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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

#91

Post by tsss »

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…

$145 a month just for being born a woman and taking a few pictures. Basically free money. Who wouldn't do it?

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

#92

Post by zibzab »

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…

Some subs now ban posters that are on OF regardless of the post content.

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

#93

Post by [deleted] »

michaelt wrote: post #44
dijit wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have genuinely looked at OnlyFans for content which is not sex related, since it's a large name and I'm becoming increasingly disenfranchised with youtube. One issue though is that discoverability is very poor on OnlyFans. I suspect this is what causes "OnlyFans Spam" on places like reddit. OnlyFans has little incentive to fix that though, as everyone spamming is basically advertising their platform externally. So,…

Other paid-content platforms - like Patreon and Substack - also seem pretty light on discoverability. I'm not sure why that is.

[deleted]

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

#94

Post by vorpalhex »

cblconfederate wrote: post #58
Cederfjard wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not just porn though, this is lonely people buying (imagined) personal intimate connections with real, attractive people. Edit: I’m sure people would pay more money in a model that makes them feel like they’ve got an actual personal connection with the creators, no matter the type of content. However adding sex to the mix probably boosts that effect quite a bit, if I’m allowed to speculate.

No it's mostly porn, and many (partnered) people enjoy porn and want to support the creators. There are other platforms for sugar babies

Most high income OnlyFans stars will do things like have (sfw) movie nights with their fans, or take time to message with people spending a lot. The people who just want to watch porn don't need to spend money.

I don't think the creator or the whale intends for it to be a sugar baby/daddy type thing. Whales are lonely, and good creators know there's a lot of value from interacting with and being human to your fans.

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

#95

Post by bequanna »

intricatedetail wrote: post #9

Why those people are not treated as employees and paid at least a minimum wage?

The content creators are speculative entrepreneurs. No one explicitly asked them to make content, to market it, etc. They are in no way employees, this isn’t even close to being in a gray area.

OnlyFans is simply a marketplace of content, like Etsy for porn.

Your question is like asking: Why doesn’t the swap meet pay me hourly to show up and try to sell my junk?

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

#96

Post by yesbabyyes »

_xnmw wrote: post #67
csomar wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the current food prices, there are no countries where $136/month is a fairly decent living. Countries where $150/month is the average salary are a hellish place to live in.

There are places where $136/month will easily cover rent in a cheaper town, or food. e.g., where I live, in Ukraine.

I'm sure you are right, but having to choose between food and a roof over one's head is hardly what constitutes "a fairly decent living", is it?

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

#98

Post by mrpf1ster »

martincmartin wrote: post #89
Lazare wrote: post #28

So... the punchline here seems to be the median revenue per content creator. Except: 1) The denominator is skewed by a large number of people who signed up but aren't seriously pursuing it, and may not even be active. 2) The numerator is skewed by the fact that this omits tips entirely, and much of the sample is missing the subscription price or the number of subscribers, so numbers had to be guessed. So in other wor…

To be pedantic, a median is not a ratio. That's the average.

The statistic he is analyzing here is median revenue per content creator, not just median revenue.

The numerator is the median revenue and the denominator is the number of content creators.

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

#99

Post by Applejinx »

orthoxerox wrote: post #20

I'm sure similar income distribution applies to all user-generated digital content platforms like YT, Patreon, Twitch, etc. A few superstars that make crazy money, some professionals who use the platform as their main source of income and a long thin tail of amateurs. The market is supersaturated now, even with the obesity epidemic there are so many college girls with perfect figures willing to bare everything for $1…

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 anywhere significant, especially if you still qualify for food stamps or what have you', and it's competitive with what a career software developer will be making by 2030 or 2040 at the most.

Top thousand worldwide is already down to your $200 a month or so, and there are hundreds of thousands of people on these platforms. This is the nature of markets in an attention economy that scales worldwide: you're getting squeezed out by anybody anywhere, and if you're a niche (I'm a niche, but not alone in it: by now, there's another plugin dev who is pushing harder for money and making more than me, who is also Patreon-exclusive) then that limits the maximum size you can scale.

It's absolutely going to be the same on OnlyFans, Twitch, etc. As a job mostly this sort of thing is 'spend a bunch of money to operate at a competitive level, and then you don't earn anything to speak of'.

This IS free market dynamics in a state of maximum globalized low friction. Silicon Valley has spent a lot of time selling people on low friction interaction and discoverability. Tearing down the walls means you're competing with the girl with a perfect figure who's in New Delhi and has family money backing her (for whatever reason), and her competing with you means you work less.

When this seriously kicks in for the very software devs who've created this situation (and it may have been inevitable, let's not directly blame) and AI begins to compete with human workers at content creation and software development, the OnlyFans/Patreon/Twitch picture becomes the world, and at that point we've got some questions to ask about sustainability. A lot of these platforms are sustained by whales. I'd do substantially better (but would ruin my positioning) if I targeted whales.

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