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Everyone’s Doing It! How OnlyFans is Remaking Porn
MARIANA: Warning: This podcast includes sexual themes and explicit language. Discretion is advised.
MARIANA: The word “OnlyFans” is everywhere, but most people don’t know much about it besides that it’s 1) online and 2) sexual.
MARIANA: So, we wanted to find out: How does it actually work? How do people make money? In this episode, we get deep into the economics of OnlyFans with everyday creators. Ami Unagi has been a consistent OnlyFans creator since 2020.
MARIANA: Ami Unagi is her stage name, not her real name. It’s a combination of her favorite anime character from Sailor Moon – Ami – and her favorite kind of sushi – unagi. That’s eel sushi for those who don’t know.
MARIANA: One of our producers, Aaliyah, talked to Ami on the phone.
MARIANA: There are two ways Ami Unagi makes her money on OnlyFans. The first is by charging a monthly subscription fee to her followers to be able to access her content.
AMI: As long as you pay the $15 subscription every month, you get to see all the pictures and short video clips I post.
MARIANA: Ami often dresses up as different characters. Poison Ivy from DC Comics, Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones, or Nurse Akali from League of Legends.
MARIANA: The second way she makes money on OnlyFans is by offering specials that her followers can pay for … a la carte.
AMI: If you want to, um, see like explicit videos, and when it comes to the explicit videos, I either do like nude videos or masturbation videos, like all that is extra, extra exclusive. And what I'll do is send out a mass message of videos with a paywall, and the subscribers have to pay extra to see the super explicit stuff.
MARIANA: And this is how she makes the real money.
AMI: Because I remember when I was going into it. I was like, “Okay, if I'm, if I make at least $10,000 from this, I'll be happy. I'll be more than happy. Um, but so far, I've made like over $40,000.
MARIANA: Forty. Thousand. Dollars.
MARIANA: I’m Mariana Escoto, and this is Everyone’s Doing It: How OnlyFans is Remaking Porn.
MARIANA: Ami is actually Aaliyah’s cousin.
MARIANA: Remember last episode how Aaliyah almost didn’t do the project because she didn’t know anything about the adult entertainment industry and had no connections? It turns out, we’re all more connected than we think.
MARIANA: Aaliyah comes from a big family. She had never met Ami until Aaliyah's sister told her that Ami does OnlyFans.
AALIYAH: Because when she gave me when I told her about this project, she gave me your Instagram. And she's like, “Oh my gosh, you know our cousin does this.” I was like, “What cousin?” And she was like, “Oh my gosh, her!” And I saw your page, and I was like “Stop, she’s so pretty. Like how did I not know her?”
MARIANA: They DM’d for a few weeks, and then eventually talked on the phone.
AALIYAH: Hi. Hello.
AMI: Hey, Aaliyah, how are you?
AALIYAH: I'm so good. How are you? How was your weekend?
AMI: It was good. My mom, grandma, and sister came up to visit me. So that was good and fun.
AALIYAH: Aw, that's so sweet. How old’s your sister?
AMI: Oh, well, so her birthday was this weekend. So, it was like them visiting and also celebrating her birthday, but she just turned 25.
AALIYAH: Oh my gosh. Dang. Happy, well, happy birthday to your sister.
MARIANA: Ami broke down for Aaliyah how she makes her money and how OnlyFans makes its money. OnlyFans takes a 20% cut off all transactions. For Ami, the rest is directly deposited into her bank account.
AMI: Yeah because when I look at the numbers, I'm like, “Dang, I could have had this much if they didn't take the 20%.” But, I mean, I mean, it could be worse. They could take like, 30 or 40%.
MARIANA: OnlyFans creators get to set their own rate. Ami chose her $14.99 monthly rate, knowing OnlyFans would take a cut.
MARIANA: That way, she says she’s ensured at least $11.99 a month per subscriber in her pocket.
MARIANA: Oh yeah, did we mention Ami has a master’s degree in accounting? She actually used her earnings from OnlyFans to pay her way through school.
MARIANA: The amount of her subscribers changes – right now Ami has 57 subscribers, but she has reached a peak of 120 in the past.
MARIANA: It’s hard to keep a consistent following because sometimes people subscribe for a while and then unsubscribe when they get what they want.
MARIANA: A lot of the $40,000 that Ami has made in the past three years is by offering … specials. She has a full-time job, but the extra money helps.
MARIANA: One thing still confused us about the economics of OnlyFans: If people can find porn on the internet for free – then why pay extra money to a single creator?
MARIANA: David Church helped us make sense of this. He’s the Indiana University professor who specializes in the history of porn.
MARIANA: He explains that the rise of the internet totally changed how people make and watch porn – just like many other industries that changed because of the internet.
DAVID: We're seeing more of, of a shift in terms of people going online and expecting pornography to be something that is widely available for free. We're sort of, sort of returned to a subscription-based model, but really more focused around not specific websites, but more specific performers or models.
MARIANA: Something we keep hearing about is how OnlyFans is more personal than regular porn. Scholars like David liken it to something called a parasocial relationship. It's an intimate, emotional bond that fans imagine they have with the celebrities they worship – but it really only goes one-way.
DAVID: So there's a porn scholar named Daniel Laurin, who's written about what he calls subscription intimacy, as one of the things that drives these sites like OnlyFans or Fansly, and others of that ilk. So the idea that you, as a subscriber, you get more that parasocial sort of feeling of connection with the performer, you know, it's no longer that, that sort of anonymous person out there on the internet, it's now somebody that you feel you have some sort of connection with, even if it might be, in many respects, just sort of a monetary connection.
MARIANA: Like much of social media, subscribers have the option to directly message the creators they subscribe to. That’s part of that intimacy or parasocial relationship. They can ask the creator to post a specific type of photo, or the subscribers send photos to the creators — you know, dick pics — and ask the creator to rate it.
MARIANA: Creators can’t directly charge for DMs on OnlyFans, but it’s still a big part of how they make their money.
MARIANA: Ami will only chat with her subscribers if they are tipping or paying for some of her extras – like the videos she puts behind an additional paywall.
AMI: And if they, they subscribed on a promotional sale, and they don't buy none of my extras. I may say “hey” to them, but I'm not finna hold a conversation with you. You need to like buy stuff and send me money. If you want to talk more.
MARIANA: Another way people earn extra money on OnlyFans is by teaming up. These are called quote, unquote, “trade scenes.” It’s when two creators make a video together to post to both of their accounts. Here’s David again:
DAVID: You know, they’re sort of pooling their, their collective followers, their collective fanbases, and, and, you know, sort of partnering on scenes and then sharing the revenue.
MARIANA: That’s how LJ, my coworker who has the mullet and the rescue dog, found success with her girlfriend Kayela. LJ and Kayela started individual accounts on OnlyFans during the pandemic in 2021. Then, they started a joint account where they posted videos of themselves having sex – and that’s when they said they started making money.
LJ: So we had kind of like three different accounts going. So we each had our own individual. And then we had, like, our couple account. My individual that I did not focus too much on just because I was like, “This is so intimidating. I don't know.”
MARIANA: LJ says she only charged $4 a month for her personal account since she didn’t post very often.
MARIANA: On their couple’s account, they got up to 150 followers and they posted about twice a month.
MARIANA: So they charged 15 a month for that, plus specials.
MARIANA: After OnlyFans takes a cut, we calculated that that’s around $1800 a month.
LJ: Anything in the car. Anything at all. People think it's hot, it's public, it's kind of risky. Anything, like, in the BDSM bondage world, people are really into that.
MARIANA: LJ says she thinks people were more into the couple's content – probably because they are two women. But, it was also better for her and her girlfriend.
MARIANA: For them, posting their sex videos online added a level of kink to their relationship.
LJ: I feel like it was definitely marketed as this like, oh, safe, casual, like, just make a little bit of cash. And it's like cool. So for people like me, Kayela and a few of our other friends. It's like yeah, this is easy. Like we already do this. Might as well like put the phone up, record, like, why not?
LJ: One second. Thanks, Mom. Oo, it’s hot. Thank you. Sorry, my mom's bringing me oatmeal.
MARIANA: That's okay.
LJ: I'm doing, I'm doing work, school, and this all at once. I'm a multitasker now.
MARIANA: You’re a one-show man right now.
LJ: I'm a one show.
MARIANA: That’s LJ’s mom bringing her food while we’re on the phone for this interview. LJ lives at home. Her parents do not know that she’s done OnlyFans.
MARIANA: A few weeks after this first conversation, Julianne and I went over to Kayela's house to talk with her and LJ about OnlyFans.
MARIANA: Kayela lives with her family in a super swanky house in a gated community in the hills. We had to wait until her parents were out of town to schedule our dinner.
MARIANA: Oh my god. She just popped a cinnamon–
JULIANNE: Biscuits?
MARIANA: Biscuits. Roll.
LJ: Biscuit. Ew? What’s that stuff in there?
JULIANNE: It’s butter.
LJ: Kind of getting an ick from it. Chunky butter. Chunky, chunky butter.
MARIANA: They even made us dessert when we came over.
JULIANNE: Are you guys making Strawberry Shortcake?
LJ: We are. We are with ice cream.
MARIANA: How’d you get that?
LJ: Yeah, we got ice cream. It's the best.
MARIANA: It was kind of like just hanging out with new friends. Normal. Except … we had to ask them a lot about their sex lives.
MARIANA: LJ and Kayela told us they first met at a horse ranch where they both worked. Now, they’ve been together for three years and are the co-parents to one beautiful dog.
LJ: I'd say we spend most of the time at my apartment. Where, like, my family is there a good amount of time, but they leave us alone for the most part. We have like, we have like my own room. And that, they leave us alone, but her family goes out of town a lot.
MARIANA: That’s part of why LJ and Kayela filmed so much of their OnlyFans content in the car. That’s the only place they had privacy. Another reason is that the subscribers loved the public aspect. Their car videos brought in bank.
MARIANA: What we’ve figured out so far is that two things help everyday people make it on OnlyFans: having an angle – like trade scenes with other creators or videos in public spaces – and having a social media presence outside of OnlyFans.
MARIANA: A big social media following is hugely important because OnlyFans doesn't make it easy to search for people. Creators have to advertise their accounts on Twitter and Instagram in order to drive traffic to their OnlyFans page.
MARIANA: Other creators use dating sites like Tinder or Grindr to build their followings, using code words so they don’t get banned from those platforms for advertising OnlyFans.
MARIANA: That’s how Gilbert, a surfer who works as a maintenance man, got into OnlyFans. Gilbert came by our studio to talk with our producer, Gerardo.
MARIANA: He told us he was at a bar one day with one of his friends who was on Grindr, a gay dating app. Gilbert, who says he’s not gay, bet he could get more matches than his friend if he joined Grindr.
GILBERT: I guarantee you I can download Grindr right now, and I will get more matches than you.
GERARDO: What happened?
GILBERT: I got, I got fucking blown up. I got, I thought it was a confidence booster. I showed her I got, like, 10 matches in, like, 14 minutes.
MARIANA: He figured, if he was getting this much attention, might as well make some money off of it. So, he started up an OnlyFans account with the screenname Gil’s Thrillz. With a z.
GILBERT: And I was like, I mean, I've sent nudes, you know? You know, I was, you know, a horndog, and I'll just say no, I've sent it for free. So yeah, what's the worst case scenario?
MARIANA: Gilbert’s family didn’t know, but he says his close friends were not surprised at all when they learned he was doing OnlyFans. He said he likes to try new hobbies just for the experiences and stories (or as he puts it, for shits and giggles).
GILBERT: So, a disclaimer, I, I've always been told I had a nice ass. Okay, so like, I didn't know I, even growing up, like, I've always had a big butt. And people would like, laugh at it and poke fun. And I didn't know it was like a thing. So when I started working out I, you know, I got really in good shape. That’s when I, so it was like, peak of working out is when I made the OnlyFans so I was, you know, I was looking the best, feeling the best.
MARIANA: Most of Gil’s followers were men, but it also led to some hook ups … with women. One time another creator asked him to do a video with her. She put it on her OnlyFans page but didn’t give him a cut of the profits. He says he didn’t mind.
GILBERT: I, I got paid with pussy. I guess.
MARIANA: Eventually, Gilbert got kicked off of Tinder for promoting his OnlyFans.
GILBERT: So I did that posted just like one, like, a shirtless seductive picture and then with my OnlyFans name, then probably got maybe couple subscribers off that. But then I got, I got banned from Tinder.
GERARDO: For OnlyFans?
GILBERT: For, for apparently in the Terms Conditions, yeah, you can't promote things.
MARIANA: Again, the reason self-promo outside of OnlyFans is so important is because you can only search for creators by username. That’s what makes it different from Pornhub.
MARIANA: People can’t search for categories like “MILF” or “lesbian.”
MARIANA: Instead, they have to find people they want to follow on other platforms. We found that, for some creators, you need to have a direct link to access their OnlyFans page.
MARIANA: Ami Unagi didn’t even start her OnlyFans until she had a large enough social media following.
MARIANA: About seven years ago, Ami started following a big cosplay community on social media, way before she was doing erotic work. She created cosplay accounts on Instagram and Twitter. After she moved out of her mom’s house, she created a sexy alter-ego: Ami Unagi.
MARIANA: Then, her followers kept asking if she had an OnlyFans page where they could get more explicit content.
AMI: I had followers asking, “Hey, when are you? Do you have OnlyFans page? Or are you going to start one? When are you going to get one?” I had a lot of people asking. And, so when I, when I got to a point where, “Okay, I have a lot of people asking, so let me go ahead and start it.”
MARIANA: Ami believes that having a niche or “unique personality” is what has helped her keep such a large following on OnlyFans … but it’s also a lot more work.
AMI: Like I incorporate, like, my favorite things into my content making. Like I really enjoy cosplay. And I love dressing up as my favorite characters and doing all that stuff. And at the artist side of it, I used to be more artistic with my cosplay back in the day – I used to enjoy, like, making part of my own costumes and making my props.
MARIANA: The more Ami got into OnlyFans, the harder it was to find the time to create the content outside of her regular job. Once a week, she spends a full day creating content to slowly post during the week.
MARIANA: Lynn Comella, the professor of gender and sexuality studies at the University of Nevada, explains that doing OnlyFans isn’t just a fun hobby for those creators who really make money at it. It’s work. It’s labor.
LYNN: They are their own makeup person, their own hair person, they are deciding what content to shoot, and they're setting up the lights, and they're setting up the camera, they're doing the editing, they're doing the back-end of all of it. It's all of the production, and the marketing, and the brand building, and the fan engagement.
MARIANA: Even for a dedicated creator like Ami, it can be hard to keep up.
AMI: The way I manage it is that if I can't, if I don't have the time to get all glammed up and stuff. I just take, like, you know, a quick selfie here and there and just quick selfies and pics in my everyday looks, um, and my subscribers enjoy that.
MARIANA: And that’s not the only work creators say they have to do. They also have to fend off unwanted attention. All the creators we spoke to agreed on one thing: more work means more subscribers, which means more money — but also more problems.
MARIANA: LJ and Kaeyla said the more popular they became, the more demanding fans became over what they posted.
LJ: I feel like when you do reach those higher levels, you're getting a lot of like, subscribers, there are those like, deadlines of “I expect you to post this many times. And I expect to see this and I want to see this.”
MARIANA: Just like with any business, the creators have to protect their content. They can’t keep someone from screenshotting their images, but they can keep them from recording their videos.
AMI: On Netflix, if you try to screen record a movie on Netflix –
AALIYAH: It has like no sound, right?
AMI: Yeah. Screen’s black.
AALIYAH: I've tried screen recording, so I know exactly what you're talking. I was like, “Let me get my favorite episode. Nope. Okay. I had to try.”
AMI: I, I've tried doing that before. And then once I did it, the screen was just completely black. I'm like, “Oh, so you can't do that.”
MARIANA: But that’s not the only challenge creators face.
AMI: I've had some subscribers that will subscribe just so they can, like, ask me out on a date.
AMI: The worst part of it is, when you have subscribers that just see you as like, just an object and a piece of meat, and they get so disrespectful.
MARIANA: OnlyFans does have some safeguards in place so that creators can protect themselves from aggressive followers. If a subscriber gets too demanding or creepy, a creator can block their account.
AMI: I think I may had one where the guy was just being too pushy. And when that happens, um, I just block them. And when I block them, it blocks their IP address. And then it gives them a refund.
MARIANA: According to Ami, subscribers get blocked, but they get their money back. And that means they could theoretically follow again from another computer.
MARIANA: When subscribers are anonymous accounts without profile photos, there is less accountability for their actions. That’s the parasocial relationship–they feel like they know the creator and can demand things of them.
AMI: You can subscribe and just enjoy seeing me without having to like, you know, disrespect me and stuff. But for me, I just don't do super explicit hardcore stuff. And so it's like, you know, I have subscribers that “Oh, I want you to do this. I want you to do that.” And it's like, “Um, I clearly state I don’t do these things, and okay, you're being disrespectful.”
MARIANA: More on the dark side of OnlyFans, and whether this new take on porn is actually better for creators – that’s next time.
MARIANA: This podcast was written, reported, and produced by me, Mariana Escoto, Aaliyah Skipper, Julianne Le, and Gerardo Chagolla. Original score was composed by Andy Van Driesen.
MARIANA: Additional audio editing by Jenny Kim.
MARIANA: Our editorial advisor is Jessica Langlois. Jill Replogle is our audio storytelling consultant. Additional technical support was provided by Joseph Pavlenko and Ryan Osborn.
MARIANA: This project was supported by California Humanities Emerging Journalist Fellowship Program.
MARIANA: For more information, visit www.calhum.org. It was produced in the Fullerton College student newsroom and radio studio.
MARIANA: Any views or findings expressed in this podcast do not necessarily represent those of Fullerton College, California Humanities, or the National Endowment for the Humanities.