So how exactly does prostitution work? It seems like it is effectively illegal.
Basically it is illegal to advertise paid sex or go looking/asking for it - but if by chance during some other encounter someone who is willing to pay meets someone who is happy to be paid for it, then there is no crime.
Another oddity is pornography. A small brothel in Grimsby got around the brothel thing by having a camera in every room - that way porn was being filmed which sidesteps the wording of the law nicely by instead being a film studio that happened to work on adult material (apparently customers walked away with the tape afterwards, though to be honest I'd not trust that wasn't the only copy!).
There is a certain website known for this which I will not link to here.
Women who work as prostitutes will usually pay taxes as self employed people and can actually claim advertising (as well as various other things that are best left to the imagination) back as business expenses.
Escorts pay tax and deduct expenses for the "Escorting" work they do, not the sex. If they declare the income as income for sex, the police quickly come knocking to arrest you for "living off immoral earnings" (a few have done so in the past as a "protest").
“Public place” includes any highway and any other premises or place to which at the material time the public have or are permitted to havea ccess, whether on payment or otherwise ”.
I wouldn't think a website constitutes a "place" under such a definition. Otherwise posting a picture of your genitals on a website could be viewed as indecent exposure, though IANAL.
In general two consenting adults who have sex and then exchange money is legal. But being a pimp is illegal; running a brothel is illegal; offering sex for money or offering money for sex is illegal. And there are some fierce laws about coercion and trafficking - the punter is guilty if the sex-worker is coerced even if the punter didn't know. And the UK has a stricter definition of trafficked than most other countries. A woman who is assisted to travel willingly and knowingly to the UK to do sex-work has been trafficked. And the punter is guilty even if they didn't know about it.
So, in the past you'd have someone offering a length of time for £X, and anything else that happened between consenting adults was just good luck, oh, and btw, here's a list of sexual practices that I like, and here's what I do not do.
For a grim website you can have a look at adultwork.com
Japan is just the opposite: prostitution is illegal, but prostitution is defined by law as "penis in the vagina for money". So a lot of institutions have sprung up to offer every other kind of service.
You advertise your phone number/email in relevant forums and wait for people to contact you.