I quit OnlyFans over a year ago, now. I have a page so that my colleagues can still tag me, but I don’t update my page and I have a line in my bio that says I don’t update the page anymore. And honestly? It’s one of the best things I’ve done for my mental health.
Sure, OnlyFans is a great source of income for many people, but for me? I was putting in more work than I felt was seeing reflected in my earnings. I had a lot of hopes for OnlyFans and I tried a lot of different strategies, but it just never worked for me. And that’s ok!
PornHub may have helped make porn more accessible for the masses, but OnlyFans brought back the customer expectation of paying for your porn. In theory, I like OnlyFans. But in actuality? Nope, it’s not for me.
What Went Wrong?
I’ve been performing since I was 19, and I just turned 37 in October. Over the course of my career, I’ve seen clip sites and sex work platforms come & go. Because of that, I tend to be a “slow to adopt” person when it comes to trying new platforms. I signed up for an OnlyFans page in 2017, I think, but didn’t really know what to do with it or how to use it for a couple years.
When the pandemic hit, suddenly, OnlyFans blew up. I was able to find people to teach me how the heck to use the platform, and even purchased a few “how to” guides. I started building my page, refining it, advertising it, and profiting off of it. But my profits were minimal at best, maybe a couple hundred at first.
My income started growing and in turn, my time devoted to the platform grew, but there were always problems that I ran into:
- what kind of content should I post there?
- how do I balance free chat with paid sexting?
- how do I get people to buy my PPVs?
- how do I convert some of the new fans into long term fans?
- how do I balance my other types of content while continuing to make content for OF?
- how do I have a healthy work/life balance on a platform that demands round the clock attention?
OnlyFans stressed me out. A lot. I put in hours of work every single day, even on my days off, and I still didn’t feel like the time invested was worth the income received. Editing, chatting, scheduling, mass messaging, etc… it all took up a lot of time and a lot of energy. My other avenues of income started failing, but OnlyFans wasn’t quite making up for that lost income.
So I did what many creators do: I hired help. I needed it, badly. I hired an OF Management company to take over my page. I had ample content to provide them with and was regularly sending them more content as they worked on my page. And for a while, things were good. My income was increasing steadily, they were able to respond to messages for me 24/7, so I was able to relax & have days off! Things were going great.
Until they weren’t.
It started with my OF Management company doing something that I just don’t do: call men “daddy” – it’s icky to me and I’m not a submissive person. It wasn’t just anyone they did that with though. It once of my top paying fans who knew this about me. He called me out on it and I rushed to do damage control with him while also trying to explain to my managers that this was not acceptable. I gave them another chance. And it happened again.
I wish I could say that was the worst part, but it wasn’t. My OF Management company cost me long term fans, some of whom had been fans since my very early days of performing. Fans who I enjoyed chatting with on a regular basis. Fans who I truly cared about. Relationships ruined all for a few more dollars a month.
The final straw was when my OF Management team outsourced their labor to the Philippines. That’s not a huge deal, tbh, but what is a huge deal is that they handed off my account to people who did not know how to use OF and tried charging custom rates for pre-made content. Of course none of my fans want to pay $300 for a 30 minute long masturbation video! Why would they?!
But it wasn’t just my work flows and the mistake of hiring a management company.
OnlyFans Loves to Censor Sex Workers
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the past few years, you’re probably aware that OnlyFans also plays games with the people who make them money. They tried to push us off their platform a few years ago, only to be met with an uprising against their plan and stepped back on their original plan.
There’s more than just that though: OnlyFans creator support is notorious for giving people seeking answers about what’s allowed or not wildly different responses. I’ve seen screenshots from my peers saying they’re allowed to sell panties & worn items, then responses from other OF customer service people saying it’s not allowed. They clearly do not train their staff the same way during onboarding, which makes them a big ol’ clusterfuck of mixed responses.
And if you think that’s it, you’re wrong!
Their terms of service also change regularly, and things that were once allowed on site are no longer allowed. So one day, a creator may wake up with 100+ notifications of their content being removed from site, with no actual reason given as to why. We can’t learn from our mistakes if we don’t know what our mistakes are!
Collaborative content must have the other performer tagged, but if that performer loses their page or deletes their account? LOL, sorry, but you’re shit outta luck unless you have the very specific OF model release that until recently wasn’t even easy to find on their site.
The AI that OF uses to police content on their platform is also horrible. It censors things that are not against TOS, without an appeals process for creators to utilize. There is seemingly little to no human oversight, and it’s bad. Getting flagged for having another creator in a video where I’m clearly using a dildo on myself? Seriously???
A colleague of mine documented a friend’s vaginoplasty, and after the surgery, OnlyFans flagged her content because her labia was not the same. They tried to tell her that it was someone else in her videos, but guess what? It wasn’t!
Oh! And! Because of course there is more! OnlyFans does not actually pay attention to whether creators tag the correct co-star in their content. I’ve seen numerous accounts of people saying they were tagged in content with someone that they’ve never met and never worked with, and were unable to report it to OF because there isn’t a way to do so.
I genuinely believe that OnlyFans has set creators up for failure.
On-Demand 24/7 Expectations
I couldn’t handle the demands and expectations of my subscribers. It was too much. Every single day, I’d wake up to subscribers getting verbally abusive because I didn’t respond to their message in the middle of the night while I was asleep. I’d get messages that dehumanized me and treated me like I’m some sort of on-demand sex robot who doesn’t have a life, doesn’t need to sleep, doesn’t have emotions.
My normally thick skin suddenly felt very thin. I’d never felt so beaten down by my own fans. It hurt. I felt guilty and stressed out trying to meet the expectations people were placing on me, and even my best efforts still fell short of peoples’ demands. I was drowning under the pressure.
It wasn’t just the expectation of round the clock responses, but also people who were new to me and expected me to be something that I’m not: submissive to men. It gives me the ick so hard that I can’t even fake it, especially with a stranger online.
I get it, I’m a performer. I’m acting. But I’m also incredibly authentic to who I am as a person when it comes to the types of content I produce. I don’t produce things that I don’t enjoy. I don’t roleplay things I don’t enjoy. I’m not that good of an actress to be able to fake the types of engagements people wanted from me.
I’m also not great at customer service. It may sound weird to refer to sex working as customer service, but that’s what it is. I’ve never subscribed to the idea of “the customer is always right” because no, that’s actually not true. My AuDHD also makes it really hard for me to be anything but blunt in my responses. I tried, but it caused me to experience even more stress. When people would treat me like I wasn’t a human, I was never good at responding in a polite or professional way. I’m a human being and I demand to be treated with respect. Dehumanizing me is not respecting me.
OnlyFans Made Me Resent Sex Work
I’ve been sex working since I was 19 years old, and never experienced the type of burn out that I did when I was utilizing OnlyFans as a creator. I hated the expectations, the demand, the dehumanization, the churn & burn of fans, the lack of relationships with fans, the cheapening of my brand, the lack of work/life balance… all of it. All of it caused me burn out over and over and over again.
I’m a big believer in I work to live, not I live to work. But the OnlyFans business model, and the fansite model in general, was not conducive to that. I was living to work. Working from the moment I woke up to the moment I went to bed with no days truly off.
My body responded by forcing me to take days off. I was making myself sick with stress. I was causing myself to experience horrible migraines because of stress. The more time off that my body forced me to take, the more behind I felt. The more stressed I felt.
It was a vicious cycle of never ending stress. And I don’t like that. Nobody should have to work that much to pay their bills or support their family. It’s not healthy. It’s not sane. It’s capitalism at its worst.
So, I Pivoted
One of the reasons that I’ve been so successful at sex working is because of my ability to pivot and evolve and try new things. I gave up on OnlyFans because I wanted something better for me and my wellbeing.
Call it selfish, if you want, but of course I’m going to prioritize my health & sanity over the boners of my fans. I can’t attend to boners if I’m unhealthy or spiraling. I’m more grumpy and mean when I’m not feeling well.
Pivoting wasn’t too hard, given that I never gave up on my niche fetish content. Hell, I even continued producing hardcore porn! Instead of OnlyFans, I opened up a membership paysite for my fans to enjoy my hardcore porn. Sure, it’s more expensive than OF, but I believe that fans who truly support me and want to see me succeed are willing to invest in me.
Over the past year+, I’ve added new full length XXX porn scenes to my paysite every single week. And my fans can subscribe for one price that gets them unlimited access to over 140 full length scenes. No PPV, no upsells, no hidden paywalls, nothing. If you ask me, it’s a better deal than my OF ever was.
My OF had an entry price, plus the cost of sexting and the cost of my full length scenes. I hustled my fans on OF, whereas I don’t hustle on my paysite. At all.
Overall, I just feel better. I’m enjoying work again. I’m enjoying filming with people again. I’m not feeling burnout or like I just want to put in the bare minimum effort. I’m dedicated to my job, and I love my job.
So, if you’re looking for my OnlyFans, don’t bother. You won’t be happy with what you pay to unlock. Most of my collab scenes have been removed from the platform. I don’t respond to messages there. I can’t even remember the last time I posted there. It’s a bad deal.
If you’d like to support my hardcore porn endeavors, please consider subscribing to my paysite instead. Subscribers get:
- access to 140+ full length XXX porn scenes
- new scenes posted every single week
- solo, lesbian, trans and straight porn
- no PPVs, no upsells
- stream or download scenes
- exclusive photosets
- the peace of mind knowing that they’re not taking advantage of their favorite BBW
- messaging & commenting
As always, thank you for supporting me. Without my fans, I wouldn’t be anywhere within this business. It’s a business that I love and enjoy.