I own half of a wine garden in San Antioco and cut the wines every winter. I sewn and sold more then hundred motorbike saddles. Its a nice winter job, that pays good for a craft. I've organized uncountable concerts, produced a few dozen bands, and pushed 3 of them into the charts. I even worked a few times for compagna.de as an escort for woman.
But all this is just a hobby, compared to coding. I'm happy if they break even, of give some small money, but my main income is a semi passive income from maintaining a CPAN module that I've published 15 years ago.
Interesting you mention escorting there, one of the few groups of people here who pay for photography are escorts. Usually solo-professionals with high-end websites and prices.
I've no interest in wedding photography, and so it is a fun niche to have fallen into. (The other large-paying niche is pictures of cats/dogs/pets for elderly/retired women.)
I suspect there is a fair amount of money to be had in a combination of scheduling/calendaring/hosting for adult-workers. There are a few meta-sites but so many of the women I talk to struggle with setting up sites, getting shut-down for ToS violations and general technology-apathy. (Despite online searching generating 50%+ of their business, the rest coming from word-of-mouth.)
In Germany 'escorting' is not necessary related to prostitution like in other countries. Prostitution is legal in Germany, so you don't have to obscure it with 'escorting'.
I think there is still a difference if a man hires a female escort, or a woman hires a male escort, also in US.
To cite Compagna.de/en_home.html "Compagna explicitly doesn`t offer erotic service at all." as a disclaimer.
So its more about knowing the cheap side street pub that has the best tappas in town, talking to the bouncer at the dance club to get instant entry, when a row of people are waiting for hours, sometimes even shopping.
Sex is outside the contract of the agency, but it happens.
CPAN modules are free. But commercial replacements for XML::Edifact start at $100k not including the required consultant to implement it. So it was cheaper for them to pay me for consulting and maintenance.
The Perl Module is bug free for ages. But the UN/EDIFACT standard improves twice a year, while XML::Edifact comes still bundled with a 1996 version of the standard. Its easy to replace/update it, but those companies always have custom code list extensions, and merging them is basically my maintenance.
But all this is just a hobby, compared to coding. I'm happy if they break even, of give some small money, but my main income is a semi passive income from maintaining a CPAN module that I've published 15 years ago.