Earlier this month, in a UK financial filing, OnlyFans reported record profits and revenue for the 2023 fiscal year, along with a huge surge in the number of participating creators using the platform. In 2023, the active user base jumped by 29%, to a current total of around 4.12 million. And it’s easy to see why there are also far more creators using OnlyFans than ever before. The company is a truly international sensation; only around 66% of its total revenue is generated within the US.
Gross payments made on OnlyFans – that is, the total contributions of users to their favorite creators – rose from $5.55 billion in 2022 to $6.63 billion last year. In terms of actual earnings – minus taxes, refunds, and other deferments – OnlyFans creators brought in around $5.32 billion last year, or an average of $1,300 per person.
When we think about the creator economy and the platforms on which the most popular creators and influencers build their followings, OnlyFans is sometimes left out, in favor of what would maybe be considered more “mainstream” platforms like YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, X, Instagram, and so forth. But with numbers like these, OnlyFans is already part of the mainstream. Goldman Sachs, based on data from eMarketer, estimates that the total creator economy is valued at around $250 billion. With $5 billion in earnings generated for creators just last year, OnlyFans makes up a pretty sizable chunk of that total.
The platform got a big visibility push over the last few years from celebrities. Rapper Iggy Azalea joined in early 2023, leading to (now debunked) rumors that she was taking home millions annually from her photos and videos. Actors Denise Richards and Drea DiMatteo also maintain OnlyFans accounts, and for good or ill, joining the site has become a kind of misogynist-adjacent shorthand whenever a woman goes viral on social media or captures the world’s attention. Is she going to “cash in” by starting an OnlyFans?
Though it’s mostly associated with sexy photos and other adult content, it’s worth pointing out that OnlyFans is not exclusively a pornographic website, and many creators already utilize it as more like an edgy Substack or Patreon-style service, allowing subscribers access to their most recent work. Comedian Whitney Cummings hosts streaming comedy shows for the in-house streaming video platform – OFTV – and has her own account where she posts roasts, comedy videos, and exclusive excerpts from her podcast.
This is not a new development, either; OnlyFans has been promoting the “multiple uses besides pornography” pitch for years now. In 2021, Slate wrote about their efforts to showcase the various photographers, fitness coaches, make-up gurus, and others who sell content there without taking off their clothes.
That’s not to say making TikTok sketches and OnlyFans videos are identical in practice. Producing regular content for OnlyFans as a career brings with it some unique challenges. A Business Insider column last year by a former OF creator will sound familiar to anyone who has suffered internet burnout but speaks specifically to the experience of making intimate content that pushes personal boundaries. Back in November, The Washington Post also considered the many spoken and unspoken layers of complexity that arise from merging sex work with “gig work” like delivering DoorDash or driving Uber.
But regardless of whether or not creators are working in an adult-only niche, making content for OnlyFans bears a lot of strong similarities to making content for other platforms. It just makes practical sense to be more agnostic, and consider these kinds of creators and their concerns in with people working in all other categories of digital media.
OnlyFans creators are in a kind of attention economy with one another, with celebrities and star influences soaking up a lot of the focus and revenue, leaving newcomers struggling for leftover clicks and views. Because of the unique nature of OnlyFans content, it’s more tricky to promote up-and-coming creators to existing users, and there’s little “scrolling” or ability to share fresh feeds algorithmically. While YouTubers may occasionally find their videos popping up in the related feeds of popular content, giving them at least a temporary traffic and visibility boost, users promoting OnlyFans content are forced to rely entirely on third-party platforms like X and Reddit to find and connect with new subscribers.
On the plus side, creators on OnlyFans take home 80% of their earnings, compared to YouTube’s 55-45 ad revenue split with its creators. This does make some rational sense, as OnlyFans contributors are purely transactional, and not based on advertising that the platform must sell. The creator sells their content directly to a user, who pays the platform for access.
Researching the relationship between creators and OnlyFans, you find the same kinds of horror stories as with every other platform: individuals who come to rely on income from a user-generated content platform, only to find that their income has been delayed, stalled, or shut down entirely due to obscure rules, random delays, or other bureaucratic mishaps. Navigating these ever-shifting relationships is a huge part of the job, whether you’re making videos for TikTok, YouTube, or OnlyFans.
Additionally, bootlegging, piracy, and plagiarism are a major concern for all creators, regardless of whether or not their projects involve racy photos. Just as YouTubers lament their videos being ripped and re-uploaded to Instagram without credit, entire sites and forums exist online for pirating and re-distributing private OnlyFans content for free, essentially taking money out of the pockets of hard-working individual creators by stealing their work.
All creators also share similar concerns about transparency and authenticity. These murky questions about how much of themselves and their lives creators must share with their audience to develop feelings of closeness and intimacy, but without risking their own privacy, sanity, or sense of self, are as true of vloggers and social media influencers as they are porn stars, ASMR experts, and nude models. As the adult industry and sites like OnlyFans are often at the forefront of technology and new ways of interacting with their audiences, they can sometimes function as a canary in the coal mine, providing an early glimpse into situations that will eventually concern all creators.
Take the rise of “OnlyFans Management Agencies,” like Wonderland, which Vice profiled last year. A major component of earning consistent revenue on OnlyFans is developing relationships with individual fans, who will become reliable contributors over months or even years. Managing their communities and giving members of the audience one-on-one attention can be a time-consuming slog for Twitch and TikTok influencers, but maintaining a relationship with your audience on OnlyFans requires even more focus and an enhanced sense of intimacy. (While all creator-fan relationships are on some level performative, OnlyFans private chats are perhaps where it truly jumps the boundary into full-on acting.)
Services like Wonderland use proxies to engage with OnlyFans community members, freeing the creators themselves to focus on their actual content. Practically, this means a lot of “fans” think they are chatting with the creator themselves – the person in the photos for which they have paid – but are in fact talking to a professional “chatter” who is ghost-writing messages for a salary. Often, these chatters are working in large professional settings overseas, such as offices in Pakistan, India, and The Philippines.
Fans don’t currently have the expectation that a famous influencer will respond to their messages, so for now, this practice makes more immediate sense for the adult industry and services like OnlyFans. Still, it’s not impossible to envision a situation in which a social media star or mainstream influencer might engage the services of a professional fan corresponder. (Certainly, they already have staffers handling their social media presence.) There have also been suggestions that this is a job AI could eventually step in and handle, though so far the results have been less than satisfactory.
OnlyFans isn’t just a window into the future of all content creation. It is content creation, just like making stuff for any other distribution channel online. Leaving these folks out of the wider discussion about creator rights and building online communities, lumping them in with “sex workers” instead of colleagues, just doesn’t make any practical sense.
