Las Vegas- In my business,” says Christi Lake, an adult film star with more than 300 movies under her belt, “Las Vegas is a great place to live. It’s close to LA, where most of the videos are shot, we have our annual adult film awards and convention here, and home prices are reasonable. And nobody really cares what you do for a living. The city affords you some privacy.”

It is a business bigger than Major League Baseball, the NBA, and the NFL. Over ten-billion-dollars-a-year is generated by the sex industry. Las Vegas Review Columnist John L. Smith takes a look at the big money that lures so many women into the business

There are at least forty topless clubs in Las Vegas and no shortage of dancers or customers to fill them. The top gentlemen’s clubs have over one-hundred girls working the floor every night. Las Vegan Jack Sheehan is releasing his latest book called “Skin City.” It’s a look at the sex industry from the eyes of those who participate.

Sheehan interviewed over a hundred people in the business of taking their clothes off.

“I took off my top and he threw three-thousand dollars in one dollar bills. Three-thousand one dollar bills is a mountain of money. And when you’re on a starting salary and not being paid that much. I said I’m taking a leave of absence. I’m doing this.”

That’s how USC graduate Sabrina Markey got her start as a dancer. One night in a New York City strip club and she was ready for a career change. “I said sure 500 dollars for one song. I’m all over that.”

After seven years as a success in the strip club industry, she’s helping other dancers with a company called Stripper 101. “This is a business that if you’re going to do it you should take it seriously. I have a lot of information. It’s a 3 day, 3 hour a day course. It’s an intensive seminar. Everything you need to know to become a stripper.”

Topics include money management, etiquette and law school. “As an independent contractor you should know everything including the laws regarding how you conduct yourself for your business.”

Inexperience is what Markey says leads to strippers crossing the line during a lap dance. “The dancers get more aggressive because they feel like they have to compete.”

It starts with a twenty, but here’s how dancers cash in on their clients. “They might go on stage and make 20 or 30 dollars. Generally speaking every lap dance is 20 a song if you’re on the main floor. If you go into any of the VIP rooms they usually run anywhere from 3 songs for a 100 dollars to 4 or 500 dollars for an hour straight.”

But before they can count that cash they’re the ones paying the club. “When you are an entertainer in Las Vegas, stripper, or however you want to call it, you are a independent contractor. You basically rent space from a club. So girls come in and pay a house fee. Whether it’s a flat fee or a percentage of what they make for the night.”

It’s an element of the business that’s accepted — and Markey believes it keeps the dancer in control and able to decide where she works. “I don’t think it’s extortion because as an independent contractor I need a place to work. I need space to rent. So if you really break it down 50 or 60 dollars a night is nothing.”

The controversy doesn’t stop there; recent corruption scandals are steaming up politics and their suspected connection to strip clubs. “I have a theory. I think that a lot of pressure on the clubs that has created these civic scandals and the county commissioners in trouble with the law. I think the hotels on the strip want that business back. They’ve seen tens of millions of dollars of their high roller money go out the door and spend their night in a club when they used to gamble.”

“On any given night in Las Vegas in one gentleman’s club there is a customer who is spending in excess of $2500 for the night on somebody.”

Good money for now, but it’s not cash flow that will last forever. “At age 50 you shouldn’t feel like I have to go take my clothes off tonight.”

The money made in the sex industry of Las Vegas doesn’t stop with those who directly participate, cab and limo drivers, valets, bell hops among others all benefit economically by making recommendations to high rollers on where they can go to satisfy their sin city fix.