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The Economics of OnlyFans: Most accounts make less than $145/mo

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Re: The Economics of OnlyFans: Most accounts make less than $145/mo

#121

Post by counterpoint1 »

OnlyFriendsThwy wrote: post #118
graeme wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a moderator. Very likely you’re wrong. Anything systematic like that is probably generated by a system where someone wrote a script of common phrases and handed it off to low wage labour to write. Highly doubt any actual creator is doing that. The payoff of untargeted spam is so low! Only makes sense if it’s outsourced at scale like any garden variety spam ring. The usual and profitable way people promote their o…

How systematic are you talking? I happen to know an OF creator who promotes herself that way and she doesn't do anything in an automatic fashion, just creates her own submissions to subreddits and gets burned by such moderators. I happen to agree with formerly_proven . When my OF friend described how she submitted topical stuff to subreddits in the hopes that others would follow up on her profile, I was like, "what's…

No, that's absolutely not how most people want their online communities to work.

Sneaky, indirect, hidden advertising is worse than regular ads or 'spam'. Regardless of if a community is about gardening or guitars or cooking or basketball, most people don't want shills posting content that's secretly sponsored product placement related to their hobby or promotion of the poster for fame or profit.

Most subreddits have rules specifically against this, because otherwise the real, organic, genuine conversation and content gets drowned out by self-promoting shills trying to drive clicks to their website or views to their youtube or get free advertising/PR for their company. You're supposed to participate out of a genuine interest in the community, not to exploit them as an audience for making money.

Re: The Economics of OnlyFans: Most accounts make less than $145/mo

#122

Post by OnlyFriendsThwy »

wruza wrote: post #120
OnlyFriendsThwy wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How systematic are you talking? I happen to know an OF creator who promotes herself that way and she doesn't do anything in an automatic fashion, just creates her own submissions to subreddits and gets burned by such moderators. I happen to agree with formerly_proven . When my OF friend described how she submitted topical stuff to subreddits in the hopes that others would follow up on her profile, I was like, "what's…

Can’t speak for your friend or a moderator, but when someone pursues goals other than a pure contribution, that contribution is usually shallow and easy to see through. This pollutes the place with a low-effort content and everyone “living” there hates it. At the core it’s a barely covered hypocrisy. Puns not intended (seriously).

I see that, and I'm all for removing shallow content. I just don't get the point of a blanket ban on OF people who market themselves this way -- a mod should be capable of saying, "this person is promoting herself, but it meets the quality standards so no reason to block it" (let alone pre-emptively ban such a person). Indeed, those are the very kind of submissions that lead to a thriving, synergistic forum-ecosystem.

I mean, from my experience on reddit, there are all kinds of unworthy submissions from all kinds of motivations that get upvoted more than they should be and removed too slowly (or not at all) by mods. Whether it's brand promotion, or karma harvesting, or (all too often) just not understanding what submissions are appropriate for the forum, it degrades the experience.[1] But targeting OF users for autobans seems tunnel-visioned at best and slut-shaming at worst.

[1] one of my favorites, /r/LeopardsAteMyFace, is intended for examples of people a) getting hurt by b) policies and politicians they advocated for. But well over the half the submissions ignore b) and are just cases of "break law they obviously didn't like, get prosecuted".

Re: The Economics of OnlyFans: Most accounts make less than $145/mo

#123

Post by wruza »

wyclif wrote: post #114
Applejinx wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can confirm. I make my living on Patreon, but I am in the top 100 worldwide in the 'music' category (I write open source DSP plugins) and I make a bit over $2000 a month. It falls away very very rapidly: top ten worldwide is what people envision for 'making good money' and is competitive with say a career software developer in the 90s or 00s. Top hundred worldwide is 'getting by pretty comfortably if you don't live a…

at that point we've got some questions to ask about sustainability Not at that point, though. The time to ask those questions was yesterday.

Personally idk if these questions are even worth asking at all. Modern economies are mostly automatable bullshit not worth a constant human attention. The only reason why we have to work hard is that making content and appliances by organized human labor is hard. It’s high time to switch attention from this crappy hamster wheel efforts to humane things.

Re: The Economics of OnlyFans: Most accounts make less than $145/mo

#124

Post by Applejinx »

conradfr wrote: post #115
Applejinx wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can confirm. I make my living on Patreon, but I am in the top 100 worldwide in the 'music' category (I write open source DSP plugins) and I make a bit over $2000 a month. It falls away very very rapidly: top ten worldwide is what people envision for 'making good money' and is competitive with say a career software developer in the 90s or 00s. Top hundred worldwide is 'getting by pretty comfortably if you don't live a…

Is the other one Analog Obsession aka Tunca? He makes good money, especially as he lives in Turkey. Anyway some friends are convinced deepfakes and "nudify" websites will compete with OnlyFans but I'm not convinced, at least in the short term.

I'm not sure there's only one other, but I am thinking of Analog Obsession, yes :)

As for deepfakes, it depends on how easily that can be done, and how much 'celebrity' fakeness can outcompete non-celebrity reality. From what I'm seeing in all these fields, they've got a point. If you can identify the #1 most popular celebrity for 'porn wanted of them', the desire for that could well be orders of magnitude beyond 'real person doing actual porn', and removing the identity of the source person seriously devalues them (in the process of making the deepfake porn). They cease to have market value as themselves though they have another kind as 'plausibly standing in for the celebrity while doing deepfake porn'.

There's also the problem of hyper-displays: suppose you want Kardashian porn but you can't have it. So you deepfake it. But what if you chose, since you're doing CGI anyway, to exaggerate the characteristics of your actors, or straight up CGI them, to go way beyond what the human Kardashian would even be? This really complicates the market, I think. We cannot assume that 'deepfakes' will stick to being realistic or plausible: at some point ingenuity will lead to these things being exaggerated versions of themselves.

I wouldn't dismiss your friends' concerns too quickly. In so many ways we're going to a world where unreality substantially outcompetes and crowds out reality. And it's all down to the market dynamics, and exploits within that. A truly free frictionless marketplace doesn't have ethics: those count as friction and will get selected against.

Re: The Economics of OnlyFans: Most accounts make less than $145/mo

#125

Post by CheezeIt »

benrbray wrote: post #3
Quequau wrote: post #2

I'm a mod on Reddit and in a few of the subreddits I moderate I see a steady stream of accounts promoting online sex work, like onlyfans. None of these subreddits welcome promotion or advertising... or for that matter NSFW content. However, so many of these accounts advertise their sex work by posting content that ostensibly complies with the community rules but which somehow encourages other users to look at their u…

That's two or three weeks of groceries if you're on a budget. It can make a huge difference for some people -- especially the type of people who don't feel like they have any options but sex work. It's hard to blame them since OF is a relatively safe way to do it, too.

No options? They could deliver food for DoorDash.

Re: The Economics of OnlyFans: Most accounts make less than $145/mo

#126

Post by Applejinx »

wyclif wrote: post #114
Applejinx wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can confirm. I make my living on Patreon, but I am in the top 100 worldwide in the 'music' category (I write open source DSP plugins) and I make a bit over $2000 a month. It falls away very very rapidly: top ten worldwide is what people envision for 'making good money' and is competitive with say a career software developer in the 90s or 00s. Top hundred worldwide is 'getting by pretty comfortably if you don't live a…

at that point we've got some questions to ask about sustainability Not at that point, though. The time to ask those questions was yesterday.

Best time is 25 years ago. The second best time, of course, would be right now :)

Re: The Economics of OnlyFans: Most accounts make less than $145/mo

#127

Post by failwhaleshark »

I had two, now one because they moved in with their fiancee, neighbors who made more than rent ($1500/month) on OF. The now one isn't very good looking, spent $15k on plastic surgery, and they still look very lumpy/dumpy. (K of FMK.) I think what this small sample-size shows is it's all about marketing / influencing creating audience-driven-content if they are determined and consistent, even if the talent isn't all that. There are apparently enough lonely/horny men to fund this sort of business model when the talent is savvy enough to monetize. I'm sure the vast majority of accounts are under-monetized talent, inconsistent, hobbyists, or they gave-up and did something else for income.

Re: The Economics of OnlyFans: Most accounts make less than $145/mo

#128

Post by webmobdev »

OnlyFriendsThwy wrote: post #122
wruza wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can’t speak for your friend or a moderator, but when someone pursues goals other than a pure contribution, that contribution is usually shallow and easy to see through. This pollutes the place with a low-effort content and everyone “living” there hates it. At the core it’s a barely covered hypocrisy. Puns not intended (seriously).

I see that, and I'm all for removing shallow content. I just don't get the point of a blanket ban on OF people who market themselves this way -- a mod should be capable of saying, "this person is promoting herself, but it meets the quality standards so no reason to block it" (let alone pre-emptively ban such a person). Indeed, those are the very kind of submissions that lead to a thriving, synergistic forum-ecosystem…

> I just don't get the point of a blanket ban on OF people who market themselves this way

The reason has been specified and is to the point: "... contribution is usually shallow and easy to see through. This pollutes the place with a low-effort content ..." - these OF advertisers are only interested in getting people to see their profile (as you rightly pointed out), not their posted content, because their intention is to make money from such content ... obviously, in a place where content is more higly valued, such posters will be banned to ensure that it doesn't attract more of these kind of people. And yes, many sub-reddits do have poor quality content. Thanks to the ban on OF advertisers, it is much less.

Re: The Economics of OnlyFans: Most accounts make less than $145/mo

#129

Post by ViViDboarder »

CheezeIt wrote: post #125
benrbray wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's two or three weeks of groceries if you're on a budget. It can make a huge difference for some people -- especially the type of people who don't feel like they have any options but sex work. It's hard to blame them since OF is a relatively safe way to do it, too.

No options? They could deliver food for DoorDash.

If you have a car.

Re: The Economics of OnlyFans: Most accounts make less than $145/mo

#130

Post by CheezeIt »

ViViDboarder wrote: post #129
CheezeIt wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No options? They could deliver food for DoorDash.

If you have a car.

I’m eating at a Panda Express right now. They have a big sign up offering $15.6/hr for their lowest level hire, with other positions open, too.
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