For those who want to make money online, there are only a few options available. Unlike Patreon and OnlyFans, OnlyFans has allowed content creators to publish any kind of content, including pornography, and put it behind a paywall for a long time.
It has been around since 2016 and is primarily known for being used by sex workers, but celebrities like Cardi B and Bella Thorne have also used it to make money. For a fee, some TikTok creators direct their fans to OnlyFans, a site that promises exclusive material in exchange for cash. OnlyFans, a popular social media platform with over 130 million users, recently declared it will no longer allow users to post material that is sexually explicit starting in October of that year.
But days later, it reversed course.
Here’s why, and what you should know about OnlyFans.
What is OnlyFans?
One of the world’s most popular social networks, OnlyFans is located in London. Timothy Stokely created it as a website-only service with no accompanying mobile apps. For a fee, creators can give films, images, and even one-on-one chats with customers. It’s a big hit in the sex industry right now. “The paywall of porn” was coined in early 2019 by the New York Times, which claimed OnlyFans had revolutionized the sex industry. But that’s all it’ll be remembered for for a while.
Why did OnlyFans try to ban porn?
“Banking partners and payout providers” were cited in a statement issued by the corporation on August 19, 2021, as a reason for prohibiting the publishing of content depicting sexually explicit behaviour. For the long-term viability of the site and to maintain an inclusive community of both creators and fans, we need to adapt our content restrictions,” the statement read.
OnlyFans has housed X-rated content, so the service is only available online and not on mobile platforms such as iOS and Android, don’t forget that.
An Axios report stated that OnlyFans has struggled to get outside investors since it permits content creators to broadcast sexual material. Perhaps the porn issue was too much for app shops and investors to overcome? If this is the case, OnlyFans’ decision to “clean up” in order to get funding is understandable.
Remember that OnlyFans has already tried to ban porn. OFTV, a free streaming service that does not allow sexually explicit material, was just introduced by the company. Since it’s made up of content from more than a hundred different contributors, OFTV’s platform presently streams over 800 videos, ranging from workouts to cooking tutorials and everything in between.
On the other hand, OnlyFans abruptly declared on Twitter on August 25th, 2021, that it will no longer be attempting to restrict sexually explicit content this fall.. In a Financial Times interview, OnlyFans CEO attributed the suspension to problems with its financial partners. Aside from being heavily criticised, OnlyFans was struck hard by reaction from both subscribers and content creators, who pointed out how it employed sex workers to gain power, and then dumped those workers when it became too powerful.
OnlyFans has now reversed its ban on the site. Because of OnlyFans’ banking partners’ assurances that they can accommodate all types of artists, it no longer has to be implemented.
Who uses OnlyFans?
It’s not simply sex workers who are using OnlyFans. More and more people are turning to OnlyFans as a way to make extra money. They can collect money from fans on a monthly basis, as well as from tips and the pay-per-view option, if they so choose. There is a $20 monthly fee for OnlyFans access for Blac Chyna, and rapper Rubi Rose made $100,000 in two days by uploading Instagram photographs to the site.
Bella Thorne, an actress, claimed to have made almost $2 million in a single week using the OnlyFans app.
On OnlyFans, you’ll find a tiny yet notable group of people:
- Cardi B – Musician
- Tana Mongeau – Influencer
- Bella Thorne – Actress
- Farrah Abraham – Reality TV star
- Blac Chyna – Reality TV star
- Dorinda Medley – Reality TV star
- Larsa Pippen – TV personality and former wife of an NBA legend
- Bhad Bhabie – Internet personality
- Aaron Carter – Musician
- Tyga – Musician
- Amber Rose – Internet personality
- Jordyn Woods – Internet personality
Which celebrities use OnlyFans?
There are many celebs and social media stars who utilize OnlyFans to promote their own material despite its massive sex workers base. As a way to promote her single “WAP” with Megan Thee Stallion, Cardi B set up an OnlyFans account Even while Cardi isn’t as active on it, she still utilizes it to connect with fans and hint at new songs. Also in 2021, DJ Khaled and Fat Joe started a combined Instagram account, where they shared encouraging remarks with their followers.
In order to promote his “baby-making record of the year,” SXTP4, The-Dream set up an Instagram account. But don’t expect to see any sexually graphic videos or photographs of the rapper in the near future. In order to further engage with his fans and encourage them to post “their own sensual choreography” to his current music, he set up a free page on his website.
In addition to reality stars like Blac Chyna and The Bachelor’s Chad Johnson, Safaree Samuels and Erica Mena of Love & Hip Hop: Hollywood also joined the site.
Tyga joined OnlyFans in 2020 and promised his fans that he will post exclusive content including music, photographs, and videos.
For the first time in his career, he has a platform where he can communicate directly to his followers and provide them exclusive songs, photos, videos and other behind-the-scenes information about his most recent albums. For the first time in my life, they can get an up-close-and-personal look at what I do on a daily basis. “It’s going to be a blast!”
Known for his hit song “Rack City,” rapper Too Raww revealed in December 2020 that he was launching Too Raww, a lifestyle and management company for aspiring models, in partnership with OnlyFans.
His account was deactivated in response to OnlyFans’ declaration that it would ban sexually explicit content (a move it later reversed). A subscription-based site named Myystar will soon be launched by the rapper.
Several more well-known celebrities have signed up for OnlyFans as well, including Chris Brown, Amber Rose, Jordyn Woods, Tyler Posey, Aaron Carter, and Austin Mahone.
Celebrity controversies
It didn’t take long for OnlyFans to become synonymous with sex work, despite its initial introduction as a subscription-based portal for exclusive material. In the wake of the coronavirus lockdowns, many people in the adult entertainment sector took to the platform to generate money. The sex workers who helped build OnlyFans saw their ranks plummet once well-known people like music artists and actresses joined the site.
The Bella Thorne controversy accentuated these issues even more. After launching an account last year, the 23-year-old actress reportedly made $2 million in the first two weeks of its existence. Many criticized Thorne and other celebrities for what they saw as a hobby on OnlyFans, which resulted in financial losses for individuals who depend on the platform for a career. Even though OnlyFans users were initially reprimanded for their use of a platform renowned for sexually explicit content, celebrities were later hailed as “entrepreneurs” for signing up.
A rich celebrity may make $1 million a day cosplaying as a sex worker, while sex workers are unable to seek epidemic aid because of prohibition. Working-class sex workers should receive the money, not celebrity LARPers. https://t.co/Z3yg3cHVQ1
The “naked” photo that Thorne sold for $200 turned out to be very mild, which led to accusations that he defrauded his subscribers. OnlyFans imposed a cap on how much authors could charge after the Thorne issue; the site stated that the change had nothing to do with Thorne.
On the same day she apologized, the actress, who has an estimated net worth of between $5 million and $12 million provided an explanation for her actions.
A greater number of individuals visiting our website will help normalize stigmas, and I injured you in my attempt to achieve this. Once or twice, I have put my career at jeopardy in an effort to reduce the stigma associated with sex work and pornography…
How to join OnlyFans
Create an account with OnlyFans by visiting their website. To join, you can either make an account from scratch, or you may use your Twitter or Google accounts to log in automatically.
Upon completing the registration process, you should be sent to the homepage. If you’d want to modify your username, email, or other preferences, we recommend first visiting your Account settings page. You can access your profile, security, and notification settings from the sidebar on the left.
Visit your profile to alter your name and subscription pricing.
How does OnlyFans work?
Home, Notifications, Create, Chats, and Menu are the five primary pages.
Home
You may see your feed, which is a stream of content shared by those you follow, including your close friends, at home. On OnlyFans, you’ll also get recommendations for other individuals to follow. There is a search bar at the top of the Home page where you may look for other users and creators to follow.
Notifications
You can see all of your alerts on the Notification page. Incredibly, right? Past interactions, likes, subscriptions, and more are included here.
Create
What are you waiting for? Create a new post on the Create posts tab and share it with your followers. Media and polls are also available.
Chats
Using the Chats page, you can start chatting with people you’ve connected with, such as a subscriber or a fan. Self-explanatory.
Menu
Display name, username and follower count are all displayed in a drop-down menu that appears to the right of your profile picture as you scroll down. From the Menu, you can also access your profile, as well as bookmarks and lists and settings and cards. As well, you can log out.
How to earn subscription money
Once you’ve added your payment information, verified your account, and set your subscription price, you’re ready to start making money with OnlyFans. Following the completion of these steps, you’ll be able to begin posting and encrypting content behind your paywall.
Add payment info and verify account
Go to the Menu on OnlyFans and click Add a Bank from the drop-down menu. You must be at least eighteen years old, and your account will be subject to verification. In order to use OnlyFans, you must provide us with some information about yourself, including your full name, address, date of birth, and an official photo ID like a passport or driver’s license. In addition, it asks if you intend to post any pornography. The OnlyFans Help hub has more information about the W-9 form for US creators (learn more about this here).
Set subscription price
Go to the menu, pick Profile, click Edit Profile, and then look for Subscription Price and Bundles to set your subscription price. You’ll be able to enter a monthly dollar amount there. The only way to establish a price or collect tips is to have your bank account or payment details set up.
How to earn from pay-per-view messages
Pay-per-view messages and PPVs are two extra ways to earn money on OnlyFan. If your fans want to see this content, they’ll have to pony up for it. Go to your messages, compose an email, attach your media, and click the price tag in the bottom right corner of your email to establish a price for your PPVs to individual accounts.
Go to the messaging page and select New message and All subscribers to distribute PPVs to all of your fans at once. Set the price by clicking the price tag icon after adding your message and material. When you click “send,” it will be sent to everyone on your mailing list.
How to become a fan/subscribe to creators
On the other hand, suppose you prefer to be a fan rather than a creator on OnlyFans. Go to the Home page and begin searching for a follower on OnlyFans.com. You can save them to a list or favorite them by tapping the star icon on their profile.
Additionally, their subscription tiers will be displayed on their profile. There are only six posts behind a paywall on Cardi B’s website right now. She charges $4.99 per month. Because her profile says “available now,” you can tell if she’s online at any given time. Her profile will also include the day and time she was last seen. She was last spotted on August 9th, 2021, just a few days prior to the publication of this guide.
As a fan and subscriber to OnlyFans, this is an example of what it’s like. Instead than subscribing on a monthly basis, you have the option to pay per view (PPV) or tip a creator, as we’ve discussed above. In certain cases, the OnlyFans creators include a link to an Amazon wishlist where you can make a donation on their behalf. This is not affiliated with OnlyFans in any way, shape, or form, therefore you should proceed with caution.
Is OnlyFans anonymous?
OnlyFans, like many social media platforms, has its own privacy concerns. As a result, many creators utilize a stage name or handle on their social media profiles in order to maintain anonymity and protect their personal and professional relationships.
This information will be shared with third-party companies for “verification purposes,” according to the OnlyFans website, although the company says this information will not be shared with subscribers or other users.
Many content providers on OnlyFans have also chosen to hide their faces in their posts. Some people prefer to leave their heads out of the picture entirely, while others prefer to wear a mask.
“I personally feel pretty safe on it,” an anonymous OnlyFans user told the College Review. “However, I do try to keep my face out of everything because there is always the risk that something may get leaked and it’s also something that you kind of have to accept or prepare yourself for when you start an OnlyFans,” he says.
Onlyfans Statistics
OnlyFans Has Paid Out More Than $2 Billion to Creators
At the time when Bella Thorne was lighting OnlyFans alight (August 2020), Variety reported that OnlyFans had paid out more than $1 billion to creators. By November 2020, The Information was stating that this number had increased to $2 billion.
Bella Thorne Earned More Than $1 Million in Her First 24 Hours
Bella Thorne, an actress, singer, and model, made a big impression on OnlyFans in a short time. There’s little doubt that her time on the podium was a busy one.
In her first 24 hours on OnlyFans, she set a platform record, generating over $1 million in revenue. She had made this possible by posting a video montage of her ideas on her Instagram page (where she has 24.3 million followers).
After a few months, her earnings had increased from $1 million to $2 million. She had set the monthly fee for her OnlyFans membership at $20. (with a limited-time 20 percent discount for a one-month subscription and 15 percent off if fans purchase three- or six-month access).
According to Thorn’s later admissions, she had opened her OnlyFans account as a test for the director of the documentary, Sean Baker. Baker, on the other hand, has categorically disputed this.
Bella Thorne was only on OnlyFans for a brief period of time. She sparked outrage by charging $200 for “naked” photos that actually showed her in lingerie, causing a backlash. Refunds were requested in droves as a result, and OnlyFans is said to have altered its payment policies in response. Workers on the platform complained that Thorn’s activities had a negative impact on their income.
Most Accounts Take Home Less Than $145 Per Month
OnlyFans doesn’t pay a lot of money to most performers. As it turns out, the vast majority of them are paid less than $145 a month.
However, it must be noted out that the bulk of OnlyFans accounts have no fans at all, which contributes to this disparity. They don’t have the infrastructure to support a big broadcast operation.
Top 1% of Accounts Make 33% of the Money
Content providers’ income is distributed in a power-law fashion, according to XSRUS. People at the top of their game make a lot more money than the rest of us. For every account, the top 1% of accounts make 33% of all money, while the top 10% of accounts make 73%.
In order to make money on OnlyFans, influencers and celebrities have an advantage. With them, they bring a ready-to-go audience. Perhaps it is not difficult to transfer a portion of an Instagram following to OnlyFans and generate revenue from them.
Average Earnings from OnlyFans is $180/month
Estimated revenues for OnlyFans creators have been calculated by XSRUS. They estimate that the average monthly earnings of the accounts are $180. It’s also worth noting, though, that their estimates exclude tipping because OnlyFans doesn’t keep track of tips.
OnlyFans Takes a 20% Cut on its Users’ Transactions
OnlyFans has a simple business plan that is easy to understand. Content that requires a subscription can be found on their site. Subscribers pay for exclusive material that creators produce and post. That money goes to OnlyFans.
OnlyFans actually retains a sizable 20 percent of all payments made by users. OnlyFans makes more money the more subscribers you have and the more you charge. Not only for the explicit content, but for everything on OnlyFans.
OnlyFans has a superior business plan than Uber or Airbnb, according to XSRUS. Only one customer group can be served at a time by an Uber driver or Airbnb property owner. In contrast, an OnlyFans channel has no such restriction. OnlyFans receives a 20% commission from every subscription, and all subscribers can watch content at the same time. There is no limit to how many devoted fans a single selfie can reach on OnlyFans.
500,000 New Users Per Day | +- 15 Million New users Per Month!
More than a thousand new users are signing up for OnlyFans per hour, according to founder Tim Stockley in The West Australian in 2019.
When it was first said, it must have seemed like a lot. However, the platform continues to attract new users. Mashable mentions an OnlyFans spokesperson who claims that in only the month of March 2020, the number of new members and content creators nearly doubled.
By the end of December 2020, according to many reports, OnlyFans had an average of 500,000 new users joining the site per day.
7,000 – 8,000 New Content Creators Per Day
“We are now on-boarding over 3000 new content creators every week,” OnlyFans founder Tim Stockley was reported as stating in The West Australian in early 2019. Of course, this was before the COVID outbreak left everyone stranded at home with nothing to do. Since then, OnlyFans has attracted a growing number of content creators.
According to the site’s chief operational officer Thomas Stokely, by May 2020, the site was acquiring 7,000-8,000 new content providers every day.
50 Million Registered Users
A lack of official registered user numbers is a problem just like the lack of official content producer numbers. We can only draw conclusions based on papers that have been published in the past. OnlyFans reportedly had 7 million registered users at the end of 2019. A January 2020 Economist profile of Lucy-Anne Brooks, a British OnlyFans star, indicates that OnlyFans claimed to have 12 million registered users at this time.
OnlyFans had 26 million registered members in March 2020, according to Mashable.
However, Variety reported in late August 2020 that OnlyFans had more than 50 million registered users. It’s clear that many people have turned to OnlyFans while in COVID-enforced confinement to pass the time.
Top Onlyfans Earners
OnlyFans’ highest-earning stars were already well-known superstars before signing up for the service, so it’s not surprising that their fan communities are willing to pay top bucks for exclusive content. Don’t treat the top earners on the site as a threat to your own success. Use their experiences as inspiration and tips on how you can also use OnlyFans to earn money.
It is up to you as a content creator on OnlyFans to select what kind of content you want to produce, how often, and how much you charge. With OnlyFans, producers don’t have to conform to a brand’s preconceived notions of what’s great, as is the case with many other social media sites. It allows content creators to express themselves in any way they choose.
All of the data shown below are based on information gathered from a variety of sources, including media stories and academic studies.
