How much do strippers make? Well, that depends on who you’re asking. It all comes down to experience, location, and beauty, of course. Most people don’t really have an objection to women working in a strip club, but the clubs that make them work against their wishes have been attracting the public backlash they deserve.

The Strip Club Industry 

A couple of coke, beer, vodka or wine of your choice and a girl to play with you for a while at under $100; yes, that’s what the average strip bars take away from a normal customer.

Several strip clubs are full of people all the time in some major cities around the world and the bills sometimes stand at over $1000. We really don’t have an actual data on how much strippers are paid, but we surely have a rundown of different possible earnings from the strip business.

An Atlanta-based stripper who goes by the name ‘Menagerii’ in Reddit discussed her financial details during her work as a bar dancer and stripper. Here’s an interesting fact – strippers are not paid an hourly rate. Menagerii confirmed that they work on flat rates and take a percentage of the tips they get. She was paid a flat fee of $34 – $50 per DJ shift and had to give 10% of her tips to the club. She worked around 6 hours on a shift, but had she worked double, she would have been paid twice the flat rate ($70 – 100).

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Cutting it short, Menagerii did not work all day, but the day she did, she’d come home with $500-$1500, and that’s a pretty good earning per day, right? She also said that she’s tipped to $400 at max, but the lowest of what she could get in the tip can be a dollar or nothing.

Here are a few things that you’d want to know about strippers, their payments and the strip club industry:

1. Most strippers are not paid to dance

In fact, strippers pay to dance and try to make the money out of it. Strippers like Meredith and others who were interviewed by Cracked said most clubs have a house fee, like $50 or $150 or $200, depending on the place and what time the stripper showed up for her shift. So that if you don’t perform well enough to cover it, it’s your loss – no guarantee of income, no coverage for injuries sustained on the job, or healthcare.

Also, the reason strippers must pay to perform is the fact that they are nearly all independent contractors. In addition, they are not paid in hours; they have a flat rate payment if they are hired as a regular stripper, and most of the money they make come from the tips they receive from customers.

2. Strippers have their own union

Believe it or not, the Exotic Dancers Union or other groups like We are Dancers, are there to protect their interests and make the stripping business a more dignified profession. That way, strippers don’t get exploited by clubs or clients.

3. The work ravages their bodies in every way

Like athletes, Kelly said many dancers are managing chronic pain – the physical and emotional stress of the job, without insurance. The physical pain comes with being on their feet for six to ten hours, basically doing squats and wall sits in heels. Otherwise, no client is going throw money at a dancer giving him anything less.

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4. Stripper generally report remarkably high job satisfaction

Contrary to what most people think, it’s not a field of desperate, broken people. According to a study, a majority of women in the industry like their job, and took home as much as $74,500 a year for their naked efforts. But not only because of the money. Scientists also observed that strippers did it for reasons other than the money it brings.

Reliable statistics about strippers’ salaries are a hard thing we can find. However, there are several reports that claim dancers earn somewhere around $70,000 annually in the UK while in New York clubs, they could earn around $1,000 a single day.

In 2014, a college student claimed she was earning a whopping sum of $180,000 annually stripping as a part-time gig. According to Maggie, a Spanish and political science double major at the University of Maryland, she is graduating debt-free – thanks to her part-time stripper job at Scores New York.  She works four nights a week and takes the train to New York twice a month. While her claims may sound too good to believe, Scores spokesman Steve Sabbeth confirmed that strippers at his club can earn much more than $180,000 per year, due to “exceptional clients” that visit the club.

After all, it’s about how pretty they look and how well they can satisfy the customers. An exclusive one-to-one show, a lap-dance or a private sho are avenues for strippers to make more money.