when it seemed like the “financial party” was going to go on forever and that it was a “new normal”; perhaps in that era many avg dancers could make b/w $80k and $100k – but that was an anomaly for a period of time. If your fave makes *consistently* $1500 on a weekend night w/o extras – that means she needs to sell at least 60 $25 lap-dances every weekend night, or more considering the club’s take; in order for her to make that kind of money – not saying it can’t be done – but seems like a pretty tall order to pull every weekend especially in these still iffy economic times. If you don’t mind saying JS69 – what club does your fave work at?
• RTP

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  10 years ago

  One other factor to consider is that these dancers get absolutely no benefits. No health benefits, not paid holidays or vacations, etc. I don't believe the average is that high, and I think in real terms, dancers are not living the good life.
• san_jose_guy

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  10 years ago

  Trixxi, Once before you posted some even lower numbers. I believe what you are telling us, and your posts are always very helpful for this forum. I know that many dancers really exaggerate. They multiply out from isolated best cases. They do this to make themselves feel more legitimated, and also to make guys feel like they have to measure up to this. The stories they are telling you about the late 90's may well be such exaggeration. I would try asking them to explain the high numbers, like how much for each stage set and for booth and VIP dances and how much just for fraternizing tips, and try to find out how much of each sort of activity they actually did. I suspect it will not all check out. Try asking them what they did with the money too. If there was really that much money to be made, then there would have been 10x as many girls out there trying to make it. It sounds like this must be how it is now in this Baby Dolls place near Dallas. Again, I think they are extrapolating out from some isolated best cases during a temporary bubble. I for one though am still having a hard time visualizing what goes on in these dives in your metro. I guess there are dives and then there are dives of dives. Your metro has the most SC's per capita and so it is highly competitive. In some of these places it sounds like anything goes and any sorts of people will be found in the club. For one thing, it doesn't seem like they have enough VIP Rooms for the night shifts, if dancers are just doing VIP dance after VIP dance. In the most UHM black clubs that I have read about, they use one large common VIP room, and so there will be lots of dancers and much activity going on in there at any given time. In some of these places they don't even bother with a VIP room, they just head to the couches in a darkened corner. I've not heard accounts of anything quite like this for your metro. It's always places East of the Mississippi, actually starting right at a 40' water retaining wall on the Mississippi's Eastern bank. Now on the day shifts in these dives you've spoken of, with very few dancers on duty, they could be doing one VIP dance after another, so long as they were willing to give up on trying to keep the stage order going. So then when people walked in it would no longer even look like a strip club. Looking at the girls when they come out of the VIP Rooms, and watching how they fraternize, it would look like something else. Now if on the other hand, VIP sessions are something which happens for each dancer only from time to time, then that would indeed make for a very competitive environment, lots of dolled up hotties sitting around without much to keep them busy. It is not clear to me, especially for the night shifts at these dives, how many of the dancers are really on for UHM. It is not clear to me how the money really works, like if the clubs might be gouging too deeply just for the use of a plywood box, and if the times are just too short. But then I read about other places in your metro and I find stories of dry humping, and then of no touching, and of making a big deal out of $2 per song minimum stage tipping, and then of dancers who to me look like they really keep it in bounds. Some of these accounts are of course written by hipsters, what we used to before the dot com boom call yuppies, social conformists. They are not written by mongers. Certainly it will be misleading if we start making comparisons about money in highly disparate situations. I believe everything you are telling us. I am just still having a hard time picturing it in the dives of your metro though. Where I am the strip club business is not very competitive at all, as there are very few clubs per capita, here or in San Francisco. Where I am, what we do have, and which is very competitive and very clandestine, are AMPs. They are always being closed and new ones are always opening. Now in San Francisco they have ones which have been around for decades, and they are not even very clandestine. [view link] In those S.F. places, they just make it happen. If the guy wants to kiss, they kiss. They don't refuse anything as that would just slow it down. This applies to more things than I want to mention here. Sometimes they are using just the floor of a cubby hole with a curtain draped over it. Outside of S.F., there are starting to be a few AMPs which are getting like this, they just are more concerned about keeping it hidden. It seems to be the same cadre of girls who move from one to another as shops are opened to replace those which have been closed. But for SC's, it has never been anything even remotely like this. Very few of them, and very highly regulated. [view link] SJG more Minh Tuyet [view link]
• steve229

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  10 years ago

  "If your fave makes *consistently* $1500 on a weekend night w/o extras – that means she needs to sell at least 60 $25 lap-dances every weekend night, or more considering the club’s take" Good point about the club's take, Papi. The local clubs take a 50% cut of every dance. My limited math skills suggest she would need to perform roughly double the number of dances in that case. Plus there could be house fees, tip outs, etc. The other key term was "consistently". Maybe some clubs are consistently busy, but ebb & flow seems to be more the prevailing pattern.
• Clubber

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  10 years ago

  steve, Don't forget tips. We $500K+ clubbers always tip at least a grand or two per evening.
• JohnSmith69

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  10 years ago

  Papi, I'd rather not identify her club. But they usually sell lap dances in a group. So the per dance price ranges from something like $25-40 per song depending upon the package you get. The point is she rarely does single lap dances. They are usually in a package of several songs for one guy and sorry to disappoint jerikson, but she often gets a nice tip to go with the dances. Also she makes significantly more on half hour and hour VIPs than lap dances. They cost several hundred and she sometimes can sell several on a busy weekend night. I'd do a VIP with her most every night if we didn't have an OTC relationship. When you factor in VIPs, she doesn't need to do nearly as many lap dances as you calculated to make this level of income. Except for regulars like me, she limits the really close contact to only the VIP and lots of PLs fall for that. I'm reasonably sure of my numbers as I've seen her count the cash at the end of the night after all tip outs. The club does take some cut, can't recall the exact amount, but much less than 50% I think. You guys basically confirmed what I thought which is she is well above average in income, probably for the reasons I identified. 50-60K is closer to what I would've expected for average dancer income. But she may be very much like most other dancers and all Americans in spending that money rather than saving it.
• PhantomGeek

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  10 years ago

  Have to agree that some dancers are damn smart about their money. One dancer I met in Dallas back in the '90s, she said that at one point, she had something like $200,000 in the bank -- until her loser husband drained it all and ran off. But at the time I met her, she said she was back up to about $100,000 and she owned six rental properties in the area. Definite kudos to her.
• mjx01

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  10 years ago

  +1 impala A dancer once told me she would need to be making $700/WEEK at a mainstream job for it to be 'worth' getting out of stripping. Assuming 50 working week (no paid vacation), that's only $35k per year, before withholdings. Assuming she actually meant after withholdings, ballpark it at $45k per year.
• GACA

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  10 years ago

  Well strippers in Souf Cackalacky not making that much, not by a stretch. Maybe $60k if there are lucky. And they have to work pretty hard for it. Most clubs are full contact.
• gawker

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  10 years ago

  One of my faves has told me she averages $700 per shift and works 3 shifts per week & about 45 weeks per year. She has a well funded 401k and Roth IRA. On the other hand I know of another dancer who had stopped using drugs and was going wild with OTC and in 2 months saved $30,000 then went on a crack binge with a real loser BF and was broke in a month. Some are smart and the rest aren't. ( very similar to saying "99% of lawyers make the rest all look bad").
• sharkhunter

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  10 years ago

  Dancers would make more money if corporations paid US engineers more money. I keep hearing about a lack of enough workers but companies have been depressing pay for decades and then bring in workers from overseas. Probably applies to several technical fields. Even though I make more than Steve, I can feel happy my 401k is still up 8% for the year. It sucks I gambled and lost big on my last trade in my smaller accounts but I still have better money management skills than a majority of dancers even if some make more than 30% than I do. Probably not in my lower wage state though.
• mikeya02

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  10 years ago

  ^^^^ How do you know what Steve makes? He never told us.
• Dougster

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  10 years ago

  Saying that you make more than steve229 is hardly sticking your neck out!
• farmerart

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  10 years ago

  My 3 year run with Toronto sweetie ended last February when she retired to open a womens' clothing store. She had been an extras girl for 15-20 years at Toronto area clubs. As part of her campaign to get me to invest in her goofy business idea she showed me the recent statements from her various investment accounts where she had been socking away her cash. I was gobsmacked when I saw this. She had 4 accounts......a simple savings account, an account with guaranteed investment certificates (laddered according to maturity dates), and 2 mutual funds accounts. All 4 accounts were with Canada's largest bank and, in total, added up to almost $500K. Sweetie had no knowledge whatsoever about investments. Obviously she just did whatever her bank branch had recommended. But, sweetie had the discipline to save regularly over her working career. To the best of my knowledge sweetie was drug free (save for alcohol) and loser BF free. A single mutual fund was the star of sweetie's various accounts. It was a mutual fund investing in Canada's blue chip dividend paying companies. That single mutual fund was over $200K of sweetie's net worth. Over the last 20 years that damn fund averaged a return of 11.3%. I didn't give sweetie a nickel for her business. She dumped me. I haven't a clue how she is doing now.
• gatorfan

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  10 years ago

  $10 after deductions
• impala

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  10 years ago

  I use to date a dancer (actually started dating her before I knew she danced) that usually made a couple hundred bucks a night (on a good night) dancing at a small dive strip bar. It was right across the street from a factory and right after shift changes they made most of their money. They didn't really do private dances and made almost all their money off the stage. She usually only worked a few weekday nights, due to location weekends weren't really all that busy. Once in a while, though, her and a couple of dancers would dance a Saturday night at a regular strip club, and make more money in 4 hours there than they would working a month at the regular place. She was in college, though, and the first place worked out a lot better for her schedule, so she never changed places full time. A lot really depends on the place they dance, the clientele, and when they work.
• ujay

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  10 years ago

  Most strippers try to stroke their egos by telling stories of a single night as though it is a regular occurence. I visit strip clubs in southern and central NJ. Majority of these girls make less than $45K a year. In some of these clubs, there are hardly any customers during the day. The strippers complain that summer was bad; it now appears that fall is becoming worse. I have occasionally visited nighttime, and there are the college kids drinking and throwing down an occasional dollar. The nonextras stripper would be lucky to make $200/day working five days a week, or $4/month or $48K/year. Then, she has to tip the bouncer, pay house fees, etc. At the high end, the most beautiful stripper that I know, Rian, who does extras, may make $500/day or $2500/week, $10K/month, or $120K/year. Even she complains that the flying days of the pre2007 are over. She admits that some of her friends are even considering, for the first time, getting a real job. For Rian to continue to service so many extras, she admits to taking drugs. She has been in drug rehab once already, and it is just a matter of time before she relapses. Other than the fact that she is the best dressed stripper daily with expensive outfits, shoes, makeup, hairdo, white teeth, there is hardly anything to show for her money. She and most of the other strippers depend on their drug dealer boyfriends to pick them up in second hand automobiles, and reside in motels or low end housing. I believe that many of these girls, though may be making some money, are hardly above the poverty level. Very few invest in education, housing, or even purchasing a decent automobile.
• san_jose_guy

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  10 years ago

  "Most strippers try to stroke their egos by telling stories of a single night as though it is a regular occurence." This completely jives with my own observations. Though I can not deny that there are some who do in fact take in mountains of cash, most really do not. It is hard to really know, because there are no records which anyone could analyze. If money was really that important to them, then they would not be spending it as many of them do. When they talk about it, they are usually not dealing in literal truth. If they say, "Oh, I made $1,500 last night", often what they really mean is just that they had a good time." I was sitting with an older Chinese massage girl in a restaurant, and she was going on and on about how with her last client he gave her a huge tip, but there was no sex. This was very important to her to put this across to me, because I saw the guy. Very unlikely that it was true. Probably there was sex and there was no extra tip as the basic fee is supposed to be the tip. She just wanted to make herself look important.. [view link] SJG Keep On Rockin' In The Free World [view link]