Most of
@User#8628's answers are pretty much exactly what I would have said, so I won't repeat those. However, I'll add a few points/comments where I see things a little differently or on topics which she didn't address.
2. Is it even safe to talk about money online?
Some SBs want you to spell out how much and for what? Maybe I'm paranoid but I don't want to be a victim of LE. I don't want to spell out that I expect sex. I definitely don't want to state : money for sex.
It is almost completely safe to discuss the money and/or money for sex online in terms of legal risk. Even in the US I don't think there has ever been a case or arrest associated with SA. It is possible to imagine LE, probably driven by some politically ambitious and/or religious nut-job prosecutor, going after SA itself for promoting prostitution or something of the sort; however, SA has been operating for over ten years without problems. But the chance of LE going after an individual person or single sugar couple seems very remote. For one thing it would be much trickier and more expensive than going after conventional prostitution activities and could be quite hard to prove in court. So far at least, there have been no legal problems at al in the sugar world afaik and no one much worries about them.
3. Some SBs seem all about the money.
I thought sugar dating was about some kind of relationship?
Varies all over the map. Some sugar arrangements are mostly relationship and hardly at all about money for sex; some are just the reverse. You need to decide what interests you and then spend the considerable time and effort required to find an SB who wants the same sort of relationship and with whom you match up well in all the other important ways too.
4. Is it ok to have sex the first date? Or is it safer to avoid that and get to know her better?
-One friend alluded to the film (Fatal Attraction)
In this respect, I think you can treat it just like any other sort of dating. Would you have sex on the first date if you met the woman in a bar or were fixed up with her by a mutual friend. The answer for sugar dating can be the same.
Should I post a picture?
I have a private picture I share. But how important is it to have a profile pic?
I get a kick out of the distinction between the open profile pics and the private pics because SBs have such different ideas about which should be which. A lot of SB show their bodies in the public photos but their faces only in the private ones while a lot of others (roughly an equal number I think) do just the reverse, and some seem to put exactly he same sorts of photos in the public and private categories! I don't know, but SDs may well do exactly the same things.
In terms of discretion, be aware that your public profile pictures can be seen by anyone who makes an account and that SA uses people's main public profile picture (the one at the top of the profile page) for advertising outside of the site...where they can be seen by anyone, even without making an SA account. For that reason, I don't have any public pics in my profile, but I show the private ones to any SB who asks for them and to any SB in whom I am at all interested whether she asks or not. So, you can suit yourself. Some SBs state in their profiles that they won't respond to messages from any SD who does not show any photos to them, either public or private ones.
I find this SD world very foreign and it has a steep learning curve.
It appears to me that you are having trouble in large part because you think that there is one right or preferred or normal way of sugaring and that you need to learn it. Ime and imo, that isn't the case. It can work in many many different ways, and one of the biggest charms of sugaring is that you don't have to stick to some system or script developed by other people. You can make up your own and look for someone who has a similar notion of what sugaring should be.
-Ww
