It's an interesting question DaBurg, especially if the economic information relayed to you by 'Candace' and your friend is anywhere near correct (bearing in mind they could be dressing things up somewhat).

My take on it is this:

1)Porn girls don't have to interact with the end consumer if they don't want to. No porn star will ever meet all of her customers, but a stripper will.

2)Strippers strip and that's all. Porn girls have product they can sell, be it DVDs, magazines, polaroids etc. A stripper just strips.

3) Fame/Notoriety/Brand Name: As Holly pointed out, girls who appear in adult magazines can demand more money. Every strip club proclaims they have the hottest babes around, but you have to take their word for it, which isn't exactly unbiased. Now, if you have a 'pre-judged' girl, be she a Fox magazine covergirl, a Hustler Honey, or even Penthouse's Pet of the Year, she has a certain amount of cachet/fame/titular worth as well as an endorsement from an unconnected source. Guys will want to see what made her so special that the editors picked her. There may very well be girls in the club on a par with her or better looking than her, but they're not Hustler Honeys or Penthouse Pets. It's like setting a guy up on a blind date with a girl who's Playboy Playmate quality or a girl who actually is a Playboy Playmate. Sight unseen, he'll go for the one that already is a Playmate.

4)Using Stormy Daniels as an example, porn stars can do both. Stormy does adult movies and strips too...or more appropriately she 'Feature Dances'. She's not just some run-of-the-mill stripper but a Feature Dancer. Strippers can't do porn or they become porn stars.

5) Stormy again...would she get all that mainstream work if she was just another stripper in some titty bar somewhere? Our survey says: No!

6) Are there such things as 'Contract Strippers' who are signed to exclusive contracts to one club? Do strippers have their own signature sex toy or moulded pussy thing? No!

7) How many household name strippers can you think of that get coverage in mainstream magazines like FHM, Maxim, ICE, etc.?

An interesting counterpoint to this would be to know (or at least have some rough guesses) how much contracts with respective companies (Such as Vivid, Digital Playground, Wicked, Adam & Eve, Club Jenna etc.) are actually worth, so as to compare them with the potential earnings a 'gonzo girl' can make. We might find that there's not that much of a difference between what a Kelly Wells and a Teagan Presley earn. Whilst a contract limits the amount of video work a girl can do compared to a gonzo girl, it does still leave plenty of moneymaking options open, like dancing and stills work, as well as providing that contract girl cachet which says 'I'm so good it made sense for my company to take me off the market and stop their competitors using me'.