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FetLife is a new addition to the homepage list, and an often overlooked craigslist personals replacement.  

What is Fetlife? On the homepage you'll see a good summary of the site:  "Like Facebook, but run by kinksters like you and me."  Basically, it's a great personals alternative if you're into BDSM, Fetishes, and Kinks.

How to use Fetlife

Here's how to use Fetlife in a way that will get you similar results to craigslist personals.

First, you have to create an account and tell Fetlife your gender, sexual orientation, and 'role' there's a lot of options:

There's a few main features in fetlife that you'll want to start using to find hookups:

Explore - This tab lets you search for new people to follow.  The people you see will depend on the orientation and role you chose when creating your account.   You can go to your profile settings to change your orientation and role.

Places - This section lets you look for members in a given location.  This is a good one for finding people for casual encounters near you.

Fetishes - Instead of searching by place, the fetishes section lets you find people that are into the same kinks that you are.

Groups - In the groups section you can browse groups to follow.  This is pretty similar to the facebook group section.  One of the ones you should be following is the classifieds group, where people post sex ads, just like craigslist personals, but with even more edginess.

Events are another cool feature of Fetlife.  You'll see all the meetups of kinksters near you.  A lot of these are at bars, coffee shops, or even sex shops and clubs. 

Bottom Line

If you use the classifieds section of Fetlife and are up for some kinky stuff, then Fetlife will make a great craigslist personals alternative.  Like with all sites for casual encounters, be careful and start off by meeting in public places.

Have you tried Fetlife? Leave a comment below and let us know about your experience!

• Switter.at
• Slixa
• DoubleList
• MegaPersonals
• Escort-Ads
• AdultSpace
• Girl-Directory
• AdultLook
• Eros
• EscortDirectory
• Gfe Dating
• Onebackpage
• Rub Ratings

If you used backpage.com for hookups, M4M, swinging events, or casual sex, then you should check out our list of sites like craigslist personals on the home page.

My Favorite Sites Like Backpage

Here's a bit more details about the sites I think make the best backpage replacements after Fosta Sesta and the backpage shutdown.

Switter

So far, the website has 200,000 registered users and gets 50,000 new visitors every month.  A big plus of switter is that it has much less spam than other backpage alternatives (Bedpage, ahem!).  It's also easier to tell if people are real or fake because you can read all the Toots on their profile to see what their personality is like and how active they've been on Switter.

The website is hosted in Melbourne Australia too, where prostitution is legal.  Because of this the website is much less likely to be taken down anytime soon.

While it's good for finding escorts, it is not the best for finding hookups or casual encounters.  For personals alternatives try viewing the list of craigslist replacements on the home page.

How to Use Switter.at

Switter can be a bit confusing at first, just follow these steps to start browsing providers/escorts/sex workers near you.

1) Create an account

Start by going to https://www.switter.at/ and signing up for a new account.  You'll receive an email that you have to verify, the usual sign up process.  By the way, you'll notice the word "mastodon" popping up a lot on the Switter website, this is the name of the software used to make Switter.  It's like wordpress.com, but for making your own social networks.

2) Navigating the Home Page

After you make your account you'll be signed into the page below.  This is where it can be a bit confusing if you are new to Switter.  The home page just lets you manage your account settings and see notifications of the providers you follow, to start following new providers you'll need to go to the next step.

3) Finding Sex Workers To Follow

Once your account is created, you'll have access to the listings page:  https://listings.switter.at/.  From here you can search for escorts and sex workers to follow in your area. 

To follow someone, just click the "Follow" button on their profile.

Once you've followed people you'll see their "Toots" on your homepage in Switter.  It's a good way to keep track of all the people you're interested in, in one place.

Posting Your Ads on Switter

If you are a sex worker, then Switter is the first place you should go to post your ads.  You'll get a lot more views and it's completely free.  In many ways it works better than backpage ever did, now it just needs to reach the same critical mass that backpage had, we'll get there soon!

To post an ad you have to follow a few rules:

• You must be a provider (someone offering your services)
• Maximum of 3 posts in 24 hours
• You must have pictures uploaded
• No racist or discriminatory language
• No explicit language
• No ads for underage services
• No ads for bareback/BBFS services

Bottom Line

Switter is a good place to find providers of sexual services near you.  It may still be a young site, but it shows a lot of promise to be the future of sex work online.

Please leave a comment if you have any other sites you like to use, or if you have anything to share about your switter experience.

Bedpage showed a lot of promise as a new craigslist personals alternatives, but after my own tests, I've found it is full of spam and fake accounts.  If you are a sex worker, it is a good place to post your own ads, since it does get a lot of visitors, however if you are looking for sex workers you'll have to put in some work to filter out all the fake posts. 

If you are looking for a personals replacement for casual encounters or M4M, then bedpage is something you should definitely skip.

Using Bedpage

The design of bedpage is almost identical to backpage, so it will feel pretty familiar.  It even has the exact same locations that backpage did.

Here's what backpage used to look like:

Bedpage Spam

Bedpage has a lot more spam than backpage ever did.  I live in Minneapolis, a metropolitan area with about 1 million people, even here about 80% of the posts are either fake accounts or just straight up ads.  I wouldn't be surprised if the fake ads were posted by the company owners themselves, since they are all kind of similar across different cities.

Finding Actual Sex Ads

If you live in a massive city like San Francisco, LA, Chicago, or New York City, you'll have an easier time using bedpage.  Keep an eye out for ads that include phone numbers in the title, these are the most likely to be legit.  Avoid ads that have emojis in the title, most actual people don't use a ridiculous amount of emojis, it's the fake accounts' way of grabbing your attention to their sex ad.  Also look for ads that include an in-call and out-call rate on the page.

If you are looking for M4T encounters, you'll also have an easier time.

Using Bedpage as a Sex Worker

If you are a sex worker looking to find clients, bedpage will be an easy place to stand out.  Make sure to use a down to earth title and say something like "actual person here, looking to make your night".  Then in the add you can include your phone number and pictures.  If you include a link to your tumblr, twitter, or blog, this can help prove you are a real person as well.

How long will Bedpage be around?

The FBI shut down backpage in March 2018, since then they've continued shutting down other sites like cityvibe and cracker as well.

So what's to stop bedpage from being next?

Unlike backpage, bedpage requires you to make an account and use your phone number and address.  This technically helps them get around the FOSTA SESTA law, by storing the data of potential sex traffickers.  However they could still be charged if their site is found to facilitate illegal trafficking.  However the site is hosted in Canada, so by violating USA laws they may still remain online.

Bottom Line

This is not a very good craigslist personals alternative. If you are looking for casual encounters, M4M, and other hookups, forget bedpage,  you're better off trying DoubleList or Adult Friend Finder.  

If you are looking for sex workers, or want to post ads for finding clients, this site is worth a try, that being said, it's still not as good as backpage alternatives like switter.at and slixa.

One of the most voted for sites on our personals alternatives tool is doublelist.com, this post is my review of how well it compares to personals.

Here are the main features of doublelist:

• Allows images
• Classified ads format
• Free to post
• Requires phone verification
• Separate sections for M4M, F4M, M4F, etc
• Education section
• Sex Work Prohibited

After you've verified your phone number and email you'll get access to the main area of doublelist.  From here you can browse the different  ad sections.  This is an improvement of craigslist personals in my opinion, there are more subcategories and it makes it easier to find what you are really looking for.  They are also adding sections on sex education, which has the potential to be really cool I think (it's still not released yet).

Posting Your First Ad On DoubleList

Posting your ad is easy enough, just click on the top right hand corner and click "new post".  From here you are taken to a screen where you can write the title and content of your add.

Post Filters

Here's another way DoubleList is different than other sites.  You can't use any vulgar language in the title of your post.   If you do it will give you a warning message that says you need to change it.  This blocks any obscene words and is their attempt to make the ads more friendly to scan through.  In my opinion, it makes it less fun than personals.

In the example below, the filters prevented me from posting an ad that had the word "suck"

To get around this, I changed "looking to suck you" to "looking to put my lips around your phallus".  This got me approved!  The solution is just to get more sophisticated with your headlines and use lots of big scientific terms for genitals.  This may make titles less sexy than they could be, but it's kind of fun to think outside the box.

​This ad passed the obscenity filters:

And we are in!  Next you need to fill in the info of your location, age, and what mood you are in.  I usually choose "Netflix & Chill", but there is also the option to "just do it" if you want to skip the soft stuff.

And finally you can choose to ad a photo to your post.  Like with the title they are very strict, with doublelist you can't get away with dick pics like you could in craigslist personals.  If you choose to not upload a photo  you will get a warning message that says you are 4x more likely to get a response if you include a picture of some kind.

After you submit your post you'll also have to go to your email to confirm it.

Sex Work and Doublelist

If you are a sex worker looking for a place to post ads, then doublelist might not be the best place.  They are a very strict website with lots of active moderators checking posts to makes sure they follow their guidelines, it is also easy for anyone to report posts which means they get taken down extra fast.

In their guidelines they mention that the following are not allowed:

• Underage ads
• Escorts
• Massage Services
• Hardcore BDSM stuff

Here is a quote about their terms on sex work.

"There is a STRICT policy of no advertisement and no transactions. This does not just mean DIRECTLY asking for money in your ad. Any 'alluding to', using code words, attempting to sell later, or trying to trick the system will get you banned quickly from this site. This is not the place for sex work, escorting, or getting paid for your personal time. "

So if you are looking to post ads you are better off trying a website like switter.at which is designed for sex workers, by sex workers.

The reason they are so strict is because of the FOSTA SESTA law.  If doublelist is not strict in this area they risk going to jail and being taken down like what happened to backpage.  They are just not willing to take any chances with the new law.

A Quick History of DoubleList

After personals was taken down, two gay San Francisco entrepreneurs had the idea to start doublelist to help meet the new demands created for a place to find casual sex.  In an interview with the huffington post, they mentioned that they had used personals a lot themselves to find M4M relationships in the SF bay area.  So they personally felt the pain after FOSTA SESTA changed things, and they set out to make the world a sexier place.

They started with only 3 employees in March of 2018, soon DoubleList was getting 100,000 visitors a month and they expanded to 40 employees by June to keep up with the challenges of moderating all the ads for sex work that could get them put in jail.  Now as we approach 2019 they have 200 employees and over 800,000 monthly visitors.  They seem to be winning the battle as the best new classifieds site for finding casual sex, but only time will tell.  The site currently makes most of its money from small banned ads that appear at the bottom of the page.  It is estimated they make about $500,000 a month from these ads which suggest everything from dating sites to physical enhancement drugs.

Looking Into The Future

So far doublelist seems to be doing a great job and they have a very useful and nice looking site.  My only concern would be that they could get taken down for the same reasons that craigslist personals and backpage were taken down.  Only time will tell, but we hope they are around for the long term.