Yahoo News Watch out for the OnlyFans pimps: can they really make you millions?
I could be earning hundreds of pounds a week. I’ve been spotted, online, for my potential. And, as I wait impatiently for payday, dragging myself through those long days at work where nothing extraordinary happens, it’s tempting. Really tempting.
How? I can become one of the OnlyFans 1%. At least, that’s what this agency is telling me. They would manage everything, I’d work less and earn more… and I wouldn’t even need to show my face. Win, win, right? But, as I was about to discover, what these agencies are really doing is less manager, more pimp. They’re selling a lie dressed as ‘the dream.’
One google of OnlyFans and the stories come rolling in. There’s the ‘Florida woman who quit her Chick-fil-A job to become an OnlyFans model and now earns a whopping $14K a week,’ or ‘the mum- of-two who makes £5,000 a month and saved a £60k deposit for a house in just two years.’ All rags-to-riches tales of women who bid adieu to their boring or unfulfilling lives and now make more than burned-out city bankers.
Your parents probably know what OnlyFans is, so extreme is its ubiquity. The UK-based company barrelled into the industry in 2016, offering users the opportunity to monetise their influence and sell exclusive content to their fans. Not all of this content is adult... but it’s largely, now, what the platform is known for. Sex workers, cam girls and adult film stars enjoy the autonomy OnlyFans offers, in an industry where – previously – they had to rely on bigger companies to either cast them, promote them or, in the case of strip clubs, give them a place to work. On OnlyFans, the creator chooses what content they produce and when, working hours that suit on a self-employed basis. The platform’s popularity peaked during lockdown (something attributed both to traditional venues closing down and more people being pushed into financial hardship). Between 2019 and 2020, the number of registered users rose from 13.5 million to 82.3 million. Now, there are 190 million active users and 2.1 million of those are creators. Between 2020 and 2021, OnlyFans’ revenue increased by 220% – to $4.9bn
OnlyFans takes 20% of whatever creators earn on the platform. The top creators, most of whom are famous women, rake in millions a month. Below them, those in the 0.1%, earn around $100,000 (£80,000) or more every month. The typical creator, though, has 21 subscribers and brings in $151 monthly. A different survey revealed that, on average, an OnlyFans creator makes about $180 every month. This means, to earn the big bucks, you need to be better than 99% of creators on the platform. An opportunity that the growing number of agencies have begun to recognise, and have come swooping in, proffering the secret to success.
THE DAILY GRIND
It was 3am and Pollie* had just finished filming her latest content. She’d been doing what’s known as ‘dick rating’, where fans send her pictures of, well I think you can guess what of, and she delivers them a critique of the picture. But, despite working for hours, she still couldn’t go to bed – she had 30 messages to reply to, from her fans, and each needed special care. She wasn’t in the mood for sexting, but if she slipped up, was snappy or not as ‘fun’ as they thought her to be, then she would lose their support. Bleary-eyed and frazzled, she checked the clock... 5am. She was finally ready to wind down. Her kids would be awake soon and she’d need to do the school run.
Pollie, who’d set up her OnlyFans account in April 2022, was succeeding on the app. She enjoyed it a lot more than her old job in the corporate world, plus it could work around the hours she needed to do since falling sick with an autoimmune disease while pregnant. She was making okay money, but with all the hours she was putting in, it wasn’t worth it. ‘It was extremely lonely,’ the 30-year-old mum says from her home. ‘It had reached the point where I didn’t have the motivation to cook.’ She’d heard that other OnlyFans creators hired people who would do a lot of the accounting and messaging, leaving her with more time to create content. Within a month of starting OnlyFans, she decided that she also needed extra help. She didn’t know then that it would end up costing her a lot more than she ever thought.
Agencies exist to help models manage their productivity, schedule work, help with time management and marketing. In theory, they aren’t any different to an actor, author or influencer hiring a PA or manager. ‘Creators may choose to work with a wide range of third parties, including photographers, videographers, talent managers and agencies, to curate and monetise their content,’ an OnlyFans spokesperson told us, adding that, ‘Any third party that a creator elects to work with does not work on behalf of OnlyFans and is not affiliated with the company in any way.’ There are also plenty of reputable agencies that are a great help to the creators and can take their business to the next level. But then there are the rogue ones. They take many guises, from the ones going after people like me, who don’t have profiles yet, claiming that they can make people hundreds without showing their faces, to those approaching existing OnlyFans creators and promising to elevate their brands and take all the hard work off them.
‘One person doesn’t have enough hours in the day to do OnlyFans and earn good money, unless you’ve got millions of followers on Instagram and are ready to mass DM them,’ says Pollie, who was building her OnlyFans profile and trying to attract a fan base from scratch. ‘If you’re just an average Joe like me, agencies are quite important because they have the strategies and finances to help you out,’ she notes.
The agency told Pollie they would do everything. She logged out of her OnlyFans account so they could post her content and reply to fans. They’d monitor her email inbox and the money made, paying her an allowance each month (40% of the profit, they took 60%) as they took total control of her account. Pollie was new to this, she didn’t know how it usually worked. Plus, they were convincing. Two months passed without them paying her. She was also still doing 90% of the work, as the agency had stopped doing any promotion for her. Pollie, curled up with her cockapoo on her sofa, takes a deep breath as she remembers. ‘I’d spend so many hours just crying, thinking, “What the fuck have I got myself into?”’ Spiralling, she demanded her log-in details. Her blood ran cold. The agency had earned $9,000 from her and had only sent her a meagre cut, not the 40% she thought they agreed. They blamed exchange rates and bank fees. When we spoke to OnlyFans, it confirmed that creator accounts have to be set up by an individual who goes through extensive identification checks before they can upload content, and that all payments are made to creators’ bank accounts, with the name field for all bank accounts uneditable. Pollie claims her agency got around this by setting up a bank account in her name.
I spoke to six OnlyFans creators for this piece, all of whom had experiences with different agencies. However, there were common threads that ran through each of their harrowing stories, with financial abuse looming large. Student Josie†, who started an OnlyFans to help pay her tuition fees, went from earning £1,200 a month to £160 in three months after signing on with an agency that sold her profile to another, without her knowledge. It then locked her out of her account, changing the email and refusing to give her the new password. ‘I was crying all day,’ she recalls. ‘I thought I was going to lose my account.’
Lia†, an ex-OnlyFans model, who also worked as a marketing and talent manager for an agency, describes being in message groups with the agents where they spoke derogatively about the women they managed, including racist remarks. The agents advised each other on control tactics such as blackmailing women who didn’t pay them their cut, by threatening to send all their pictures to family and friends. At one point, one agent said (in messages seen by Cosmopolitan), ‘Sounds like time for a leak of content... revenge porn,’ before a colleague reminded them that they could get into legal trouble for that.
As for the professional marketing strategies and account growth promised? This turned out to be fake followers and likes bought to boost profiles, and ‘the chatters’ (people employed to pretend to be the model, to chat to fans and boost engagement) were mostly friends and family members of the company directors. ‘Only one of them had sales experience,’ says Lia. ‘[The models] were giving away a percentage of their earnings for no reason.’ Meanwhile, agency staff began promising fans in-person meet-ups that, aside from the safety and privacy concerns, is a violation of OnlyFans policy, with their spokesperson telling us that ‘OnlyFans is a site for digital connections, and in-person meetings are strictly against our terms of service. Words such as “meet” are not allowed on the platform and we use AI tools to screen for them. Supported by our AI tools, our team of human moderators review all content uploaded to the platform, including direct messages, and anyone found to be breaching our terms of service faces being banned from the platform.’
Lia screenshotted everything and showed it to a solicitor. They told her she couldn’t take it further because they’d taken themselves off Companies House, a government register of legitimate companies. ‘Every few months, they set up a new business name. They would rack up a lot of debt, and a lot of unhappy clients. But then the clients can’t do anything about it because they’ve now resigned.’
TURN UP THE HEAT
‘No one actually needs a subscription for your pussy...’ I’m chatting on the phone to flame-haired Rebecca Goodwin, who’s an OnlyFans success story. Before joining the platform, she was £15k in debt and feeding her children with food vouchers. Today, she earns between £60,000 and £100,000 a month. But, despite her success, she’s keen for people to know about the hard work that goes into it. ‘People think, “Oh, OnlyFans will save my life.” It’s just not that easy,’ she explains. ‘We’re in a cost-of-living crisis, so you have to put 10 times the amount of work in [to get subscribers].’ You need to be in people’s faces constantly to do well, Goodwin adds.
People message Goodwin all the time asking if they can sell content on OnlyFans without showing their face or having any social media. ‘Less than 10% of it is the actual act of anything explicit. In fact, 90% of the job is constantly being on social media, piquing people’s curiosity so they want to see more,’ she shares. She’s a brand. ‘People remember my name. They know my personality, rather than just someone anonymous on a free porn site. That’s what they pay for.’
Yet, it was exactly this that I was promised. The opportunity to build a fan base without having to show my face, or use my own social media channels. Agents prey on vulnerability. When Goodwin’s page started blowing up five years ago, it all got too much. ‘My anxiety was awful. I thought that having all the money would be an exciting time. But it was just so much more pressure than I could have ever imagined.’ She signed a 12-month contract with an agency, whose advice then led to her losing a bulk of her subscribers and income.
That was a year ago, and the 29-year-old from Chesterfield is in a much better place now. She works without an agency, and puts time aside (8pm to 11pm, six days a week) to answer messages. It’s a lot of work to sext this many people every day, but her fans expect a personal connection. They send pictures of themselves, she sends a video back. She’ll also ask how their day went, and the chat might get deep. Others are witty and playful. It’s very rewarding, she says. Alongside this, she makes three or four movies a month. They are comedic parodies, professionally produced. Her titles include The Little Spermaid, Super Mario Hoes and Lord Of My Ring. Each movie takes two days (seven hours of acting with clothes on, 20 minutes of sex) and costs about £4,000 to make. The bulk of her time is spent promoting the films and her page across social media, which is why her average screen time is 10 hours a day.
On one shoot, she met adult film director Dick Bush. They got on and decided to become business partners. He gets between 15% and 20% of her earnings a month, which amounts to between £15k and £20k. It’s worth every penny to work with one person she trusts rather than an inexperienced team she’s never met, Goodwin says. He helps her with filming and editing, brainstorming ideas for content and finding new work opportunities. He also motivates her for the sex scenes. ‘I’ve got the worst self-confidence in the world. So I have to talk myself into doing sex scenes for days before actually doing it.’
What Goodwin has discovered is her niche. With new creators joining OnlyFans each day, most have to find a way to stand out. The top performers find their USP and perfect it. Astrid Wett is known for also being a boxer. Bonnie Locket uses her knowledge and love of super cars to attract fans. Goodwin is known for her comedic parody fantasy films. ‘Being down to earth and having tits – I soon realised how important it was to stand out from the rest of the competition,’ she notes.
But what if you don’t have a niche? The agencies, it turns out, will find one for you. Pollie, who now has 123k followers on the app, has settled as a ‘curvy football mum’ but she’s also been a nurse, piano teacher, an office worker; whatever an agency (she’s now moved between a few) suggested she try, she did. I was also told by one creator, who preferred not to be named, that she was pressurised into creating content about wanting to sleep with a stepson, something she was opposed to doing as it would make her own stepson feel uncomfortable. But she was bullied into it and eventually gave in. The platform may have been built to put the power back in the hands of sex workers, but it seems the more business has boomed, the more outsiders – often men – have tried to exploit the women at its core.
BREAKING THE CYCLE
‘How I made $100k a month in 2023,’ the video proclaims. Only this time, it’s men, not women, being sold a dream on OnlyFans. YouTube is full of hacks on how to earn six figures a month running an agency. Like the Bitcoin-hungry crypto bros before them, the OnlyFans boom provided a chance to cash in. Men see how supposedly easy it is to make money and are lured in to set up their own creator-management agencies. I’ve been told of men telling their partners or friends they could make loads of money if they let them manage their OnlyFans account.
But, as the platform (and cash within it) grows, what can be done to stop this from happening? An OnlyFans spokesperson told us, ‘OnlyFans provides creators with a platform to monetise their content and engage with their fan base. Our relationship is with the content creators and OnlyFans is not affiliated with and does not endorse any third party or agency.’ This stance exists within a wider context of murky UK legislation. OnlyFans itself is legal (with restrictions on certain types of content), as is working with agencies. However, laws for in-person sex work state that working with a third party is illegal. This results in those who feel taken advantage of by their agencies feeling afraid to go to the police, not to mention the long-running mistrust that sex workers have for law enforcement.
Transparency could help break this cycle. The more that creators speak out about exploitation, the more sex workers know what to look out for. But perhaps we also need to break our dated perceptions of what OnlyFans is and how it functions. Society sends the message that when a woman is using her image to make money, then she mustn’t know what she’s doing. That it’s work that doesn’t require a brain, only a body. But, as every creator I spoke to showed, making it on OnlyFans is a business. And today, it’s about being a business owner in a highly saturated market. Like all new companies, you’ll need a strong plan, a USP and the energy and drive to hustle, hard. And like any other business, the dream doesn’t really exist. Overnight success stories are rarely what they seem and, where there’s money, there’s always a host of snake oil salesmen trying to cash in. Third party OnlyFans agencies are no different, but due to the law and a society that shames sex work, forcing it underground, they have the opportunity to exploit and thrive.
* Name has been changed
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