How Onlyfans Is Ushering the Creator Economy into a Prosperous New Era
By: Alice Lemée
Tags: Social Media, Onlyfans, Future Of Work, Digital Life, Technology

If I told you that Starbucks and OnlyFans hold a lot in common, there’s a fair chance you would look at me like I was crazy.

Yet both companies completely revolutionized their respective industries — coffee and pornography — and altered entire economies. Starbucks pioneered American coffee culture, providing personalized premium beverages within beautifully designed lounges which became the world’s second home office. OnlyFans developed a platform that transformed the pornography star from employee to business owner by offering paywalled subscriptions to its creators.

OnlyFans rose to stardom for similar reasons to Starbucks. Yet OnlyFans stands to make an even deeper impact within our culture — financially, economically, and socially — than Starbucks, because it has provided a necessary building block to bolster the creator economy.

In fact, I’d bet that in a few years we’ll look back and think to ourselves, “Can you believe OnlyFans was originally just for porn?”

We’ll see estheticians, authors, motivational speakers, botanists, bakers, and everything in between utilizing the platform.

Content creators had been asking for a platform like OnlyFans for a long time, hacking old social media platforms to provide them the tools that OnlyFans now officially provides.

Now, OnlyFans continues to pave the way for the future of work, allowing creators to take control of their content. And with such autonomy, these creators are opening the floodgates to an entirely new economy and changing the meaning of having a career.

The rise of OnlyFans

Every day, more than 115 million users virtually flock to Pornhub to get their fix, free of charge.

In other words, porn is free.

So why do people pay for pornography on OnlyFans?

This is where we compare the reasons for Starbucks ' rise to popularity to OnlyFans’ to understand the power of offering a premium, personalized product.

Coffee then and now

Back in the 1970s, there was no option to order a caramel-mocha frappuccino with whip cream and skim milk. In fact, most commercially available coffee was just instant coffee which had been freeze-dried and would contain bitter robusta coffee beans (as compared to the higher-quality arabica coffee beans we use today).

Long story short: it was cheap, low-quality stuff.

Fast-forward to today, and consumers now spend tens of billions of dollars on coffee every year.

This surge in popularity has partially to do with laws and agreements which allowed for the export of Brazilian coffee beans in the late 1980s, but Starbucks founder Howard Schulz played a major part in the coffee renaissance.

In 1982, Schulze was hired to act as the director of retail operation and marketing at Starbucks. About a year later, he jetted off to Milan and was introduced to the world of leisure cafés, and was completely blown away by these stores which not only served high-end, treasured beverages but also had dedicated customers.

Baristas would have vivacious, full personalities. They would take the time to ask customers about their children. Oftentimes, they’d know their customer's orders by heart, facilitating a truly seamless and personable interaction.

Schultz was completely enamored by what Italian cafés had created, and he decided to take this concept to Starbucks. Upon his return, he stressed the emphasis on the creation and presentation of the beverage. Starbucks underwent a complete makeover to transform the stores into an inviting, luxurious buying environment.

Each barista’s job requirements shifted to prioritize personalization and connection. In fact, if you look at a Starbucks Barista application, it says, “deliver legendary customer service…and connecting with the customer.”

It makes sense now why the barista asks for your name after ordering, doesn’t it?

Different products, same framework

We can agree on the same thing: Starbucks is expensive.

Is it the best coffee you’ve ever had? Probably not. Yet we flock in droves to Starbuck’s moody brown lounges, idly standing in line while listening to refined jazz humming softly in the background. We order mindlessly, having memorized our order over the years, and then take a deep sip of our drinks that barely justifies the ridiculously high price point.

Starbucks moody brown lounges are America’s second work office and living room (Via RR_arbrot on Unsplash)

We enjoy the familiarity and find solace in a product that’s nicely presented. We’re willing to pay more for a “better” product.

Porn is the same thing.

Yes, you can get pornography for free thanks to behemoths like Pornhub and Bellesa. Yet, it’s been proven that people are willing to pay more for a premium product. In this case, sex actors providing quality content that truly suits a customer's needs and fulfills their desires.

You see, people were already willingly paying for pornography long before OnlyFans came to fruition. They were just doing so ‘unofficially.’ And OnlyFans provided a brilliant solution that sex actors and content creators were already asking for.

Making it ‘official’

Before OnlyFans arrived on the scene, content creators were hacking their own ways to create a metered paywall. We first saw this with premium Snapchat accounts, where popular pornstars would advertise their “private Snapchat.” If you were willing to pay, you could get access to their (explicit) Snaps.

This then materialized itself once Instagram copied Snapchat’s Stories model and eventually launched the ‘Close Friends’ feature. Once payment was processed, they’d be included in a user’s circle and could watch exclusive content that was unavailable to the general public.

This unofficial guarded metered paywall gave porn stars their first taste of autonomy as they had full control of what they wanted to post for that day. Gone were the days of being on a set all day long, being paid a sliver of their earnings while heeding to a director’s orders.

Now they were the ones who had control.

However, Instagram and Snapchat aren’t made for pornography. These private corners of the internet would be continuously shut down by moderators, leaving pornography actors increasingly frustrated as they would have to build their audience anew.

OnlyFans was silently watching this unfold and came up with a solution for the frustrated content creator that would revolutionize the future of the creator ecosystem.

The ultimate platform for modern-day content creators

When operating behind a metered paywall, both creators and consumers win.

With the middleman now dismissed, the creator can stand to make a lot more cash. This possibility for a larger income — paired with a sense of autonomy — invigorates the creator to produce extremely high-quality content that’ll appease their viewers.

Anyone can be an influencer

OnlyFans also allowed for the democratization of the playing field by allowing anyone to become a creator on their platform.

If these creators can gather a distinct audience that they actively engage with and end up influencing their purchasing decisions, they technically become “an influencer.”

Gone are the days where “influencers” were roles exclusively reserved for the uber-rich celebrities where they’d promote skinny tea detox solutions while tucked away in Malibu mansions. Now, anyone can become an influencer if they forge direct and authentic connections within their niche communities.

These “micro-influencers” (1,000–10,000) followers often report having much higher rates of engagement due to catering to more specific, narrower audiences. In such, they end up housing “true fans,” which is someone who benefits from their content so much that they willingly pay for their creations.

According to Kevin Kelly’s highly referenced essay 1,000 Fans, it only takes around 1,000 of these true fans who are willing to pay you $100 bucks to make a pretty decent living (we’re talking six figures). Kelly believes that if creators embrace their online networks, they could get paid directly from their superfans.

This would consequently eliminate the need for traditional gatekeepers and middlemen who usually take a decent chunk out of the creator’s labor. Right now, OnlyFans takes a 20% cut from a creator's income stream.

The unfair advantage

For every company, their “unfair advantage” is the biggest asset in being able to differentiate themselves from the competition. An “unfair advantage” cannot be easily copied or purchased by competitors and acts as a moat around your company, harboring it from sabotage and allowing it to remain unmatched.

OnlyFans’ has an exceptionally unfair advantage: their lax censorship policies.

Having the ability to post uncensored content and being able to monetize that content wasn’t something that was readily available until OnlyFans arrived to the scene.

Because OnlyFans was built to accommodate uncensored content, they made sure their safety regulations were up to par.

OnlyFans was built with security in mind, allowing pornographic content to flourish as creators were reassured that their content was secure, watermarked, and valued. This security encourages creators to post without fear of their content being wrongly distributed or having to deal with copyright infringement.

Not only this but being able to post content with much lower barriers to entry is a huge advantage for creators.

Having the ability to post uncensored content and being able to monetize that content wasn’t something that was readily available until OnlyFans arrived to the scene.

Esthetician Hadiyah Daché is one of these creators who’s taking advantage of OnlyFan’s model by posting content that would usually get her banned ASAP.

Daché makes a living providing waxing and sugaring services from her beauty studio in the San Francisco Bay Area. A usual day for her would include waxing someone’s bikini lines before finishing it off with a happy trail trim. Daché recently joined OnlyFans to promote her services and educate viewers by creating videos that demonstrate the waxing and sugaring process.

The content isn’t inherently sexual. But because it features genitalia, content like Dachés would get immediately censored if shown on any other social platform.

Daché isn’t used to this newfound freedom but is already playing around with how to promote her business and is planning to create “a mix of tutorials for other estheticians and voyeuristic/ASMR content for intimate services like Brazilian waxing/sugaring.”

And it’s not just the beauty industry which could profit from these breezy censorship guidelines. Consider the medical field, which wouldn’t be able to post a video of an OBGYN changing a women’s Mirena IUD or performing a colonoscopy. Sex toy companies who could use OnlyFans’ to promote their product in detail and showcase their effectiveness. Morticians breaking down the embalming of a human body.

There’s an infinite amount of content that could be newly released to the platform and continue to educate viewers in new ways as they’ve never experienced before.

Other Perks

OnlyFans’ doesn’t have a completely revolutionary platform per se. The company Patreon, for instance, was built for the creator in mind after its founder Jack Conte received a measly $400 payout from a Youtube video which racked up millions of views.

He realized there had to be a better way for a creator to be compensated for their efforts. And in 2013, Patreon was born.

Patreon is one of OnlyFans’ direct competitors yet the two have their marking differences. What OnlyFans does well in comparison to Patreon is:

Charges subscribers on the 30th day of their subscription, regardless of the day they signed up, while Patreon automatically charges the first day someone subscribes. Allows for creators to run promotional sales, discounts, and bulk buys which is helpful for acquiring new subscribers. Lets subscribers decide if they want to be a recurring subscriber, whereas Patreon automatically assumes the subscription is recurring, meaning it saves the creator the hassle of having to handle its fanbase.

However, OnlyFans definitely over-performs the mega-platforms like Youtube and Instagram in terms of allowing creators to monetize their fans.

Creators are already suffering in the hands of Youtube. The creator F*ckonomics who introduced this brilliant analogy between porn and coffee had her video demonetized shortly after it was posted (apparently, for showing too much cleavage). Seriously. Other videos are subject to demonetization for cleavage slip-ups or cursing aloud.

And even if a creator’s Youtube video isn’t demonetized, placing six advertisements in a 20 minute-long video is taxing. Every single time an ad pops up, it subconsciously nudges the viewer to ask themselves, “why am I still here? Do I care?” If the answer is “meh, I’d rather be on TikTok,” they’re out in a heartbeat.

Attention span is waning. Having to force potential fans to sit through advertisements doesn’t make it easy for creators who post on Youtube. Not to mention, the Instagram algorithm is challenging as well. It’s changed to favor celebrities, sponsorships, and advertisements. Creators have noticed.

OnlyFan’s Future is Already Materializing

OnlyFans is continuing to pave the path for the creator ecosystem. It is also serving as inspiration for other startups who seek to also allow creators to directly monetize from their audience.

Take the ironically named OnlyTweets, a spin-off from OnlyFans that aims to let top Twitter users monetize off their tweets. OnlyTweets provides separate, locked Twitter accounts only accessible to users who are willing to pay.

Even the branding of OnlyTweets seeks to mirror that of OnlyFans

This is an exceptionally interesting idea as OnlyTweets is trying to ensure seamlessness between the two platforms.

For instance, every time a Twitter creator says, “click this link to join my Patreon,” they are nudging the viewer to a different platform. This leap can be a transition that many users are simply too lazy to bother with. OnlyTweets seeks to make the process harmonious and uninterrupted.

Creators are also leaning towards Substack, OnlyFans literary cousin. A platform built for independent writers, creators can start building and nurturing their audience by publishing free newsletters. If they’d like, writers can put certain newsletters behind a paywall, giving them more autonomy over their own email list.

Not to mention, Substack also allows for relatively uncensored content, a win for audacious journalists.

OnlyFans and Substack share a similar unfair advantage: uncensored content

Granted, OnlyFans isn’t without its own challenges.

A 20% pay cut is still pretty significant and can be difficult for a creator to swallow. Plus, OnlyFans has a pretty shaky money withdrawal system that works on a rolling basis of eight days. OnlyFan’s competitor, Patreon, allows for creators to take out and transfer their payments anytime. This convenience is huge for creators who oftentimes would like to receive their funds immediately.

And most glaringly, OnlyFans has a heavy stigma enshrouded around itself. It’s associated exclusively with pornography and content of an overtly sexual nature. No doubt, it would be difficult for a botanist to say, “Come check me out on OnlyFans!” without their audience thinking that they’ve suddenly converted to creating sexual content somehow incorporating bonsai trees.

Definitely, the mental block that would allow us to associate OnlyFans with holistic, wholesome content rather than exclusively pornographic would be a difficult one to budge. However, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

Think about Uber which started off as a tiny company dedicated exclusively to providing expensive black car services in San Francisco. Now, Uber is synonymous with the transportation industry as a whole.

If OnlyFans is successful at facilitating the transition between porn stars, to OBGYNs, to estheticians, to botanists (so on and so forth), they could create the foundation of the creator ecosystem. It would become a home for the modern-day creator who makes a living off of their creations.

It’s a rosy world up ahead. Content creators being able to make a living creating the content they actually want for viewers who genuinely want to buy it? We’re all for it.

Does this mean you should create an OnlyFans account and start making money from your passion?

As concluded at the end of F*ckonomics video, “that’s entirely possible.”