I’m a dominatrix who makes over $6,000 a month online. During the day, I’m just another mom in yoga pants. Here’s what my job is like.

• Olivia Rose is a 30-something dominatrix based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 
• Rose grew up in a religious family in Las Vegas. At 18, she began working as an escort at a various clubs to pay for college, and later became a strip dancer and fetish model.
• There’s a lot more to being a dominatrix than simple sex work, Rose says. Every client has unique preferences, from sissification to foot worship, chastity, and even financial domination, aka ‘wallet-draining.’
• In 2019, she earned over $80,000 from in-person domme sessions, fetish modeling, phone sex, camming, and selling clips and worn clothing items.
• Here’s her story, as told to freelance writer Jenny Powers.
• Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

I was 18 and working in a sub sandwich shop in Las Vegas when I came across a local classified ad for a hostess job at a club. The ad said the job paid $80 a night, which was way more than I was pulling in slapping sandwiches together. I was trying to scrape up enough cash to pay for community college, so I jumped at the chance. 

When I turned up for the interview, I learned it wasn’t just an ordinary club. It was a swinger’s club and basically a front for a working brothel, and the so-called ‘hostess’ position was nothing more than a euphemism for escort.

Despite having been raised by hardcore Jehovah’s Witnesses, I was an openly rebellious and sexual person, so when they offered me the job, I took it. 

The club wound up being super seedy and not a great fit, so I left after a month but continued escorting at the R&R Club, where I remained from 2002 to 2005. Luckily, I always managed to time my schedule right and was never there when the place got raided by the vice squad. It was a 9-to-5 job ,but the reverse of the traditional 9-5 because we started work at 9 p.m. and finished up 5 a.m. On average, I could pull in a minimum of $500 per shift, allowing me to pay for college and survive on more than just 79-cent Del Taco burritos.

As a little girl, my parents did everything they could to stomp out my natural rebellious personality.

From a young age, I would question everything and call out hypocrisy whenever I saw it. By 15, I told my parents I didn’t believe in our religion. By 17, I announced I wanted to go to college, despite having learned full well that higher education was frowned upon by our faith. Since I was only a week shy of turning 18 when the semester started, I needed my parent’s permission to register. They allowed me to enroll in one class at community college (I chose psychology 101), and later I transferred to UNLV.

I was considered a sophomore, class credit-wise, when I ended up dropping out in the summer of 2005. I often think about going back to to finish but haven’t had the time or mental drive. I have bounced around the idea about going back and then trying to get into the Master’s program at Widener University in Human Sexuality Studies, but I’m still not sure. Maybe one day.

My father was an elder in the church, so our family was supposed to set an example for everyone else. Needless to say, I was a terrible example.

I’m dominant by nature, so I like exploring other people’s kinks, getting inside their head, and seeing what makes them tick. 

I’ve always been the type who will try anything once. In 2005, I started working as a dancer at a strip club and did some on stage domination since we’d get fetishists and submissives in there all the time. Overall, though, I found stripping to be emotionally draining, so I gave it up.

In 2007, I stumbled into fetish modeling while doing a boudoir shoot inside a dungeon in San Diego. I got along really well with the people on the shoot, and they hooked me up with a list of people to reach out to for future gigs. I pursued it and wound up doing a bunch of damsel-in-distress-type shoots for bondage sites, videos, and pin-up magazines. I still do fetish model shoots — they can be a lot of fun with the right props. 

I was classically trained under a domme named Master Len for two years beginning in 2008. 

He was a married, polyamorous, practicing Buddhist. I was under contract with him for domme training and served as his submissive also. In the industry, this is known as being ‘collared.’ We’d have daily phone calls as well as in-person sessions, and every six months we’d review our agreement that outlined topics like negotiation and consent. 

As far as lifestyle BDSM, protocol, and how to practice safely and consensually, I feel this was my greatest learning period. All of the training was extremely therapeutic and helped me reclaim much of what I’d lost over a very tumultuous three-year period in my life. There’s a certain freedom someone gains when they explore BDSM and their sexuality and I definitely learned a lot about myself, what I like, and my boundaries. Boundaries are something that has taken me a long time to learn, especially when it comes to friendships and relationships.

Around the same time in Las Vegas, I started doing these performance bondage shows where I’d tie people up on stage. I also began working as a dominatrix and seeing clients in person. 

Before I ever agree to meet a client for an in-person session, they must pass a background check, provide references from other sex workers they’ve worked with, and put down a deposit. My rate is $300 an hour.

Every client is different, so every session is bound to be as well. 

Sessions run the gamut — there’s rope bondage, diaper discipline, corporal punishment, key holding/chastity, foot worship, and sissification which I enjoy a great deal because I like dressing submissives up, and find it can be quite cathartic for them to experience a gender transformation. Sometimes a guy just wants to meet me outside Starbucks for a sock exchange where I take off my dirty, worn socks and give them to him in exchange for $150. Selling intimates is a thing, you know. In fact, anything can be a thing, really. 

 My clients have a wide range of sexual proclivities — one has a beam scale in his home dungeon and loves measuring and weighing me despite the fact my measurements rarely change. Another keeps a chart on his wall and when he earns a certain number of gold stars, I allow him a weekly orgasm. Orgasm denial is pretty common as is role-playing. One time after the Games of Thrones finale, I had a client request a role-play session based on the show.

I also do financial domination (FinDom) sometimes known as wallet-draining. FinDom can take lots of different forms. For example, every time I snap my fingers, a guy might have to pay me a certain amount, or maybe he has to pay me every time my shoe dangles from off my foot.

One of my clients even has a written debt contract set up stating that he owes me a certain amount of money which must be paid by a certain date. Back in April during the height of the pandemic, one guy gave me over $4,000, which included the $1,200 he received from his government stimulus check.

I like to think of my brand as ‘sadism with a smile’ because when it comes down to it, I’m truly a happy sadist.

In 2010, I started camming on Streamate. I’m definitely more of a sensual domme than the type that just barks orders at you, although I can certainly do that too if necessary. 

I do all sorts of fetish stuff on camera from putting on latex medical gloves and a gas mask to wearing medical scrubs to napping in a full Hazmat suit. Yes, sometimes I get paid to nap on video! I use several different sites, including OnlyFans, NiteFlirt, and ManyVids, among others. My rates are between $5.99-$6.99 a minute for the main group shows and $10.99 a minute for a one-on-one exclusive. I’ve made $1,800 camming during a single 9-hour work day. 

In 2019, I earned $80,000 between in-person domme sessions, fetish modeling, phone sex, camming, and selling clips.

People are always surprised to learn that dommes have a normal everyday life outside of kink. We’re not walking fetish robots, after all. There’s this perception of what we are like but there’s a lot more to me than what you see on camera. I’ve been in a relationship for four years, I have a child, and there’s a lot more to me than sex work. 

I’ve always been a very schedule-oriented person but the pandemic has forced me to juggle my calendar around quite a bit. Before COVID-19, my days were free to do in-person or virtual domme sessions, fetish shoots, and even create clips and edit them after our bedtime routine. Now, all my work is virtual and with my daughter home all day doing remote school, I’ve shifted my work hours to 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. 

We left Las Vegas two years ago and moved into a place with a cute little yard in a middle class neighborhood in Pittsburgh. My neighbors have no idea what I do for a living. On the outside, I’m just another mom in yoga pants waiting at the school bus stop, and that’s just fine with me.