What is OnlyFans? | The Influence
A comparative newcomer to the social media platform party is OnlyFans — an entertainment platform launched in 2016 that removes the middleman and connects content producers directly with their fans.
Unlike most other platforms, OnlyFans has few restrictive rules about the nature of what is published, making the website ideal for a broad range of creative skills to be featured — and by ‘broad’ we mean content that YouTube and Facebook wouldn’t allow.
How does OnlyFans work?
OnlyFans is dedicated to content creation, similar to Twitch. The platform enables content creators to sell subscriptions to ‘OnlyFans’ for set monthly amounts, with the platform taking a 20% cut for the service. While it’s true OnlyFans is used by many celebrity chefs, actors, musicians, and models, its no content restrictions policy means that it has also become a ‘go-to’ content creation platform for thousands of amateur pornographers and sex workers. There is no OnlyFans app in Google or Apple’s apps stores, but OnlyFans explains a work-around here.
The current top earners on OnlyFans are Bella Thorne and Cardi B. The pair have regularly appeared in either the number 1 or number 2 slot for the last several months according to data sourced from web traffic monitors AHREFS.
Cardi B made it clear from the start that she would not be offering any pornography on her OnlyFans page. For $4.99 per month users can access exclusive content. She says that fans should pay that instead of buying her vinyls.
Bella Thorne hit the headlines in 2020 by supposedly earning a million dollars within a day of being on the platform and two million within a week. A large chunk of this came from a Bella Thorne Pay-Per-View (PPV) which implied nudity and charged fans $200. However, the imagery was not full nude which caused a fans uproar and OnlyFans had to refund many users. Since then OnlyFans has introduced a policy that caps the charge for a PPV at $50.
The move has angered sex workers who previously were able to price PPV at whatever the market was prepared to pay. OnlyFans also changed its policy on tips — which are now capped at $100.
The OnlyFans Top 10
The following are the Top 10 creators with an OnlyFans account based on verified monthly traffic.
How Popular is OnlyFans?
According to data from Similar Web, Onlyfans.com is averaging around 180 million visits a month — putting it at position #196 in the world’s most trafficked websites. These are very respectable numbers, but if you take the position that OnlyFans is just another adult content site — then its traffic is dwarfed by Pornhub, which is 10th in the world at 3.3 billion visits a month. Around 50% of OnlyFans traffic is from the United States.
How to Make Money on OnlyFans
The business model for OnlyFans is simple; a content ‘Creator’ (you must be 18) produces exclusive content and charges via the platform for access. The content can only be seen by those who pay monthly subscriptions. OnlyFans suggests creators should charge between $4.99 and $49.99 a month, or in some cases levy one-off charges for exclusive content. The platform takes a 20% royalty for the service. For many content creators, it’s a much more attractive revenue split than offered by YouTube and Facebook — both of which keep around 45% of the revenues generated by the creators on their platforms.
So how much will you make on OnlyFans? The simple answer is it all depends on your popularity on other platforms like Instagram and Twitter. OnlyFans has a tool for estimating potential revenue. The platform says that in the case of an Instagram model with 10,000 followers, for example, only about 1–5% of those followers would be likely to pay for the model’s content on OnlyFans. While the 1–2% figure is a quite common and accurate benchmark across a range of creative industries when promoting online, 5% would be a very high conversion rate. So in the theoretical case of an Instagram model with 50,000 followers who charges $10 a month for exclusive content, OnlyFans estimates revenue of between $5,000 and $50,000 a month.
There are other ways to be compensated though. OnlyFans creators are also able to set up Amazon wish lists and post links to things they’d like their fans to buy them. This could be lucrative in a couple of ways. One is to receive the item itself, and the other would be to charge companies to feature their products in a creator’s wish list. The opportunity certainly exists for brands to create relationships with OnlyFans creators for sponsorship and product placement.
The difference between OnlyFans and most other social media platforms is that the viewer is paying for the content, so they are definitely paying attention. It’s not like Twitter or Facebook where the user is lost in the never-ending scroll, they are a captive audience paying attention because they paid for the content. This suggests influencer marketing with OnlyFans content creators should produce better ROI.
OnlyFans profiles can appear with fake pseudonymous names, but you cannot be paid by the platform anonymously and creators need to provide a photo ID and a bank account in the same name to be paid. OnlyFans will accept creators from regions such as the US, Canada, Australia, and most of Europe. Creators from other countries are also accepted, but the difficulty appears to be in receiving payment for people in some territories. Various options are available — including direct to bank, using the SWIFT system, or via e-wallets. Less payment options are available out of the US and UK — and the minimum withdrawal amount is also higher — up to $200 in some instances.
How to Get Fans on OnlyFans
The challenge for most creators on OnlyFans is the same as for entertainers anywhere — that of creating a fan base. Being a ‘featured creator’ would be a good first start, but once again the advantage here falls to those with existing fan bases. For example, OnlyFans will only accept as featured creators people who already have 10,000 or more followers on Twitter or Instagram.
Data from Similar Web shows that Only Fans creators drive traffic to the site from their other social media accounts
One interesting aspect of OnlyFans is that it doesn’t have a sophisticated search function as one might find on a dating site. This means a site visitor can’t just arrive at OnlyFans and do a filter search of the type of creator they’re interested in. Instead, OnlyFans seems to rely entirely on its creators bringing their existing fan bases with them to the platform. Yes they will pay you a greater percentage of revenues than YouTube and others, but put simply, you’ll need to get your fans yourself.
The platform makes it clear that creators should go all out promoting their OnlyFans profile on their Twitter and Instagram accounts — using these platforms “to tempt fans” but hold back on “exclusive experiences” on the free platforms, reserving them for paying fans only. Many creators offer free subscriptions on OnlyFans, but anyone who subscribes for free content must still enter payment card details.
What are OnlyFans Content Restrictions?
You can’t be nude in your avatar or page banner, but aside from that, content creators on OnlyFans can produce pretty much whatever they like. There are some rules though. For example, “fraudulent, defamatory, libelous, hateful, discriminatory, threatening or harassing” content is out. As is anything that the police would consider ‘obscene’ (porn with animals and the like). The platform’s terms and conditions do spend a lot of time discussing Intellectual Property breaches and copyright infringement, so the intent is there at least to try to prevent content hijacking or deepfake style manipulation of imagery.
How successful they will be at policing that, only time will tell. But for other platforms like YouTube and Facebook, maintaining control over what creators upload has become a never-ending and expensive part of their businesses. Straight-up prostitution promotion is also not accepted and nor is “3rd party commercial activities or sales, such as contests, sweepstakes and other sales promotions, barter, or advertising.” It is not clear how OnlyFans would be able to monitor this type of activity though.
Conclusion
While traffic to OnlyFans is just a fraction of Instagram’s 6 billion monthly visitors, it does offer creators easier ways to make money than the bigger more conservative influencer sites. It’s much easier to do a racy photoshoot than get a lipstick sponsorship, for example. The platform brings the watchers and the watched together in a relationship where both parties are happy with the outcome and it doesn’t take too much of a cut for doing so. Importantly, as censorship creep continues to impact other social sites, OnlyFans offers a proven channel to marketers who are comfortable associating their brands with creators who are prepared to push the boundaries.
Originally published at https://theinfluence.biz on December 10, 2020.
