I've seen some discussion on here about sugar babies, so I decided to look into it further.

  1. How common is it?

I live in a city of around 400,000 people. It has two university campuses in it, and high incomes. Classic university town.

I created an account on the biggest sugar dating website, and gathered some stats. I was only interested in the younger cohort (students, etc) - who the fuck is going to pay for a 35 year old sugar baby?

By counting the number of sugar babies aged 18-24 on the site, and comparing it to the city's demographics, I calculated that just under 2%, or 1 in 50, of women 18-24 in my city are on the site looking for a sugar daddy.

That seems a lot, and does include users who haven't logged in for a while, but that's the market.

2. What sort of girls are doing it?

A bit harder to work out without meeting any, of course, but a look through profiles gives you a fair idea.

The common characteristic is that the sugar babies are almost all the party girl type. Their profile pictures are heavily made up. Often they are in party or formal dresses. Often also there is a bikini shot, sometimes underwear.

I didn't see many introverted nice girls, let's put it that way. Occasionally there would be one who said she warmed up after a while - maybe they're the introverts. But it's 99% extroverted party girl types. I guess that makes sense - these are the girls already giving it away for free and often.

For comparison, I also checked out profiles in some larger cities without such a strong college presence. Many of the girls on the site there seemed - how can I best put this - dumber than the college girl types in my city. But the breakdown of party girls vs everyone else seemed about the same.

3. What are they doing?

Again, unclear without meeting any. But I'd estimate about 10-15% of profiles were overtly sexual, bordering on clear invitations to exchange cash for sex. In other words, straight up hookers or damn near.

Maybe the same number again implied sexuality - "give me money and I'll make your dreams come true daddy" kind of thing.

A smaller number implied some possibility of intimate relations if the chemistry was right etc. I kind of viewed these as likely girls who would happily be paid to go on a few dates but wouldn't close the deal.

And perhaps 10% outright said they weren't interested in doing anything sexual. This is either anti-slut defence, or these girls are deluded enough to think that older men are going to want to pay for their time but not fuck them.

The rest were pretty ambiguous - they read more like dating profiles.

4. Are there many takers?

The site claims that there are 10 girls for every man registered. Maybe so. But my observations over a year or so suggested not many of the girls were coming off the market. I saw the same profiles all the time and only one or two of the ones on my favourites list disappeared during that time. Maybe some girls hit the jackpot this way, but I don't think it's very many.

5. Does the age of the sugar daddy matter?

It seems to. I created two profiles: one in their late 30s, one in their early 50s. Neither had photos. I then basically favourited every 18-19 year old I vaguely liked.

The 30s guy got a lot more favourites and messages back. Having said that, Mr Fake 50s could have had himself an 18 year old sugar baby on at least three occasions.

I suspect using a picture might have swayed the results, especially if Mr Fake 50s was good looking.

5. Anything else?

One more thing. I listened to a few episodes of a podcast called the Sugar Baby Confessionals. I expected to hear from young women, but what I got was a couple of mid 30s women making very good money ($500/visit type thing) from men in their 50s and 60s. One of them was married and her husband was fine with this.

Jackiechanwtf.jpg

Why pay massively over the odds for a 35 year old when you could have someone much younger?!

6. So is this alpha or beta?

Personally I think beta. I guess you'd have to be a little bit alpha to be able to get an 18 year old into bed in your 50s, but on the other hand, money talks. To me it seems a bit "provider".

My view is than an alpha would be able to land a younger woman without paying.