OnlyFans: This Is How It Works

by Ellen Moore

This week on The Slut Show Ellen Moore is joined by OnlyFans entrepreneur and porn creator Nympha Ophis (she/her). They discuss what it’s like working in the porn industry, how her husband feels about her job and what goes into creating content for OnlyFans. This week’s Slutty Science explores the website OnlyFans, looking at its money making opportunities and structure to find an answer to the question: how does OnlyFans work?

In 2016 Timothy Stokely launched OnlyFans. With over 30 million registered users and over 1 million content creators, the corona-virus pandemic helped the site to become a booming business. Let’s take a closer look at how Only Fans works, what you are obliged to pay and what you can possibly earn.

Creators offer content locked behind a paywall, which only becomes accessible when users subscribe to the content-creator in question. The prices of subscriptions vary anywhere between the minimum of $4,99 and $49,99 a month.

When actress and singer Bella Thorne joined the platform in August 2020, she set a record by earning over $1 million dollars in revenue within the first 24 hours she was on OnlyFans. Within a week of joining the site Thorne earned double that amount, making $2 million dollars.

The former Disney star supposedly sold non-nude images - as nude images - resulting in an overwhelming amount of refund requests. OnlyFans proceeded to change the platform rules, within a week of Thorne joining the OnlyFans family, however the website claimed these platform changes were unrelated to the redheads debut.

Until that moment paid private messages could be sold for a maximum of $200 dollars, which is now a maximum of $100 dollars. Pay-per-view posts - for creators who don’t charge a subscription fee - used to max out at $200 dollars, now that is a maximum of only $50 dollars.

Another way to earn money through OnlyFans is by using their referral program. When someone refers a creator to the platform they can earn 5% of the referred creator’s earnings for the first 12 months, up to the first $1 million dollar earned by the referred creator. Interestingly, there are no limitations to the number of referred creators, or total referral earnings. That offers a huge business opportunity for people working as talent scouts or it offers opportunities for pimps. 

The OnlyFans business model is very straightforward. The platform takes a 20% cut from all things content creators earn. The exact amount of money content creators collectively earn remains hard to guess, because OnlyFans has not come out with a lot of official statistics in regards to - well, basically anything. This makes it hard to make estimates about collective amounts of earnings, users and content-creators. Therefore, we will just stick to what we know for sure.

On average it's been said that creators earn around $180 dollars - a month -  excluding tips.

The majority of OnlyFans creators however, receive less than $145 dollars per month.

The top 1% of accounts make 33% of all the money earned by the platform.

And the top 10% of all accounts make a baffling 73% of all money that is spent on OnlyFans.

Interested in hearing more? You can now watch the full episode of The Slut Show on YouTube or listen to it on your favorite podcast platform- now also on Apple Podcasts & Spotify! Either way make sure to subscribe and turn on the notification bell, to get notified of new uploads.

Want to send in questions for our mail-segment? Want to be on the show yourself or do you have suggestions for subjects to talk about? Don’t hesitate and hit us up on Instagram @TheSlutShowWithEllenMoore!

We hope to see you on our socials and for now, Sluts Out!

Lots of love,

Ellen Moore.

‘The Slut Show With Ellen Moore’: A place to speak openly about shit you and I have to deal with on a daily basis. About feminism, insecurities, feeling like a bomb ass bitch and obviously about loads of sex. Raw, real and uncensored, Ellen Moore brings you your weekly dose of empowerment.

 

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