This rapidly growing platform represents the creative economy in a more commercial manner, where sex is just another unit of content for profit. Warning: This chart requires JavaScript to be enabled. Please enable JavaScript for the best experience.
In the Morning of the New America
In the morning, workers of the Bryce Adams Empire enter OnlyFans through a security gate connected to a camera, proceeding to the $120,000 paved temple entrance and parking their cars outside Bryce Adams’s $2.5 million office home. A large American flag flutters from a pole above their office door. A sign depicting Adams, in tight shorts, is also visible from behind.
Business Operation
Inside, a story designer opens the publishing plans for the day not only for OnlyFans but also for all of the clients’ other sites – Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube. Editors begin to trim videos into short, repeatable clips, optimized for viral dissemination. The “collabs” are sent to paying fans.
The Creative Economy
More than 3 million creators are now publishing worldwide on OnlyFans, which has 230 million “fan” subscribers – a global audience equivalent to two-thirds the size of the United States itself, according to the company’s report in August. Thanks to help from the pandemic that isolated people at home, total fan payments to creators last year rose to $5.5 billion – more than what all online influencers in the U.S. earned from ads that year, according to an analysis of the creative economy this spring by Goldman Sachs.
OnlyFans: The Most Explicit Platform
If the earnings of creators on OnlyFans were counted as a whole, the company would rank around 90th on Forbes’s list of the largest private companies in America by revenue, surpassing Twitter, Neiman Marcus Group, New Balance, Hard Rock International, and Hallmark Cards.
OnlyFans: A Direct and Efficient Platform
On the surface, OnlyFans is a straightforward business: fans (primarily men) pay to scroll through feeds of images and videos (primarily of women), with some perks offered at an additional cost, such as chatting live with the creator or custom videos according to fan requests. However, as creators’ popularity on the platform rises, content trading has become more professional. Many creators now operate as independent media companies, with support teams, growth strategies, and promotional budgets, employing online marketing and data analytics to create a fictional lifestyle.
OnlyFans: The New Work of a New Generation
OnlyFans has become a model for how a new generation of online creators is monetized. Influencers on major sites use OnlyFans to capitalize on the audiences they’ve spent years building. Creators on OnlyFans have turned viral moments on large social networks into a marketing strategy, using Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok as sales channels to attract new viewers to subscribe.
OnlyFans: Explicit Profit
The rapid rise of OnlyFans highlights how the internet has helped foster a new style of modern freelance work that creators see as safe, remote, and self-directed. Pani Farvid, an associate professor and director of the SexTech Lab at The New School in New York, who has interviewed digital sex workers, notes that the creators’ disregard for digital sex commerce has sparked a broader debate about whether OnlyFans’s promotion of feminist freedom is merely a facade: a new category of techno-capitalism selling the same heroic dream. Some aspiring newcomers to OnlyFans have been urged to understand what they are getting into: the pressures of performing for a global audience; the existence of an unforgiving internet. “There is no room for naivety,” one commented in a guide they posted on Reddit’s r/CreatorsAdvice.
OnlyFans:
Financial Freedom and Excellence
The allure of financial freedom and the challenge of excellence have led to the activation of many OnlyFans creators like start-up tech companies. The Adams process is registered in official business records as a limited liability company and offers quarterly performance reviews for employees and free lunches. It operates efficiently, thanks to an internally designed system that tracks millions of data points about customers and content, ensuring that every video is meticulously planned and optimized.
OnlyFans: Huge Profits
Adams and her team are among the highest-earning accounts on OnlyFans, which the platform calls the “top 0.01 percent.” Since posting her first picture in 2021, Adams’s OnlyFans accounts have generated $16.5 million in sales, over 1.4 million fans, and more than 11 million “likes.” She is now earning about $30,000 a day – more than most small American businesses – from subscriptions, video sales, messages, and tips, with half of that as net profit.
OnlyFans: Regular Work
The Adams team sees their work as a clean and unobjectionable business, where each party gets what they want. Buyers on dating apps are ignored; they are widows, divorced, or bored individuals eager to pay for intimacy with a partner who is generally inaccessible. They see the sales as not much different from influencers they’ve watched grow on YouTube, asking for parts of their lives that they would have shared for free.
OnlyFans: The New Model
Although many OnlyFans creators don’t offer anything explicit, the platform’s pornographic content cannot be ignored; even some seemingly regular creators are shedding their clothes behind a paywall. The company promotes itself as the only social network that “openly includes all types of creators.”
OnlyFans: Freelancing
OnlyFans creators are classified as independent contractors for the platform, which provides essential tools to publish content and gain customers, taking 20 percent of creators’ revenue. OnlyFans sends 1099 forms to the Internal Revenue Service and all American creators who earn more than $600 a year to confirm that they are paying taxes on all income. (Adams stated that her company paid about $1.3 million in taxes last year.)
OnlyFans: Self-Employment
With the promise of wealth, a flow of new OnlyFans creators has begun to push OnlyFans mentors and training programs that teach marketing strategies and industry techniques. For those feeling overwhelmed, agencies and account managers offer to handle administrative tasks, caption writing, and social account management for a share of the revenue.
OnlyFans: Community Support
On Reddit’s r/onlyfansadvice, creators share tips on how to get a bank loan using OnlyFans income, how to handle fan disputes, or cope with significant fluctuations in pay. “I took a week off and I haven’t recovered since,” one creator recently said there.
OnlyFans: Extreme Income
Like most platforms, OnlyFans suffers from a vast wage inequality, with most profits concentrated in the accounts of a lucky few. In 2020, independent researcher Tom Hollands gathered payment data on the site and concluded that the top 1 percent of accounts earned 33 percent of the money, while most accounts made less than $145 a month. (OnlyFans declined to provide its own analysis, and Hollands said the company made it difficult to access this data or conduct new research.)
OnlyFans: Financial Security
For those who succeed, things can change dramatically. When OnlyFans creator Elle Brooke was prompted during a television interview in June to explain how her future child might feel about her work, her response – “They can cry in a Ferrari” – became a slogan for OnlyFans. Stella Sol, a control enthusiast, said, “It’s always funny how people get mad at beautiful successful women in the game of life.”
OnlyFans:
The Dream Reality
Bryce and Brian met for the first time 13 years ago in high school, in a career studies class, and the two were identical immediately: ambitious, competitive, and a little obsessed. They played baseball for eight hours a day, and she attended every practice and game, sitting in the bleachers with a notebook documenting every pitch and hit.
OnlyFans: The Beginning
Adams spent her teenage years selling her old clothes on eBay and became excited about making fantasy money a reality. So after leaving college, the couple dedicated themselves to small online businesses, where they bought baseball bats and gloves from local stores and resold them online. They hired their friends, and the company expanded until it became self-sustainable, and they felt bored.
OnlyFans: The Real Start
On a Sunday night in January 2021, Adams created an OnlyFans account under a pseudonym and posted a picture of her butt. The couple had an open relationship; it was, according to her, kind of a joke. Then a man who found her account contacted her, and they started messaging, asking for more. She had no idea how to price the photos, but the man kept paying. After two hours and five pictures, she made $62.
OnlyFans: The Business Opportunity
Her boyfriend saw it as a huge business opportunity. Other OnlyFans accounts seemed underdeveloped, he recalled, and the pool of paying fools appeared to be vast. “There is a huge demand, and the sellers’ ability to meet this demand is terrible,” he said. “It’s like stealing candy from babies.”
OnlyFans: Continued Success
For Adams, the experience was thrilling too. She could take a selfie in two seconds and get paid by a stranger. She felt desirable, maybe even a bit powerful. After a few nights, her boyfriend walked into the bathroom around 3 a.m., and Adams was sitting by the sink, sending sexual messages.
OnlyFans: Continued Success
They started studying OnlyFans like a puzzle, tracking what fans wanted, what they would pay for, and what to say to keep them engaged. They began collecting a range of data, from video sale rates to subscriber conversions. They performed what they called “little tests” on everything in hopes of maximizing engagement: the most profitable poses, the ideal video title length.
OnlyFans: Continued Success
Every week, they compete against themselves to achieve higher revenue than the previous week, gradually pushing boundaries in hopes of standing out in an internet full of pornography. They moved from selling individual photos to “photo packs” to full videos. They started recording in new locations, teasing each other, and bringing in new partners. The number of fans continued to rise.
OnlyFans: Continued Success
With Adams’s rising popularity, the workload for Adams and Brian, who became her “CEO,” also increased. Each of them works about 90 hours a week. There is always a new message to respond to, new social content to post, and new collaborations to record. In the evenings, the couple goes for long walks, planning content and how to “take Bryce to the next level.” After that, they go get Starbucks for caffeine to keep them going through the night.
OnlyFans: Continued Success
They started hiring workers through friends and family, and what Adams considered just one person became a collective effort, with everyone expected to work on naming and video ideas. The team evaluates content based on their comfort level with certain material as well as potential engagement and “brand alignment.” Bryce became the person who embodies the Bryce brand, a commercial persona crafted and refined by the committee for maximum marketing.
OnlyFans: Continued Success
The team views their work in OnlyFans as innocent and untainted, where everyone gets what they want. Buyers are overlooked in dating apps, they are widowed or divorced or bored, eager to pay for intimacy with an unattainable partner. They see their sales as not much different from the influencers they’ve watched grow on YouTube, asking for pieces of their lives that they would have shared for free.
OnlyFans:
Continuing Success
OnlyFans creators are considered independent contractors for the platform, which provides essential tools for content publishing and customer acquisition, taking 20 percent of creators’ revenue. OnlyFans sends 1099 forms to the Internal Revenue Service and all American creators who earn over $600 a year to confirm they pay taxes on all income. (Adams said her company paid about $1.3 million in taxes last year.)
OnlyFans: Continuing Success
Many new creators have been lured by the promise of wealth, starting to pay OnlyFans mentors and training programs that teach marketing strategies and industry techniques. For those feeling pressured, agencies and account managers offer to handle administrative tasks, caption writing, and social account management for a share of the revenue.
OnlyFans: Continuing Success
On Reddit’s r/onlyfansadvice, creators share tips on how to secure a bank loan using OnlyFans income, how to deal with fan disputes, or manage significant fluctuations in earnings. “I took a week off and haven’t recovered since,” said one creator there recently.
OnlyFans: Continuing Success
Like most platforms, OnlyFans suffers from a massive wage inequality issue, with most profits concentrated in the accounts of a lucky few. In 2020, independent researcher Tom Hollands collected payment data from the site and concluded that the top 1 percent of accounts earned 33 percent of the money, with most accounts earning less than $145 a month. (OnlyFans declined to provide its own analysis, and Hollands said the company made it difficult to access this data or conduct new research.)
OnlyFans: Continuing Success
For those who achieve success, things can change dramatically. When OnlyFans creator Elle Brooke was prompted during a TV interview in June to explain how her future child might feel about her work, her response – “They can cry in a Ferrari” – became a slogan for OnlyFans. Stella Sol, a dominatrix, said, “It’s always funny how angry people get at beautiful women who are successful in the game of life.”
OnlyFans: Continuing Success
Bryce and Brian first met 13 years ago in high school, in a career studies class, and the two clicked immediately: ambitious, competitive, and a little obsessed. They played baseball for eight hours a day, and she attended every practice and game, sitting in the stands with a notebook recording every pitch and hit.
OnlyFans: Continuing Success
Adams spent her teenage years selling her old clothes on eBay and became passionate about making fantasy money a reality. So after leaving college, the couple dedicated themselves to running small online businesses, buying baseball bats and gloves from local stores and reselling them online. They hired their friends, and the company expanded until it became self-sustaining, and they grew bored.
OnlyFans: Continuing Success
On a Sunday night in January 2021, Adams created an OnlyFans account under a pseudonym and posted a picture of her backside. The couple had an open relationship; according to her, it was kind of a joke. Then a man who found her account reached out, and they began messaging, asking for more. She had no idea how to price the photos, but the man kept paying. After two hours and five pictures, she earned $62.
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