Virtually everyone I know has at least dipped a toe into creating or producing sexually oriented materials. Some of us are writers, some are photographers, some are artists, some are videographers, some are performers, some are publishers, and some are distributors. I used to think that this was because we were producing a new kind of erotica, a kind that respects its customers and focuses on their brains as well as their gonads. This helped me feel better about my perennial brokeness, but was otherwise a straw man. Since then, I've met some of the folks who produce traditional porn, and they're doing a bit better, but not much.
Writers bitch about insensitive editors and slow or nonexistent royalty checks.
Artists are tortured by inadequate fees and by art directors who reject their most sensitive and heartfelt work in favor of commercial dreck. Performers put in days under hot lights and nights carrying hot trays of restaurant food. Publishers writhe in the twin grip of spiraling paper costs and punishing distributor discounts. And so on. We're not unionized.