Onlyfans, a content subscription service, is a blessing for all content creators around the world. Content creators get a chance of earning money directly from their subscribers or “fans”. These direct fundings are received on a monthly basis, pay-per-views, and one-time tips features. Sounds interesting, Isn’t it? Let’s have a closer look into the Onlyfans business model and try to get our answers to these accustomed questions- “How does Onlyfans work?” and “How does Onlyfans make money?”. Firstly, we’ll begin with the platform’s history and then move on to explain its business model. Read this article till the end to get accurate answers.
In this post, we'll cover:
Onlyfans- The Beginning
Onlyfans, launched in 2016, is an online platform to share creative videos and photos with followers in return for a monthly subscription fee. The website was launched by British tech entrepreneur and investor Tim Stokely. The parent company of Onlyfans is Fenix International Ltd. It has a partnership with Demon Time social media show, an online strip club, which shows the late-night Instagram live streams featuring women.
Onlyfans- The current statistics
The platform currently has 1M+ Content creators, 50 million registered users with 7000-8000 new creators joining the platform every day. The CEO of Onlyfans, Tim Stokely, claims that 200,000 new users join the online subscription platform each new day.
Since the platform allows pornography, Onlyfans is mostly used for porn shows. But that doesn’t make it just a pornography website as there are creators like chefs, fitness instructors, musicians, dancers, artists, etc to showcase their talents to their fans and earn a handsome amount of money. In 2020, when the world was hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of creators at Onlyfans has increased incredibly, i.e., about 40%, and the number of users has shown an increasing trend from 7.5 million to 85 million.
How does Onlyfans work?
The subscription-based content sharing platform, Onlyfans, is quite easy to handle. Let’s understand- “How does Onlyfans work?”.
Creators on the platform are simply required to make an account using the official website of Onlyfans and start earning by upload content on the platform. It is completely up to the creator if they want to display their content without any fees or with fees. The fans are required to buy the subscription of paid content on a monthly basis.
The platform provides complete security to its creators by ensuring that the content cannot be shared outside the platform. If any Onlyfans user tries to take a screenshot or record a video of the content, the user profile will be subjected to banning if caught. The platform has a strict privacy policy which reflects how much are they concerned for their creators’ security and why wouldn’t they be, after all Onlyfans creators are the only fuel that runs their business. The company has designated a special DMCA team that issues formal notices to any privacy policy violations reported on the platform and takes strict actions against the lawbreaker.
How to become a creator at Onlyfans?
Here are the steps to becoming a creator at Onlyfans.
- Signup and create your account
- On confirming the email address, a profile of yours will be created
- Enter all the required details like name, locations, personal website, profile image, etc.
- Add the bank details under the Subscription Price section to be able to get paid by your fans
- Choose your country and confirm that you are at least 18 and press the next option
- Now, you’ll have to share more details like legal name, address, city, postal code, Twitter account, Instagram account, website, etc. Also, upload the government-issued ID and a selfie
- After the account has been approved you can add payment information and get started with earning.
Onlyfans Business Model
Understanding the Onlyfans Business Model will make the readers more clear about “How does onlyfans work?”. So, here’s a lucrative perception of its business model.
Onlyfan features various fitness trainers, artists, chefs, writers, sex workers, dancers, and much more. But the main source of its earning is the porn content that it features. There is no such popular social media site like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc that supports the interaction of fans with sex workers and pornographers. So, since there is no such competition there are higher chances of success of a unique platform as it allows pornographers, sex workers, and other creators around the world to earn money (huge amount of money depending upon the individual skills) through interacting with their fans on a social media platform.
The main goal of the platform is to provide a platform for content creators all around the world to create videos, share images and share these contents with fans. Along with this, it also allows them (creators) to build a true fan following and most importantly, earn money from their fans. Remember, not all creators on onlyfans use the platform to sell explicit content.
Key Activities
Onlyfans is a platform that allows the creators to share content, build a fan following, and earn money. Users can either watch the free content that many creators allow without charging money or subscribe to the creators on the monthly basis to watch the explicit or private content.
The platform has set a minimum subscription price at $4.99 per month and a maximum at $49.99 per month. It also provides the feature of pay-per-view, on-time tips, and private messaging. These two features have to turn out to be really advantageous to the creators as they can charge money for private messaging with their fans, receive money as a tip on any content, and get paid for each view of the user.
Customer Segments
Actors, models, fitness experts, trainers, chefs, dancers, sex workers, influencers, and almost everyone can be a creator at Onlyfans. Broadly speaking, then the two main groups of customers at Onlyfans are Content creators and Content viewers (users).
Content creators create content and share it with their fan followings. For this, it is up to the creator to charge money or display it free of cost. The user on the other hand must be at least 18 years old to be a part of the audience community as the platform features explicit content also. These two customers play a very important role in Onlyfans growing economy.
Customer Relationships
Onlyfans maintains a healthy relationship with its customers by reaching out to them through its contact support team. If any user faces any problem in accessing the account, the user can directly contact the support team for help. Sometimes, the reply comes a bit late due to lots of requests at the same time but they support the user until the issue is resolved.
Additional to this, if any creator wants to file a complaint against someone for violating privacy rules, the company has designated a DMCA team for hearing such issues and resolving them by taking strict actions against the lawbreaker.
How does Onlyfans make money?
For the online content sharing platform, creators are the key to their success so far. The more the audience engages with the creators, the more will the platform make money. Onlyfans has set a minimum subscription price for the users at $4.99 per month and the maximum subscription price is $49.99 per month. The platform pays out 80% of the money earned and keeps 20% of the earning as a fee.
It is up to the users to send tips to the creators or pay for private messages. For these features, the minimum charge is $5. Most of the creators especially sex workers take huge advantage of paid tips and private messaging features to earn more money along with a loyal fanbase.
To start earning money as a creator on Onlyfans, the user has to add his/her bank account to the personal profile and start uploading quality content. As earlier mentioned, the payout is received every 21 days of 80% of what the creator earns, and the rest 20% is charged as a fee.
Let’s now discuss how to become a member of the Onlyfans creator community.
Get started with your own solution
Onlyfans has used the talent of creators in an incredible way. As already said, the most profit-earning decision of the company was the involvement of pornographers and sex workers in the platform. We are well aware of the fact that sex has always been able to sell hard. Amateur pornstars, professional pornstars, actors, and some other creators post exclusive content to which only the paying fans have access. The platform has benefitted incredibly from the pandemic and lockdown. Search activities on onlyfans have been doubled since then and the traffic has surged massively. Right now, onlyfans is playing hard in the industry that too without any external investors’ involvement.
If you are willing to launch a content subscription service platform similar to Onlyfans(Onlyfans clone), Ncrypted Technologies has the right solution developed by our talent pool. We offer customized and innovative features as per your requirement to let to launch a successful content subscription service platform.
