In all seriousness, when TAG was first developed... it was out of need to put a stable & reliable platform up so that people had a place to go to voice their experiences and find reliable resources back when the market was very different. There were not many choices for non-Japanese that didn't speak much Japanese. If you spoke Japanese, your options were greater but not as many as there are these days.
Having the escorts themselves on TAG (posting, interacting) wasn't something we planned, it's just something that evolved beginning sometime in 2012-2013 and has grown since then. Ads were free up until 2017, when the abuse skyrocketed. We clamped down on everything to keep the quality.
We've managed to keep things clean over the years buy developing methods to screen out the junk... such as fake reviews, shills and scams. If you look at some of the other sites that have Japan service reviews, nearly 100% of them have paid reviews, 'promoted' content. TER is especially bad now, ISG has good days and bad days... but neither of those sites have any sort of Japan/Tokyo focus and just allow whatever is submitted to be posted without any screening or fact checking. In the days when TAG was born, there were two other Japan-specific sites, but both were full of trolls, fakes & favoritism and management did little to QC their content. (both are gone to my knowledge, one of them just imploded on itself because the owner gave up....)
While we accept money for advertisements, we do not allow any 3rd party to have any influence over TAG. The ad fees are kept at a much higher tier than other sites, because we only want truly serious providers & agencies putting their name here on TAG. We've had numerous offers for investments but that meant giving up some control or management input by those investors. (We clearly declined any sale or investment since we wanted to protect the TAG ecosystem as well as preventing anyone from having access to people's private information. This is another reason why I stand alone when it comes to holding the keys to TAG's infrastructure. (There this a fail-safe system in place in case I should be killed, maimed/disabled or otherwise incapacitated to where I couldn't run TAG.)
After all these years, we've had ups and downs... we could never please everyone, that's just impossible. We do appreciate many, many regular members who are active members and even the lurkers who joined YEARS ago but still lurk here almost daily.
Edit: I forgot to add... I was brought into this industry by accident. One simple introduction turned into a chain of introductions where I got to meet many girls working in this industry, where I got to hear there stories, complaints & wishes... I had no dealings with Japan's adult life until one very specific point some 13 years go.
