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Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

matthewball.co

91–100 of 878 posts

Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

#91

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?

My proverbial homies that use it say it's because they get private show or host will watch via a 2-way video. It's basically peep shows and phone sex meets FaceTime. Stuff like this is why the growing part of their business is "One-off Transactions". It should be called "Jerk-off Transactions" because that's how it's being used.

Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

#92

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?

I have known people who have been content creators on OF or similar. The whole industry is pretty abusive and exploitative, but on platforms like OF you can be more (certainly not entirely, but more) sure that the creator isn't being exploited and is the one benefitting from the work. A big part of it is also the creator interacting with the fans up to creating custom content for individuals.

Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

#93

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?

I would liken it as "digital sexual companionship" in many cases, rather than just porn. That's the value here, for a lot of the same reasons that people would engage with a "traditional" prostitute/escort. It's just cheaper (at first), and less likely to get you arrested or put in dangerous areas.

The article makes mention of AI content potentially coming for this industry, but I believe it's the "GirlfriendGPT" and similar that will be the bigger threat, once they improve.

Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

#94

I have a buddy how likes to tell how he "had the idea for Onlyfans first" but I advised him not to pursue it. The reality is that OnlyFans wasn't the first to try this model. You have to give them credit for successfully building the business, especially with several close calls between them and government regulations.

This is relevant: https://x.com/cyantist/status/1832921451986632777 A similar app creator talks about her experience and why it failed.

It's worth listening to the Hot Money podcast which goes into detail of how OF makes money: https://www.ft.com/content/762e4648-06d7-4abd-8d1e-ccefb74b3...

Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

#95

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?

Some of the OF models are more physically attractive than most of the actors in free pornography. There's lots of free pornography on the internet but very little of it contains 9s and 10s.

Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no "formula" for success in the creator economy - the winners are largely random. I think that strongly depends on what you call "the creator economy". For example, on YT it's really mostly skill: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ip2trao6dYw Not that I believe its easy, nor do I think AI will be super good at it, at least not before everything else also enshittifies into the habsburg-AI-powered dead interne…

The idea that success is earned through luck rather than merit is a firmly ideological position, regardless of the domain you’re talking about. If you succeeded via luck then that provides a better moral justification for the related ideological position that you should be deprived of the fruits of your labor as much as possible, for redistribution to others who were simply less lucky than you. It’s really just sour…

> The formula for success in any field is simply to make a product that other people want to consume

Well, the formula for success in selling products is this. Most people don't define success in terms of business acumen.

Except, of course, businessmen. If you perceive our society as centered around successful people, of course you'll see it as merit-based. If you perceive our society as poorly run and catering to the rich, of course you'll see success as primarily a product of circumstance outside of your control. Is it so hard to see that "merit" is necessarily defined in subjective terms?

Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

#97

Seminal article (I guess), https://xsrus.com/the-economics-of-onlyfans > It’s just as easy to imagine demand for the “real thing” going down due to the emergence of more substitutes as it is to imagine the premium for parasocial authenticity going up. And yet only Generative AI “creators” will truly do whatever “you” want and only for you. And unlike real ones, they speak in every language and are available at any ti…

It's the same pipe dream as "AI content creators will take over youtube". There is no "formula" for success in the creator economy - the winners are largely random. A better way to look at it is there are 4 million humans out there trying every permutation to crack success, and ~400k actually do it. Unless you have a sufficiently advanced AI agent that is both varying it's content and it's marketing strategy to the t…

> There is no "formula" for success in the creator economy - the winners are largely random.

That observation has echoes of the music industry - another extremely top-heavy creator business. There are formulaic ways to make "good enough" and "catchy enough" songs, but the window for "X enough" keeps shifting. Cranking out grunge won't be sustainable in the age of K-pop.

But the massive runaway hits have been predominantly outliers for their age. They have veered far enough from the mainstream to be interesting in new ways, different enough, and surprising enough to break through.

But to predict in advance what kinds of outliers will win the lottery? Largely random, indeed.

Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

#98
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say the set of people who want an AI girlfriend and the set of people whose defining trait is a lack of empathy is probably a bigger overlap than you think.

> I'd say the set of people who want an AI girlfriend and the set of people whose defining trait is a lack of empathy is probably a bigger overlap than you think. The defining trait of people who want an AI girlfriend is ugly, lonely men. Is lack of empathy the defining characteristic of ugly men? Or is it simply that people in general hate ugly people and thus ascribe various ills and character faults to them? I'd s…

I know plenty of ugly men in committed, loving relationships. You're the one bringing up looks. I don't think it matters what you look like; if you want to date a computer you have some kind of psychiactric disorder.

Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

#99

Seminal article (I guess), https://xsrus.com/the-economics-of-onlyfans > It’s just as easy to imagine demand for the “real thing” going down due to the emergence of more substitutes as it is to imagine the premium for parasocial authenticity going up. And yet only Generative AI “creators” will truly do whatever “you” want and only for you. And unlike real ones, they speak in every language and are available at any ti…

There are a few key points to understanding the OnlyFans business which are not covered by either article (and the one on xsrus.com is pretty old and is off by several billions regarding revenue now). * Point #1, OnlyFans is the biggest thing in porn by far, its rise is meteoric. * Point #2, OnlyFans is in the business of selling relationships. It's not a tech company and attempts to analyze it as such are therefore…

> In reality none of the models who are successful have time to talk to fans, everything is outsourced

It depends how you define “successful”, but I would say that’s not true. I personally know several OF models for whom it is their fulltime job (earning decent money), and they do not outsource anything. Highly popular models almost certainly do, but there’s a lot of smaller creators who don’t

Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

#100

I find myself a little sad at how lucrative a job this will appear for an entire generation. $1500 average creator pay is higher than 40 hours a week minimum wage.

I don't. People get to take home 80% of what they make, have full control over their work and it eliminates the biggest drawback of sex work which is safety issues. The day when enough people have a way to opt out of grueling min wage work is probably when it's finally automated or at least people get treated better.

> it eliminates the biggest drawback of sex work which is safety issues

It certainly reduces it a lot and your point is valid, but let’s note that it doesn’t “eliminate” it: doxxing and stalking are very much a thing and my OF creator friends live in flatshare or have building security for safety reasons

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