what percentage of exotic dancers do it because they’re desperate and see it as their only way to make money

What percentage of people work other risky jobs for the same reason? Sex work gets a lot of coverage from sea lions asking these types of questions without offering the same support for other hard labor like construction or oil rig work.

The issue here is that people are being forced into unwinnable situations where they feel they are forced to take jobs they despise, regardless of profession. Sex work is work, and so is hard labor. The people doing the exploitation are at fault, not the industry as a whole.

but then it’s a myth, they don’t make a ton of money,

It's not a myth - it's just not universally true. All the sex workers I personally knew out-earned me and my "professional" career by several orders of magnitude - but they are, of course, a minority.

There are people in my (ex) line of work that also got wealthy doing it - bit I daresay that your chances of earning a decent living doing sex work is better than your chances of joining that exclusive little club.

We're all prostitutes here. Some of us just gets paid more doing it than others.