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Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

matthewball.co

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Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

#501

Post by makeitdouble »

paxys wrote: post #281

> The company counted an average of only 42 employees in 2023, down from 61 two years earlier. During the year, it generated $31MM in net revenue per employee (13-28x that of Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft) and $15.5MM in operating profit (27-560x). This is the wildest part. One company that is proving all the "why does need 10000 engineers?" takes true.

My gut feeling is this number doesn't match our assumptions.

For instance moderation and community management alone must be a huge pool of people. While the content and comments can be adult, they'll need to deal with all the payment related back and forth, including chargebacks, legal inquiries etc. Same for doxxing, underage filtering, spam and so on.

I assume most if not all of it is a different company which isn't counted in the 42 employees.

Of course engineering can be treated the same, with sub-contracting companies dealing with the actual running of the service or part of the developement.

Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

#502

Post by mrgoldenbrown »

ethbr1 wrote: post #480
afavour wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The circle of life. People said the same thing about Playboy when it first came out, about Internet porn when it first came out… People have been “falling in love” with strippers for as long as strippers have existed. In many ways OF feels like a positive step because it allows the removal of toxic middlemen that stand between the model and their customer. To my mind the bigger issue is how much of it is a total scam…

> OF models [...] using AI for [answering DM responses] This seems like OF's Etsy trap moment. On the one hand, scaling creator:individual_fan multiples via AI assisted messaging = $$$ (to creators and OF) On the other hand, it canabalizes their core business value tenet -- authenticity. It'll be curious to see which path they choose, and if it ends up playing out similar to Etsy. I.e. temporarily increasing their re…

Doing it with LLMs may be new but the idea of farming out the fan interaction to an army of gig workers plus automation is well established, including automation for suggested replies, keeping track of past interactions, etc.

Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

#503

Post by yieldcrv »

tpurves wrote: post #370
jappgar wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem here is that ceratain members of our society think sexuality is immoral and that sex performers deserve ostracism. The idea that someone shouldn't be hired for a job because they have/had an OF is puritanism plain and simple. I expect that fewer people actually care about the "morality" and simply want to use morals as a weapon against women in the workplace.

This. This is the real social problem we should be fighting. SW should not impinge on career or social status. As a hiring manager, if anything I'd want to consider sex performers as a green flag in a job history. Speaks to resourcefulness, social skills, courage and self confidence.

And your women in tech won’t be SWERFs

last two decades all the representation was sex worker exclusionary, fighting for a libidoless morph of the corporate world, talking over and on behalf of any women that thought or acted differently

glad that was temporary

booth babes and atmosphere models coming back soon

Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

#504

Post by standardUser »

k33jf33l2 wrote: post #467
standardUser wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These things you mentioned are all still looked on negatively by some people. I don't know anyone who has been denied a job or an opportunity because of those issues. I also don't know anyone who has been denied an opportunity because they made adult content. Does it happen? Absolutley. Is it crippling to the point of ostracization? Not even close. If anything, being able to filter out people who would look down on…

> I don't know anyone who has been denied a job or an opportunity because of those issues. How would they know? I suspect there's some selection bias at play here because it might not be legal to discriminate on this basis. > (...) because they have a piecing or like to take naked photos. That's a strawman. The discussion doesn't concern people who "like to take naked photos" ; it concerns people who do it for money…

I was being mildly playful with my language, but I mean and intended to mean people who get naked for money. The difference is pretty minimal if you ask me.

Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

#505

Post by alsetmusic »

whoopdedo wrote: post #469
qingcharles wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This view isn't matched by the stats. I have a friend who is a successful OF model and only a fraction of one percent of her subscribers ever DM her. A lot of them subscribe, see what they want and then immediately delete their accounts. There's no apparent relationship between her fans and her, for the most part.

>subscribe ... and then immediately delete their accounts Sounds like credit card fraud to me. Bots using stolen cards to scrape OF content. Also easily verifies that the number works before attempting a pricier purchase.

> Sounds like credit card fraud to me. Bots using stolen cards to scrape OF content. Also easily verifies that the number works before attempting a pricier purchase.

I’ve subscribed for one month to two different creators just to check the content. Neither was interesting enough to maintain a subscription. I don’t think the described behavior sounds nefarious.

Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

#506

Post by knodi123 »

whoopdedo wrote: post #469
qingcharles wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This view isn't matched by the stats. I have a friend who is a successful OF model and only a fraction of one percent of her subscribers ever DM her. A lot of them subscribe, see what they want and then immediately delete their accounts. There's no apparent relationship between her fans and her, for the most part.

>subscribe ... and then immediately delete their accounts Sounds like credit card fraud to me. Bots using stolen cards to scrape OF content. Also easily verifies that the number works before attempting a pricier purchase.

Sounds like it, and I'm sure it is sometimes... but it's also legitimate behavior from people struggling with guilt or self-actualization. At least as far as internal fraud detection, a lot of sites like these have had to re-think what kind of behavior is a red flag. For instance, it's also common for sellers to have multiple separate identities on these sites, where they may re-sell the same content but they act as totally different personalities. On any other site, like say Facebook, that would definitely be a fraud indicator. On adult sites.... less so!

Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

#507

Post by Demiurge »

hyggetrold wrote: post #478
Demiurge wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dtaisk Afai. Cof Lemma, 19:1, 2, 549-552 / https://www.jstor.org/stable/25414613 Let me first give you four quotations. Firstly: “Our youth loves luxury, has bad manners, disregards authority, and has no respect whatsoever for age. Our children today are tyrants; they do not get up when an elderly man enters the room—they talk back to their parents—they are just very bad.” Secondly: “I no longer have any hope for the…

"It seems like nobody wants to work these days" has been a refrain since ancient Mesopotamia!

That's probably why they call it work! :D

Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

#508

Post by deepsun »

ehnto wrote: post #482
qingcharles wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This view isn't matched by the stats. I have a friend who is a successful OF model and only a fraction of one percent of her subscribers ever DM her. A lot of them subscribe, see what they want and then immediately delete their accounts. There's no apparent relationship between her fans and her, for the most part.

Parasocial relationships don't require interaction, you could just watch a twitch streamer a lot. I think if we defined it by requiring interaction we would underestimate the percieved impact of these social phenomenon.

But then what's the difference between live streaming and recordings? There's some magic in live streams -- people prefer to watch boring live streams instead of hand-picked recorded videos of best games/conversations/jokes.

Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

#509

Post by yieldcrv »

listless wrote: post #90

Is anyone willing to admit they subscribe to an OF and explain why over the free pornography alternatives that most of the internet is full of?

Four years after the pandemic and people still pretend not to know that onlyfans is often free? Its such a tired trope to debate, but there is the possibility you’re serious

The article itself explains how subscriptions are a low part of OnlyFans business

But maybe this is only offering a glimpse

Many successful creators have a marketing strategy that includes a free subscription tier, and make money in pay per view DMs, or charging for DMs at all

So for people browsing for free pornography, its the same or better

Either way, its nice to see your attractive friends naked. Many women you meet in real life have a link in their social media bio that includes their onlyfans. In my world its very predictable based on visual attractiveness. Astoundingly, often it seems other women in their friend groups don’t know this and haven’t checked the “link in bio” of their girl friends. This masquerades as acceptance of sex workers.

Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

#510

Post by chongli »

afavour wrote: post #441
agumonkey wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The shocking part is how new generation have a fully rational reinterpretation of all this, they call it "ethical sex". It's beautiful to them (probably in contrast to the boat loads of issues IRL social and intimate relationships can bring with them). And anything not aligned with their view causes a lot of angry arguments.

The circle of life. People said the same thing about Playboy when it first came out, about Internet porn when it first came out… People have been “falling in love” with strippers for as long as strippers have existed. In many ways OF feels like a positive step because it allows the removal of toxic middlemen that stand between the model and their customer. To my mind the bigger issue is how much of it is a total scam…

removal of toxic middlemen that stand between the model and their customer.

...

OF models offshoring their DM responses

I mean this sounds to me like the toxic middlemen have changed form, rather than gone away. Now the toxic middlemen work for the performer, rather than the other way around. But they're still toxic and their toxicity is now directed at the buyer instead.

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