[waves crashing]
[intriguing music]
This whole thing about
OnlyFans isn't a new idea.
People have been trying
it for many years
and it's actually been
a very popular thing.
Because OnlyFans technically
wasn't supposed to be porn,
it was supposed to
be exclusive content.
You know, at the time there
were so many other companies
trying to replicate what
OnlyFans had already mastered.
So everybody's
signing up on OnlyFans
and just selling their
masturbation videos.
I'm like, why not?
I could do the same thing.
I used to f*ck my fans
and post those videos
on my OnlyFans.
I originally started
with web camming.
I was found by a
recruiter who was like,
"hey, have you ever
thought about doing porn?"
I had 26, just become
freshly single.
And then I started dating this
guy who was just a total dirt bag.
I was a dancer for years.
I was traveling out in Vegas.
From as early as I can remember,
I was always chasing girls
around the playground.
A lot of the guys from my Twitch
community would come in and say,
"make an OnlyFans,
make an OnlyFans."
And I'm like, "oh, I'm not...
I would never do that."
They can connect with
that audience directly
and they can make thousands a day.
And that's why we're seeing
these top 1% creators
buying Lamborghini Uruses and
mansions in Beverly Hills.
I didn't even really think it
was like a career or an industry.
Girls these days are only
focused on their own things.
But now girls are getting all
this attention on social media.
Human beings are looking for their
interactivity on social media.
People who are
desperate to make money.
People who have money and are
desperate for interaction.
And it created a perfect storm
to make OnlyFans one of the largest
social media platforms in the world.
Hi, I'm Adria Rae.
I'm Dan Dangler.
I'm Amber Marie.
I'm Kenzie Ann.
[clapperboard clattering]
And this is the Rise of OnlyFans.
[suspenseful music]
This whole thing about
OnlyFans isn't a new idea.
People have been trying
it for many years,
and it's actually been
a very popular thing.
It was called Solo Sites.
Solo Girls Sites were very popular
as little as five or ten years ago.
Thomas Stokely, who
founded OnlyFans,
actually was already
kind of an adult industry
entrepreneur at the time.
He had founded a couple websites.
One of them notably
was called Glamworship.
The other one was called Customs4U.
These were basically sites where
he was trying to develop that
relationship between the
audience and the creator,
and kind of cut out the
middleman, the studio.
The first time I ever heard about
it was my agent at the time,
and the agents were
trying to sign us up
so they would get a kickback or
they'd get a percentage of sales.
Stokely really saw the vision
that if you could connect
the creator directly
to the consumer,
that as a platform you
could make tons of money.
I remember the first site
I was on was Patreon.
They generate nudity,
sexual contents,
at the beginning of their sites.
These are basically
websites where the creator
just posts their videos and
then somebody can pay for them.
This all turned itself around.
In 2016, he hadn't really
experienced a lot of success.
He goes to his dad, who
gave him a $10,000 loan.
His dad basically tells him,
"this is the last
money I'm giving you."
Teams up with his brother,
and they build out
what today is OnlyFans,
which has done billions of dollars.
So the first time
I heard of OnlyFans
was at one of the adult
entertainment conventions.
They had actually had a booth
there and were kind of like
approaching different porn stars
and different people
in the industry kind of being like,
"hey, you know, we
have this platform."
I saw a bunch of my
other fellow performers
hopping on the platform,
and I thought, you know,
what a cool way to like push content
that I already had on my phone.
A lot of people moved, to
our worst, to OnlyFans.
How I got started, it was
very different, you know.
It's like I started off modeling
and kind of like ended
up in the adult industry.
When I was modeling, I was
always open to being nude
and all that stuff or whatever, but
the majority of the photos we take
was things that would
be safe for Instagram.
I was always open to it.
I just didn't... when
I started OnlyFans,
I just didn't know that
that's what the fans wanted.
They wanted to see more.
And so as I met people in Miami
and I worked in the industry
and I kind of really
realized like, you know,
what the fans wanted.
When I first started, I
had known of some girls,
you know, making good money,
and I just kind of reached out
enough to where I became friends
with those girls, started
collabing with those,
getting on their pages, then
meeting the people they know,
but just learning from that.
[pensive music]
Throughout the course of history,
we are one of the most
innovative species
when it comes to technology.
Credit cards, when credit
cards first came out,
the first uses for credit cards
were actually for online
payments for adult content.
VHSs, DVDs, DVDs started taking
off because of the adult industry.
Audio equipment, 4K, the
internet, even now, online
the majority of content
is actual adult content.
VR, the adult industry,
we're the ones
taking a chance on this new tech.
At the time, Snapchat
was like the big thing.
If you had personal
content on your phone,
like amateur videos
or things like that,
you would have like
a private Snapchat.
The app would crash all the time.
It was just annoying.
So we had a platform,
but it wasn't like perfected
because doing everything on
Snapchat was really annoying.
So when OnlyFans came around it was
very, very like attractive
to somebody like me.
Around 2018,
Stokely sells 75% of the company
to a very famous adult industry
founder, Leonard Radvinsky,
who was actually the founder
and owner of MyFreeCams,
one of the largest adult
campsites in the world.
As soon as Radvinsky gets involved,
now we start seeing
some huge numbers.
Radvinsky really saw the
vision of being able to create
that interactivity between
creator and consumer.
The majority of adult
content porn consumers,
I don't have the exact number,
but I'd say nine out of
ten porn consumers are men.
They're the ones spending
a lot of the money on it
from just the analytics
and a lot of the porn that
we see as kind of base
for the male gaze.
How did this go from a
relatively successful
but obscure website,
to a part of mainstream culture
that is almost
impossible to not see?
The community was just growing
at like substantial speed.
So that was why I got on it.
It seemed like I wanted to be
somewhere where more people were,
and that was OnlyFans.
One of the biggest catalysts
that is often overlooked
that really, truly led to the rise
and positioning of OnlyFans today
was COVID -19.
I was late to the party.
I heard about it when
everyone else did.
Right when COVID hit,
it was like, boom.
Pandemic hit, everything shut down.
More people are working from home.
More people are using the internet,
and more people are
desperate for money
than ever before in our lifetime.
I started at the
most impeccable time.
I couldn't have gotten deep
into the online community
at a better time in the history
of the online community.
OnlyFans at the time,
they were begging performers
when it first came out
to join the platform.
Until the pandemic,
when they stopped,
they shut down
professional sh**ting.
I thought I was
going to be in Guess.
I thought I was going to
be in all these big brands
to where I was like, I'm
working from home now.
The clubs are closed.
I'm not dancing anymore.
I don't have work anymore.
So I'm just doing OnlyFans.
Everybody is quarantined, staying
at home and nothing to do.
So everybody is
signing up on OnlyFans
and just selling their
masturbation videos.
I'm like, why not?
I could do the same thing
and make a living off that.
So we pretty much left our own
devices to fend for ourselves.
And that's when OnlyFans
started taking off for myself
and a lot of my peers.
When COVID hit, any girl
that dropped an OnlyFans
made 40 grand, 50 grand,
whatever, depending
on their popularity.
You were first, you sold your
nudes, okay, you made money.
During COVID, there was
hundreds of thousands of people
that were out of work.
They needed to survive.
You know, they were going to
OnlyFans to sh**t content
because, say, they were a teacher
or they were a dentist, whatever.
Like, they were losing
their jobs as well.
It wasn't just the adult
industry that was losing work.
This girl is selling her nudes.
You know, this girl in Toronto is
selling her nudes that we all know.
You can go buy her nudes?
That's crazy.
Let's go check it out.
What's the site called?
OnlyFans, okay.
And now another girl
just dropped in OnlyFans.
What?
I had just started up my new
business venture
of the online sex work community.
And all anybody was doing
at that time was being home,
and that's all I was doing.
So I was home working my a*s
off and making a lot of money.
[chuckles]
I was working towards
trying to direct
and move more behind the camera
right before COVID-19 hit.
And then the pandemic hit,
and it enforced a lot of testing
regulations on our industry
that were very strict and
were changing all the time.
Pandemic hit.
There was no more flying out
to L.A., anything like that.
So what I did was I
networked with girls in Miami
who had OnlyFans who were starting
to blow up in the industry
and the world over there and
started to make a lot of money.
It definitely increased
my revenue for sure.
It increased my revenue
on everything because
people were just home, and my job
is being on the internet in general,
whether it's streaming or OnlyFans,
so it definitely
increased my income.
And I remember the boys' group
chats just being electric.
You know, we're all bored
at home during COVID,
nothing to talk about, and then,
oh, this girl just
dropped an OF, how is it?
Let's share money on an account.
[laughs]
Oh, it's 80 bucks to see her naked?
20 each then, you know.
It made directing and
producing incredibly hard.
We're having to do
24-hour COVID testing
on top of the STD testing
standards that we already have,
ultimately led me to
kind of stepping away
from directing and producing
because it was just way
too much on my plate.
I was able to take the the
skills that I was using
for a company directing
and producing,
and I was able to just
use it for myself.
That was when I launched everything.
That was when I started camming
and then that was when I broke
through with my OnlyFans.
And I had so much fun
filming my OnlyFans
because it was right when
the pandemic was starting.
I bought some camera.
I knew nothing about
YouTube how to use it,
and I actually started
taking professional photos
and videos of myself that I
was loading to my OnlyFans
and editing myself.
And I was having fun like
in this online world that
involved nobody else but me.
With the rise of OnlyFans
like the big name porn stars,
they weren't sh**ting for the
production companies anymore
because they were making more
money sh**ting their own content
from their own home.
Up until this point, it was very
standard for production studios
to play flat rates to girls and
performers, in general, to perform.
Some of those rates on the high end
were considered maybe
thousands a day.
On the low end, it could
be as low as hundreds.
What the production companies
would do is they would actually
take the creators and they
would pay them as talent
and then they would own the content
and then they would go
on and distribute it
and make tons of money from it.
You make this scene
with this company
and you get paid $2,000,
let's say, back then, not that much.
And whatever flat rate they
got to do that sh**t that day,
that's what they got and
very often, no royalties.
So they would have to show
up on set, nine hours, film,
and then get their pay, go home.
And then they go and they sell it
and they put it out
there and they make
thousands and thousands
and thousands of dollars off it.
Well, OnlyFans is giving people
the opportunity to make that money
themselves without the middle man.
OnlyFans, for sure,
absolutely gave creators
for the first time
a place to really monetize the
brand they built for themselves.
So sure, they get
paid to show up on set
and do their sh**t for
the production companies,
but it's not the same money at
all as they're making on OnlyFans.
There were porn stars that
capitalized on their name
that they had created through porn
and having all their
content on Pornhub, per se.
And then they were using that
clout on OnlyFans to monetize.
So they're taking their
name and their image
from what they created to
OnlyFans to make money.
One girl I know is making
1.5 million a month.
Another one I'm tight with
showed me her account.
She's making $850,000 a month.
They're not getting that from
the production companies.
That's all about the O.F.
I quit porn because
I kept getting sick.
I was always on antibiotics
when I was filming.
It was awful.
You're sharing so many germs on set.
So when you're home
and creating content,
you just have more access
versus when you're on set.
I mean, when you're on set,
you're not sitting there on
your OnlyFans chatting with
your biggest spenders and making
sure that somebody who just tipped
is getting what they
just tipped for.
Definitely quitting
was a skyrocketing
concept for my business.
When you are taking away, like,
physical exhaustion that porn
actually gives you, you're tired.
You don't want to go home and
make the custom that requires you
to do your makeup again, and do
something physical that maybe
your body can't do after
sh**ting a porn scene.
On OnlyFans they get to choose
where they sh**t at their own home.
They get to film it
themselves 45 minutes
with a guy that they're
comfortable with.
They get to edit out the
parts they don't want, cut it,
sell it themselves, make
hundreds of thousands,
millions of dollars off it.
The process, like, I enjoy going to
set because a lot of the companies
I've been sh**ting for so long,
so I have a relationship with
the producers or the crew.
They're like family. Like, there's
some people in this industry
that I've known for so
long, they're like family to me.
So if I'm sh**ting
from my home, you know,
I don't get to see these people.
If I'm on set, it's cool.
It's like a little reunion
where I get to hang out
with my friends and my peers.
On amateur sets, I sh**t from home.
Don't have to worry about
opening up the camera.
Don't have to worry about directors.
Don't have to worry about,
if we want to take a break,
we can take a break.
Yeah, it's just easier.
It's just more relaxed.
It's more, it's just more informal.
Now, the typical split on OnlyFans
is around 80% to the creator
and approximately
20% to the platform.
That's great for OnlyFans as well
because the credit card
processing really only costs them
somewhere around
three to five percent.
So they're basically
taking 15% margin
just for providing a website.
My OnlyFans actually
was not thriving
while I was in production.
Once I quit, my OnlyFans turned over
because I was finally
home again all the time.
And when you're home and
you're creating content
and you're doing this
solo one on one time,
in my experience, you're making the
best production that you can sell.
You have your marketing down.
You know when to make TikToks,
when to post on Instagram,
when to Twitter, when to Telegram.
I strictly do OnlyFans.
I've thought about in the past
getting into the adult industry
after getting into OnlyFans,
but decided it wasn't
what's best for my brand
because there's more
money working for yourself
than there is working in porn.
But it's still great for the
creators, because the creators,
if they're making 75% or
80% of the money themselves,
they no longer need to
go work for $200 a day
or for even $1,000 a day.
The production companies pretend
that they're supporting it,
but I think deep down
they don't like it,
because I know for a fact, some
of the production companies,
they'll put a boy
and a girl together
and they'll make them
wipe off all their makeup
and change out of their outfits,
go home in separate
cars after they sh**t
because what a lot
of people are doing,
they'll show up on set,
then they'll be like,
"do you wanna f*ck
again for our content?"
And the production company
is like, "whoa, whoa, whoa."
If you're gonna f*ck again in
this house, in the same makeup,
in the same outfit, and then
put it on your OnlyFans,
who the f*ck's gonna buy our tape,
that we just spent all
this production for?
So the crazy thing about
OnlyFans is it had never been
initially created
solely for the purpose
of connecting adult
creators with consumers.
It was really meant to be a
platform that musicians would use
to connect with their audiences
and sell their music directly.
It was a platform for artists or
dancers or fitness instructors
to be able to teach courses on.
That was the original
vision for OnlyFans.
The perpetuation of
adult content on OnlyFans
was almost completely driven by the
Visa and MasterCard ban on Pornhub.
[suspenseful music]
So towards the end of 2020,
OnlyFans receives a holy grail that
they could have never expected.
The world's largest
adult website, Pornhub,
gets their credit card processing
pulled by Visa and MasterCard.
Basically, there was
content going on Pornhub
that wasn't legally shot.
Some people were even
saying that there was
videos of minors on the site.
Pornhub's not a big model,
it's like a big webcam site,
it's more so a collective of porn.
When Visa and MasterCard
canceled with Pornhub,
a lot of their processing was
lost when they made that switch.
What does this lead to?
It leads for the biggest
exodus of content creators,
specifically adult content
creators, from Pornhub to OnlyFans,
desperate for anywhere to sell their
content and continue earning income.
The movement of content creators
went from the webcam
platforms to OnlyFans.
That's where they lived and
then they went to OnlyFans.
I was on Pornhub
before they got banned,
like Visa and everything.
I have a big income on
Pornhub just posting videos,
so one day they just started
banning all the videos,
taking down videos.
It was weird when it happened
because all of us porn performers
already had OnlyFans and whatnot,
but everybody kind of
started jumping onto it
and the traffic on it
started getting crazy.
Pornhub's more of an aggregate,
more of a library of
p*rn*graphy and adult content,
and then the web camming sites
are a whole different beast.
There was definitely mass
exodus from the webcamming sites
to OnlyFans for sure.
What did this do for OnlyFans?
This was the opportunity
of a lifetime
that I don't think any of them,
including Stokely, could
have ever seen coming.
Back when everything started in
the adult entertainment industry,
girls relied on the production
companies to get anything out.
It was all they had.
It was their only choice.
It was kind of like a perfect storm.
Like all of these girls
had the opportunity
to make a bunch of
money from their homes.
All of this traffic is getting
driven there from Pornhub,
and so it made OnlyFans into this
monster that it is now. [chuckles]
What ends up happening
is all these cam girls
and all these adult actresses
who are using Pornhub
as a platform to sell
their content through,
all of a sudden have
no way to make money,
no way to accept payments,
and nowhere to go.
There's two ways
performers look at it.
They would either upload
their content on Pornhub
to monetize it when
they could at the time,
or there was performers that
would just, with the good graces,
they would be cool with their
content being uploaded on Pornhub
because it would give
them more visibility.
In my case, for example, I have
600 million views on Pornhub,
so that's a lot of
free publicity for me.
I was very scared that when I lose
a big chunk of income from Pornhub,
but some of the fans would move to
OnlyFans to watch those contents.
The people who are most
successful on the platform
are ones that already have large
established audiences
somewhere else,
and they're able to move
that audience over there,
cut out the production company,
cut out the middle man,
and then get more of that revenue.
OnlyFans changed a lot
for a lot of people.
It allowed some cam
girls and some porn girls
to make way more money than
they were making before.
With the sex industry,
when it comes to porn,
it's like you've got
a lot more people
where it's like a lot more girls,
they're not even gonna
get into porn now
because they could
just do it themselves.
All the girls now, the new ones,
are only going on
the mainstream sites
to promote their OnlyFans,
or to promote their name,
to promote their brand.
I still use a professional
production company.
I still sh**t for them, like
MindGeek, Brazzers, Vixen.
To be honest, I think that's just
for marketing purposes. [laughs]
They can jump into my OnlyFans
to see my personal videos,
to get some custom videos, which
means like homemade videos.
I could just have my phone,
you know, like not really
professional angles
and the shaking angles,
they can just see homemade videos,
which is I think some
of my fans love that.
They are literally making
more than movie stars are
because some of these girls who
have built up big followings
and moved them successfully
over to the platform
are able to really write
their own paychecks
and they're able to create unlimited
subscription revenue for themselves,
which was never a possibility
when they were working directly
with production companies that
control the whole industry.
None of these girls, really,
unless they were like the top five,
were millionaires
from doing this stuff.
So this is very fresh that
the biggest names in porn
are now all multi-millionaires,
all of them.
That is brand new.
So it used to be like, "oh porn
star, okay, she does porn."
But now it's like, "oh, porn star",
"richer than the top
music artists today,"
"richer than our celebrity friends,
richer than the best lawyer,"
these girls are just
doing sh*t at home.
They quit porn and some of them
just do nudes, example, Mia Khalifa,
who's one of the most watched
porn stars ever on Pornhub.
She's only done I
think eight scenes,
but she does OnlyFans now.
She's top five earner in the world,
doesn't show her n*pples.
So she's a multi multi millionaire
because she did porn,
now just doing OF,
not even showing herself,
making millions and millions
and millions of dollars,
millions a month.
Although there are creators
that are very successful
on the OnlyFans platform,
some of them even making
millions of dollars a year.
One of the huge misconceptions that
the public has about the platform
is that everybody
on OnlyFans becomes
automatically
financially successful.
OnlyFans isn't cheap, you know.
I spend 10K a month
on promo for my page
and girls who don't spend that
they don't make much money.
People do OnlyFans and they think
of it almost like a dancing,
like being a stripper just like
"I'm gonna start OnlyFans and
I'm gonna make all this money,"
with what platform, with what
traction, with what anything?
You don't have any network.
It doesn't work like that,
you don't just drop OnlyFans
and all of a sudden people see you.
A lot of people think
"well, I can quit my job
and I can go do OnlyFans."
But the reality is
about 90% of the revenue
goes to less than
1% of the creators.
You are not gonna be
successful in content creating
if you don't know yourself
or where your boundary is.
If you're gonna let your
fans push you to do something
that you're not comfortable with,
you're not laying your
boundaries down initially.
Your fans should know what
they're getting with you.
And then your boundary is that
you slowly open up to your
fans, should be rewards,
like hey this is my
first time I've ever done
whatever fetish whatever
niche you're selling,
and use that to market.
Because you're gonna make more
money with your boundaries.
I'm just trying to jam up
my income trying to come
up with these creative ideas.
How to track my fans
to join my OnlyFans.
So I come up with the
idea for the raffle.
$20 for each raffle.
Some people will spend
thousands of dollars on raffle.
The biggest reward
is they can f*ck me
in real life, in person.
Some of the fans got
a lot of the raffle
but they did not win,
so they kind of get jealous,
so they reported me.
On OnlyFans that's how I got
banned
for about a year and
a half, I would say.
That life was not fun at all.
You know some people
don't have large audiences
and maybe they don't make
that much on their OnlyFans,
so doing the production
company is great
but even then it's still promotion
for their OnlyFans in the long run.
I try to interact
with them personally.
So I try to live stream a lot.
That's really big with
connecting with people.
They can see your
mannerisms, how you are,
how you joke about things, laugh,
and they can relate to you.
And then I also try
to do little vlogs
of just stuff that I'm doing, you
know, fun things that I'm going to,
whether it be an event or
a sh**t that I'm doing,
or a collab that I'm
doing with a girl.
I really try to involve
them in the process as well
so that they feel like they're
a part of what I'm doing.
During COVID everybody's
trying to make money.
Money was great and was
pretty easy, but after,
towards the end of the COVID,
it's slowing down a little bit.
[suspenseful music]
We go back to August, 2021.
OnlyFans, under
Stokely's leadership,
decides that they're going
to pull out of adult content.
That sends the adult creator
community into a whirlwind.
I was like, oh no.
It was like a catastrophe
in the world happening.
I remember that happening
and I was like, "uh oh",
this is going to k*ll OnlyFans.
This is the reason
I heard of OnlyFans.
My first reaction was,
well, all the girls
are going to come back
to sh**ting porn now that left.
[chuckles]
Everyone's faces dropped, like...
My reaction was sort of like
everybody else online freaking out.
I laughed at that because
people aren't going to OnlyFans
to watch a girl's cooking show
or to read a book to them.
It's at least 95% of the content
and money made on that
website is for adult content.
It was scary.
OnlyFans is mostly where
my income is coming from.
That's the big part.
If I lose that side then
the biggest thing is gone.
And that week was just insane.
It was just everyone freaking out.
And it was all these new
opportunists like Playboy
and all these other ones like,
"well, come to us, come
to us, come to us."
And all these like, "one of the
OnlyFans companies are saying",
don't worry, we got it, we got it."
And everyone's freaking, "well,
which one are you gonna go to?"
What the f*ck, what
are we gonna do?"
I do have to start from like ground
zero to build up my fan base.
The process of getting fans
back towards the other platform,
which is the harder part.
I was just like, "I'm just
gonna film a bunch of porn."
I mean, my paychecks
with porn were fantastic
and I could just
continue to max that out.
They weighed the benefit and the
negatives and stuff, you know,
the money versus,
is it worth putting
my body out there to everybody?
And so for all those girls
who already put their body out
and now they weren't going
to be able to like make money
on their OnlyFans, I was a
little bit saddened for them.
I'm like, "oh, that sucks."
"Oh my God, now I'm going to
have to get back to mainstream."
The girls that quit, like it was
everyone losing their f*cking minds.
And that was insane to watch
because it was really
like the world was ending.
It seemed like it.
So my plan B was to
get into production
like I was and just sh**t a lot,
and then switch over to
a different platform.
We had celebrities leaving
their f*cking OnlyFans accounts.
We had people dropping
their agencies.
Everybody was coming out of
the woodwork for sex workers
and because we built the platform.
Why did he do that? He was probably
being put under a lot of pressure
by the same regulators and the same
merchant processing executives
that were coming after Pornhub.
They saw what had
happened to Pornhub,
Pornhub losing their
ability to monetize
through credit card
payment processors.
So I think they saw the same thing
potentially happening to them.
They're like, "sh*t, we need to sell"
before we lose our
ability to monetize."
Stokely comes out and he tries to
ban adult creators on OnlyFans.
This is a platform that's making all
of its money off of what I do on it.
There's no way they're
canceling us out.
Obviously, it was
alarming to everybody,
but at the same time it's like
marketing geniuses.
I was shocked.
I was surprised.
I put on my business owner hat.
I'm like, how the f*ck is
this company going to survive?
But I also had this suspicion
that it wasn't real.
It was a really great way
for them to build traction.
We had celebrities where
it's like Tyga, for instance,
who had an OnlyFans agency,
who had his own OnlyFans
that was making,
I think it was like six mil a month,
went viral and posted him
deleting his entire account.
Everybody was panicking.
All the people that I know is
on OnlyFans was panicking.
And they started telling
their fans, at OnlyFans,
"oh, you can't go on
the other platform."
Here is where you can see
me for the same content.
They would never be able to
delete porn and stuff like that
because what that would do is like,
there's plenty of people
who has bought the content.
And when you buy content
as a fan on OnlyFans,
it saves you your ba*ls.
So what that would mean is that
you would have to remove
all of the content
that you sold that fan.
So as a company,
that they would have to either
give those people their money back
or they would be,
it would be liable,
they could get sued up the
f*cking a*s and lose everything.
Stokely is under tons of pressure,
he's getting backlash
from the creators,
he's getting backlash
from Visa and MasterCard
who are putting pressure on him.
They would be tanking
their business.
There would be no way in hell that
company would be able to survive
if they canned the adult industry.
Six days later,
Stokely does a U turn,
decides, you know what,
we're not going to
eliminate and fully
ban adult creators.
And then they shut it down and they
announce that they will maintain
their relationship and to hold adult
content creators on their website.
We are going to allow adult creators
to continue using the platform.
When it came back,
everyone was celebrating,
there was parades, it felt
like, [laughs] you know.
That was my first highest month
because they brought so much
attention back to the platform.
Oh, thank God, everyone was so
happy, high-fiving, dancing.
People were going out that
night, someone threw a party,
like it was a big day.
It does make it tough, you know,
if you're sh**ting and
whatnot, more girls come in,
there's going to be a
bigger pool of girls,
going to be less demand
for you, of course.
I have a lot of friends, they were
doing OnlyFans for a long time
that would have never
got into pro-porn
and then kind of
dipped their toes in,
and now are working for companies
like Brazzers and Vixen
and stuff like that,
so it's kind of weird.
In a weird way,
it definitely kind of like
harmonized the communities.
There's free porn on
the internet forever,
if OnlyFans was about things
being free and just jerking off,
porn would be out of
business and porn isn't.
I'm really glad that
OnlyFans stayed,
so we were able to keep up
our income and be happy.
I think OnlyFans kind of
understands that we helped kind of
create the traffic that's there.
It put us back on the
map, back on the radar,
it was really good for us.
The average creator on OnlyFans,
in fact probably more than 75%
of the creators on the platform,
make less than $600 a month from it.
I used to think, okay,
porn is easy, you know,
you're hot, you go get f*cked on
camera, you get paid, whatever.
It's an easy thing any girl can do
and if you're above a
six, you'll make it.
But the reality is, it's like
any other industry in the world,
to get to the top it's
the hardest workers.
It's really hard to convince people
to join OnlyFans nowadays.
What do I have to
post on social media
to like let them click the link?
Going on OnlyFans and making
a life-changing decision
about putting yourself on the
internet permanently like that
doesn't always mean it's going to
translate to financial success.
I know a lot of girls who are
porn stars, famous porn stars,
and they get on OnlyFans
and they don't make sh*t.
It's one of those things where
they don't go hand-in-hand.
Our fans use their profiles
the same way that we use ours.
They're posting things over there,
so they want attention too,
it's very much set up like Facebook.
So it's completely different.
It's hard.
You know, it's like I have tons
of content that I dropped there,
you know, it's like
I hope they buy it.
Building a brand,
though, is number one.
It's one of the
hardest things to do.
It's not about the
prettiest anymore at all.
You'll see the most beautiful
girls that are making,
you know, 5K a month,
and you'll see just a girl who
works her f*cking a*s off
making 500K a month.
There's no business where
you're going to make
over 100K a month where you
didn't invest into your business.
I have to come up with a concept.
Okay, maybe we should
go to the pool,
do some fun pool bikini
jumping around short videos
to get them joining my OnlyFans.
The hardest thing is to
build your community.
The real way of
engaging in the crowd
that is already on OnlyFans
is by using other creators
to help your profile perform.
So if I see somebody who I know
is making more money than me,
I'm going to offer them
a certain amount of money
to advertise a photo of me
with a link directly
to my OnlyFans.
Female creators make
a lot more money.
They have bigger platforms.
So sometimes they'll pay
me to sh**t with them.
They'll pay me my rate.
Sometimes if it's a smaller creator,
we'll just do a content share.
[suspenseful music]
It's really, really
a standard practice
to talk about boundaries with people
before you do a collab with them.
It's usually right before you're
about to collab with them.
You say, "okay, so what
are your boundaries?"
To know yourself and
your boundaries before
you even put content out
there is so important.
My mom always said,
"you go to sleep at
night with your thoughts"
"and you have to be
proud of yourself."
And so I always made sure
that no matter what I did,
I went to bed and I
didn't feel uncomfortable
or unsafe with
what I'd produced.
It's really important to stick
to those, especially for men,
because if men break
a woman's boundary
that can get spread all within
the OnlyFans and adult community
and it can get you canceled.
So boundaries are very important.
I compare it to the NFL.
The women in the industry
are like the running backs.
They come in for a couple
years, they're the stars,
they score the touchdowns,
they get all the points,
but they only have a couple
years of longevity in it.
They get a beating, they
get pounded up the middle.
You know, after a couple
of years, they're done.
The men, we're like the kickers.
We can do it for 20, 30 years.
My whole family has always
been supportive of what I do.
I've always been financially
independent of them
since I've been an adult.
So their approval of what I do,
as long as it doesn't
affect anybody negatively,
hasn't ever come up.
I've completely lost my family
by their choice, not my choice.
I was okay with it.
I knew that it would
draw my family away.
And those are all the things
that I had to think about
before I made the decision to
actually go through with it.
So they know what I do,
and they just completely
disagree with it.
You know, they're very religious.
You know, they see it as immoral,
not as me expressing
myself and being safe.
Maybe I shouldn't
be on the internet.
Maybe I really just
should find another job,
like be a normal girl,
never be showing my body or
showing myself on the internet.
That's really, like I
always think about it.
It makes me sad all the time.
And sometimes it makes
me cry thinking about it.
Is my family comfortable
with what I do for a living?
Probably not, but
are they supportive?
Extremely yes, because I do
extremely well for myself.
And at that point,
when you get to a certain level
of money that you've made
and, you know, reputation
to where it's kind of like,
I make enough money online to work,
what the f*ck are you gonna say?
[laughs]
But now, nowadays
I'm like, f*ck you.
I don't care what are you saying,
but while I look at the mirror,
I'm the best. That's it.
On December 23rd, 2021,
Stokely steps down as CEO
and hands the baton
over to Amrapali Gan,
the chief marketing officer
who is so instrumental
in marketing the
success of OnlyFans.
For a company that hasn't even
been around for 10 years yet,
OnlyFans has seen a
tremendous amount of growth.
They had a respectable 20
million users for some time,
but under the leadership
of Amrapali Gan, the CEO,
they grew to over 200 million users,
with three million
creators serving them.
This created a lot of pressure.
This created a lot of
attention on the platform.
I think that when you're
doing such awesome sh*t,
you're gonna get equally as many
people telling you that you suck.
And that just kind of
goes with the territory.
To say that negative comments
online don't affect a person,
we're all affected.
The thing is that the energy
exchange online is real.
So you are taking
energy and absorbing.
I think that being strong and
knowing where people are coming from
when they say things to
you is more important.
It's okay, I don't let
it get to me because
at the end of the day,
I still pay my bills,
I still sit in my house, and
they're just on my phone.
They're not on my face, so...
[chuckles]
I don't really get that
kind of hate on my page.
And if I did, I wouldn't give
a f*ck anyways. [chuckles]
You gotta respect the grinders.
No one can look at an OnlyFans girl
who has a beautiful car and be like,
"ah, f*ck her, she doesn't work."
No. She's probably working
harder than you, I guarantee it.
[gentle music]
The whole reason I
started the OnlyFans
is because I want to open
up an animal sanctuary.
It comes down to weighing whether
or not it's worth it for you.
And for me, I saw animal
sanctuary, rescuing animals.
It was hard, but it was worth
getting rid of, you know,
sacrificing those
other relationships
to get where I want to be.
One of the toughest things
that I've dealt with
while being an adult
performer is relationships.
It's always been hard,
whether I've dated
other adult stars
or I've dated girls that
aren't adult stars.
Both have their pros and cons,
but it's made dating
tough because, you know,
I'm sharing my energy,
I'm sharing sex,
I'm sharing myself
with other people.
And a lot of healthy
relationships, you know,
you're not really sharing
your body like that.
So it's been difficult for
me to kind of navigate that.
If I've had a girlfriend
and I'm sh**ting all day,
I'm having sex on camera, I
get home, like, I'm drained.
You can lose a lot of relationships,
important relationships.
I've spent a lot of
time with my therapist,
working on sexual trauma,
the communication,
and all these sort of things
I'm dealing with daily
because every single day you get
a negative comment, at least one.
I do get negative
comments under my posts
or my videos or everything.
At the beginning of my career,
I was really like attached
to those hate comments.
I would think about
them all the time.
It was stuck in my
head all day long.
There's been times where, you know,
I've been dis-invited from functions.
I was doing some stuff with
my university a few years ago.
I was mentoring entrepreneurs
and people in business school.
Because I was in that same
school, I owned, you know,
started up several businesses.
So I was helping some students.
One of the faculty members found
out that I was an adult film star,
and she had an issue with it.
She's like, "oh, this kind of person"
"shouldn't be teaching our
students, blah, blah, blah."
So I was getting, you know,
some sh*t from a university.
The majority of the faculty
they were okay with it because
they knew me as a person
and they're like "listen,
we know him personally"
"like, okay, he does this for work
"but that doesn't disregard
his knowledge for business"
"or who he is as a person."
So luckily I had people that had my
back with that and fought for me.
People asked me about
getting into the industry
and told them don't do it.
[laughs] Don't do it.
It's not for everyone, it's
really nice, it's tough.
A lot of guys that
get into the industry
professionally they don't last
because it's definitely grueling,
especially the mental aspect of it.
Not everyone can stay
rock solid on command
with the room full of people
watching them in a
high pressure situation.
It's just not
everyone's built for it.
[pensive music]
If my OnlyFans were
never gotten deleted
I probably wouldn't jump
into professional porn.
I do know a lot of people
have been more influenced to
get into porn, who may
have never done that,
simply because they
want to grow a brand,
so they can have an
OnlyFans following.
What's very interesting
about OnlyFans is
lately especially there's
been a very big decrease
in beautiful women's numbers
and the average girl next door,
the six, the seven,
the attainable women
are who making the most money.
OnlyFans is kind of personal,
you're in there messaging
them, you're talking to them.
Guys feel like they're
sh**ting their shot.
Girls that they see like in L.A.
that are ten out of tens,
that are always around celebrities.
They're not making
that much anymore.
Like it inspires me
to see people online
that are having fun
sh**ting for themselves
but I just don't have
the courage to do it
if I haven't got
lost of my OnlyFans.
Don't get into OnlyFans
or being a content creator
if you're not a content creator,
because that's the
biggest misconception,
I know a lot of people that get into
the industry because thinking that,
oh, it's fast money and
they hear this thing,
they're gonna make a quick buck.
If you don't like it,
you're not gonna do well.
As any content
creator will tell you,
we have to be our
own production house,
we have to be our own accountants,
we have to be our own
marketers, our own managers.
We have to feed ourselves, cook for
ourselves, clean up after ourselves.
We gotta do everything
for ourselves
and so you run into a
lot of different problems
when you wear that many hats.
And I think the
best way to overcome
any of those challenges is
to just not give up.
[suspenseful music]
In July of 2023,
Amrapali Gan steps down as CEO
and is followed by Keily Blair.
Now Keily was originally
the Chief Strategy and
Operations Officer for OnlyFans
and she was also instrumental
in the growth of the platform.
She's pegged a CEO,
and they go from there.
Moving forward, I think
the adult entertainment
is just gonna become
bigger and bigger.
Really, it's guys, it's
fantasy, and it's guys thinking,
"I wanna date this girl,
I wanna f*ck this girl."
Porn's always gonna need new faces,
it's always gonna
need girls to sh**t,
it's always gonna be there,
because it's just this
giant mega industry
that it's never gonna go away.
What I most like is
when I'm out in public,
and people would come
up to me, and just say,
"oh my God, hi Nicole, I am a
big fan, I love your video."
That's the most
rewarding thing for me.
I feel like, okay, so
now I'm in the public,
and people actually like
the video that I made.
Last year, I had dropped
an OnlyFans workshop.
I help other girls make money,
and pretty much learn the
ropes to where I guide them,
because there's a lot of
girls that get into OnlyFans,
where it's like, that $1,500 promo,
that's a lot of money to them.
So to me, it was like, I
started a workshop where it's like,
I guided girls to help
them find good promo.
Pretty much just told
them all the things,
all my lessons I learned,
to where they wouldn't
make those same mistakes
to protect their investments.
Sex will always sell.
There's a lot of technology
going out there right now.
The community seems
to be growing so much.
The aspect of self-creating,
personal content creators,
like OnlyFans, people
sh**ting for themselves,
people sh**ting their own content,
as opposed for
sh**ting for companies.
It also sort of set the
bar for people accepting
that we just want to make
money and have better lives.
We don't really dream of labor.
There's, of course, jobs that are
extremely important in this world,
but a lot of us just need
to pay rent. [chuckles]
From DVD to like, just so easy,
our cell phones to watch us.
And right now like VR
scenes are very popular.
I just feel like the technology for
adult entertainment is graduating.
They're going to the next level.
I think we're going into AI.
I think we're going into AI
porn and it's making me so sad
because I don't want my job gone.
[laughs]
There's going to be more
people in the adult industry
because again it's more
socially acceptable.
I wouldn't be surprised
if a few years from now
you see people that had an OnlyFans
and are running for public office.
People like performers used
to make their main income
just with production companies,
and nowadays everything is digital,
online like anybody.
You can go out to a
restaurant and the waitress
could have an OnlyFans page.
I don't think AI is the next thing.
Talking to a robotic
version of a girl,
I just don't think is it.
VR was supposed to be
the next big thing,
which I'm a huge fan of,
but it didn't catch on.
It's not catching on.
It looks like porn is here to stay,
but the human connection
style of porn, OnlyFans,
is what people are
wanting more and more of.
I think that's the biggest shift
and that will continue to be
the biggest shift moving forward.
I see it growing and I see it
being more accepted, which...
you know, that could be
a good and bad thing.
People love watching porn.
For the horizon of
adult performers is,
it's sunny.
I think there's a
lot of opportunities
that will be able
to come out of this,
especially with the
rise of OnlyFans.
All the opportunities that
will rise out of that.
[intriguing music]
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Rise of OnlyFans (2024)
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