A TEENAGER is auctioning off her virginity online to "highest bidder" in hopes she will raise £57,000 to help her parents pay their mortgage and her university fees.

The 18-year-old from Sydney set up the website using the pseudonym Siena Payton shortly after birthday last month, news.com.au reported.

So far she has received two bids, one for £570 ($1,000 AUS) and one for £5,709 ($10,000 AUS), but she hopes to raise more.

She said: "That’s not my goal amount. I’m hoping for $100,000.”

Payton said she got the idea after seeing news stories online about supposed “virginity auctions” where some young women claimed to have made millions of dollars.

She said: “I’ve been thinking about it for a long time and I thought I would give it a go.

“I thought it’s best to do it now, later on I might meet someone and I don’t want to have to wait for my first time because I’m still waiting to sell my virginity.”

Payton, who hopes to study IT at the University of Technology Sydney, said it wasn't a big deal to her and she sees it as an opportunity to get financial help.

She said: “I just need some quick financial help and I think it’ll give me a good boost to help pay for uni fees, I know you have to buy a lot of textbooks.

“Also a car, and I can help my parents pay off their mortgage and pay bills.”

The stories Payton is referring to have called into question over whether they are scams, publicity stunts, or sex workers pretending to be virgins.

In 2010, a 19-year-old from New Zealand claimed to have auctioned her virginity for £24,108 ($45,000 NZ) on a classifieds site to pay for her university fees.

In 2014, a 28-year-old medical student from the US made headlines by documenting the process on her blog, “Musings of a Virgin Whore”, saying she had received bids as high as £62,3056 ($800,000 US) before getting cold feet.

Earlier this year, a 23-year-old from California enlisted Nevada’s Moonlite Bunny Ranch to help auction her virginity for an expected £5.71million ($10million US).

A large number of stories have been promoted by controversial German website Cinderella Escorts, which has had its credibility was thrown into doubt earlier this year.

Payton said she was aware of those claims but was “not sure who was telling the truth”.

She said she had applied on the website but the process was “very tedious and long” so she pulled out, which she now realised was a “good decision as something could’ve gone wrong”.

She reached out to another woman for advice, a 22-year-old student from Brazil who told media in August she was auctioning her virginity for £740,000 ($1.3million AUS).

Payton said: “I found her off an article, I went to her web page and emailed her on there,”

“I was asking her questions, asking her advice on how to start. She told me, you know, ‘Make a web page, make sure you set up the details correctly, know what you’re looking for.’”

Payton copied the layout and much of the text from the other woman’s website.

One section reads: “I don’t care about the age or the appearance of a man.

“I admire respectful and intelligent men. Men who take care of women, give compliments and know what they want. I will be waiting for you to take my innocence.”

It also lists a series of rules for the process, stating that “documents of my virginity will be provided by local health authorities”, the buyer “also has the further possibility to check me up again with a doctor he trusts” and “we will spend 12 hours together at the hotel where the winner is staying”.

Payton said she didn’t want to ask her parents, who are originally from South America, for any financial help and would “probably” never tell them.

She said: “I think they would think it’s kind of stupid, I don’t think they would get angry, they would just ask me why I would do something like that.

“I guess I’d lie (about where the money came from). I would just say I got a job.”

Dr Lauren Rosewarne, senior social scientist at the University of Melbourne and author of Intimacy on the Internet, said she didn’t see it as “either positive or negative”.

She said: “At the end of the day it’s up to a woman how she uses her body, and if she wants to profit from selling access to her virginity that’s her choice.

“I do think it says something about our culture that the quickest way for a woman to earn $10,000 upwards is to do this.

“Just be careful."