Eps 1637: Onlyfans
— The too lazy to register an account podcast
| Host image: | StyleGAN neural net |
|---|---|
| Content creation: | GPT-3.5, |
Host
Perry Bowman
Podcast Content
OnlyFans, a subscription-based social platform, has emerged as a profitable avenue for certain influencers, especially adult content creators, to make money. Launched in 2016, OnlyFans is a subscription-based social media platform in which users can sell and/or buy original content - usually the sexually explicit variety. OnlyFans has sought to expand to other areas of content besides pornography, an industry with a problematic relationship with the broader financial world.
According to OnlyFans, over 100 creators have earned more than $1 million after they have monetized their content on the platform. While creators are able to set up accounts for free, When they make money on OnlyFans, OnlyFans pays 80%, keeping 20% of earnings as commission. Another way of making money on the platform - for many, the more lucrative - is by directly messaging fans, which pays either a per-message fee or a flat rate, as well as creating personalized content.
Some TikTok creators are also steering their followers toward OnlyFans, where they promise exclusive content in return for cash. OnlyFans is not exactly a name you associate with fintech: OnlyFans made its name by offering amateur, adult content creators a way to earn money via subscriptions. Last year, it announced that it was banning adult content from the site, following pressure from card-payment companies and efforts that were reportedly made to secure external financing.
OnlyFans later announced plans to ban explicit material, hoping it would help it attract investors, but changed course after creators complained. OnlyFans launched streaming platform OFTV last year as a destination where it can host more professional-grade content. OnlyFans originally launched as a subscription-based platform to offer exclusive content, and did not take long for it to become synonymous with the work of the sex industry.
Because OnlyFans allowed people to post content that would have got them banned from other social media sites such as Facebook and Instagram, OnlyFans was also heavily used by sex workers and amateur pornographers, who uploaded videos and pictures, and interacted with their fans using direct messages. OnlyFans has been around since 2016, and is primarily used by sex workers, although celebrities such as Cardi B and Bella Thorne have recently started using OnlyFans as well in order to make money. Patreon and OnlyFans are both popular options, but OnlyFans is definitely the more controversial one, as it allows creators to upload any type of content, including pornography, and locks all types of content behind a paywall.
Start basically means that OnlyFans was created so that users could publish content behind a paywall that fans had to sign up to get access. Each creators trademarked content is protected with OnlyFans as well, making sure that they cannot be shared outside of the platform. The goal of OnlyFans is to give creators a platform to produce and share valuable, premium content they cannot obtain elsewhere.
OnlyFans is an online platform and application created in 2016, in which individuals pay for content through monthly subscription. OnlyFans has built up a substantial payments business, according to Lee Taylor, and has recently processed $18 million worth of payments to creators on one day. At that point, onlyFans had paid out $3.2 billion in total to creators, of whom about 16,000 earned at least $50,000 per year.
After this controversy, OnlyFans placed limits on how much creators could charge; OnlyFans insisted the changes had nothing to do with Bella Thorne. After Earnings, new restrictions were introduced limiting how much other creators on the platform can charge, and how fast they can receive payments, although OnlyFans stated that these restrictions were not related to Thorne, and were instead part of a process of evolution. Following the rapid rise of OnlyFans, a number of fraudulent videos appeared on sites such as YouTube promising free content, claiming to show viewers how to hack the accounts of creators.
Many also took issue with early users of OnlyFans being berated for using OnlyFans, whereas celebrities were later praised for being entrepreneurs when they chose to join. There was certainly some hesitancy about joining OnlyFans, fearing it might impact a personal relationship or professional opportunities, so many creators used stage names or handles in their accounts, for the sake of anonymity. In addition to sex workers, there are fitness instructors, dancers, and entertainers, all of whom use OnlyFans to publish paid content and communicate with fans.
OnlyFans also offers a referral program whereby those who recommend a creator on the platform can earn five percent of that referring creators earnings for the first 12 months, up to the first $1 million earned by that creators recommended referrer. The referral program used to pay out 5% of a referred creatoras earnings for life, but due to the popularity of OnlyFans, now referrals are limited to one year after signing up, up to the first $1 million earned by the referred creator. OnlyFans, launched in 2016, has been experiencing a surge in business amid the pandemic, with OnlyFans becoming the method by which creators can make money selling directly to subscribers.
In May 2020, CEO Tim Stokely revealed that OnlyFans was seeing around 200,000 new users per 24 hours, with between 6,000-8,000 new creators joining each day. As we mentioned above, Mashable quoted an OnlyFans spokesperson claiming the number of new users and creators had almost doubled during March 2020 alone.