I'm an admin assistant for adult creators — here's what my day is like

Sex sells, but you might not know just how much.

There are people who make their living having sex or looking sexy, but there are plenty of others who make money in their orbit. 

"I thought my only option was to teach sex ed at primary and secondary schools through charities," said Amari, a sex positive virtual assistant and social media manager. "And now all of a sudden I have these two businesses where I'm working in the sex space in a completely different capacity than what I thought."

Since 2023, Amari has run Admin by Amari, an agency offering services from administrative work to social media to copywriting and SEO, all for different workers in the sex space. She also runs Sex Coaching by Amari, but the former business is her bread and butter. 

"Sexual health nurses, gynecologists, obstetricians, all the way to sex workers," she described clients. That's not all: "OnlyFans models, sex toy companies, sex dungeons, play parties…reproductive justice charities, abortion charities. The list…it's crazy."

Mashable interviewed Amari about how she went from university student to right-hand person for the sex-positive among us.

"It just accidentally became my full-time job"

When studying sociology in university, "every topic that I was allowed to pick was about sex in some shape or form," Amari said. The topics included gender, sexuality, sex work, porn, feminism, and gendered violence. 

She volunteered for different charities, like a sex workers' rights charity and one about sexual domestic violence. She'd do various administrative tasks, social media work, and help with events. Eventually, she got a job at a nursery and thought that when she'd graduated, she'd go either down the charity or women's rights group route or the childcare route.

Then COVID hit. But she graduated with a full-time job, as nurseries stayed open in the UK. Amari loved working with kids, so she decided to enroll into teacher training. 

Unfortunately, though, it was a grueling experience. Between 80-hour work weeks and not getting paid due to the nature of the program, "I got incredibly stressed out, mentally, physically," she told Mashable. "It attacked my joints. I was on crutches at the age of, like, 23."

"I was actually physically unable to work with children," she said. "My body just completely shut down."

She also didn't have a good experience with her mentor. All of this prompted her to ask herself what she's going to do with her life.

Given her charity volunteering while at university, she sent her CV to charities and secured an administrative and social media role at a forest school nursery. While the pay was low, the job was remote, and Amari decided, "This is the life I want to live." 

It was around this time that she also received her sex education qualification, but realized she wasn't able to be in a school environment due to her physical condition. 

Months later, a reproductive justice organization reached out to her, offering admin work for 10 hours per month. Amari figured she could do admin and use the bit of extra pocket money, so she registered as self-employed.

"That's how I set up the agency," she said.

She reached out to other charities to offer freelancer work, and it slowly became her full-time gig.

"It just accidentally became my full-time job," she said. "And all of a sudden I was like, 'Oh my gosh'...I had a sex educator reach out to me, a sex worker reach out to me. I had a sex work company reach out to me," she said, after they found her through Instagram.

"I didn't even know all of these people needed this sort of support," she said. But now, she works with six clients and has a team of over a dozen people handling administrative and social media work. 

The day-to-day of a sex work admin assistant

Amari's day-to-day is "chill" these days, she said. Sometimes she'll have discovery calls with potential clients, negotiate brand deals, do interviews or podcasts, or write articles, but she said that's more of a "side thing."

"I wake up whenever I want," she said. "I get to go to the gym whenever I like. I get to do Pilates whenever I want to…It's mainly me in bed tapping away at my computer to be honest."

That doesn't mean she always puts her feet up. As someone who posts about sex on social media, she knows all about platforms' draconian rules. On her website, Amari has a guide on censorship and shadowbanning, which is when someone's account is deprioritized by a social media app. Sex workers, erotic artists, and LGBTQ content creators have told Mashable that they've seen their Instagram accounts shadowbanned or simply banned.

"The first time I got shadowbanned, I was like, 'Oh my god, I'm gonna lose my job. My whole business is gonna go to shit. I need to get a new job.' I was so stressed out and so overwhelmed," Amari said. But she did a lot of research and spoke with clients who've experienced shadowbanning, so she's gathered that knowledge over the years. 

"We understand shadow banning, we understand censorship," she said. "But I cannot make you a promise that something won't happen to your account." She does have best practices, though: diversify your platforms (have two to three social media accounts), and go outside of social media too with an email marketing list and website.

Depending on the client, she also censors specific words as well (a content moderation phenomenon we've seen on social media the last few years — "seggs," anyone?), but some clients specifically don't want her to. 

But it's just one thing she's learned being in the sex space, which she said is "such a fun industry."

"I learned so much in that first six months," she said. "Proper whirlwind." 

Now that she's cemented in it, it feels like she has a proper community despite being remote — not that she doesn't love working from home.

"If there's one thing I want people to take away from this, it's get a remote job," she joked.