OnlyFans, an online content subscription service, allows content creators to earn money from 'fans', or users who subscribe to their content. Each month, a user pays a fee between $4.99 and $49.99 to view a creator's content.
The site eventually became a hub for sex work. As the COVID-19 pandemic left many out of work and on lockdown at home, the site has grown exponentially. According to Influencer Marketing Hub, in 2019, the site had 60,000 creators.
By December 2020, it surpassed 1 million.
By Hannah Hebel, Gabriella Brown and Brooklyn Slaughter.
This article was originally created for WVU journalism professor Jim Iovino's journalism capstone course in Spring '21.
Late at night Keirra Davis switches on the soft purple lights that line her walls. She styles her hair, applies makeup and slips into lingerie.
Once she is ready, she clips her phone to a tripod, adjusting it until she finds the perfect angle, rubs her skin with oil and hits the record button. The only people who will see her that night are those who are paying on the other side of the screen.
“It takes maybe two hours to record a day's worth of content,” she said. “Sometimes longer, sometimes all night. It depends.”
Working as a content creator on OnlyFans, a platform that charges a monthly subscription fee to view creator’s content, has become part of her weekly routine.
One to three days a week, she uploads content to the site. By morning, she opens the OnlyFans app on her phone, revealing her revenue from the night before.
By the end of the month, she will earn anywhere between $2,000 to $3,000.
“I always said when I made enough on OnlyFans I would buy a pair of Dior sunglasses,” Davis said. “And I did, and I spent a decent amount on them.”
Keirra Davis tries on her Dior sunglasses, which is the most expensive purchase she has made since starting her OnlyFans account. Photo by Brooklynn Slaughter.
Davis’ life outside her job as a content creator looks much different. As a junior addiction counseling student at West Virginia University, most of Davis’ day is spent on schoolwork. Along with OnlyFans, she pursues a part-time job as a behavioral therapist where she works with children with special needs.
“My younger brother, he has autism,” she said. “He was adopted back in 2012, and ever since he got adopted into my family, we've wanted to know more about autism.”
When she was 14, she worked at a special needs summer camp, and later worked in applied behavioral analysis therapy in Maryland. She now works from home helping children with autism build life and social skills.
Keirra Davis, OnlyFans content creator
Davis’ work as an OnlyFans content creator is not her first experience in the sex work industry. Prior to her work on the site, her work was more intimate. The content she created was for an audience of one.
"He just had too much control over me": Entry into the sex work industry
Davis received an Instagram message from a somewhat familiar face soon after graduating from high school.
The message came from a high school peer Davis barely knew. Christmas was approaching, and he asked her if he could send her money for the holidays. It caught her off guard, but the amount offered made it difficult to turn away.
“It kind of started as, ‘Oh, I just want to give you money for no reason’,” she said. “I knew there had to be a catch eventually.”
Davis received money from him for nothing in return multiple times, but it was only a matter of time before that dynamic would come with a price. Slowly, he began offering her larger amounts of money, but only in return for nude photos and videos.
“I knew that at the end of all my nights, I'd have to go home and record something for him,” she said.
For two years, Davis would create custom photos and videos and provide them to her "sugar daddy," a relationship where one person provides financial support. His financial support extended to things such as logging into her housing portal and paying her rent for the month.
Over time, the financial control he held over her slowly tightened its grip. He began trying to control when she left the house. He insisted on approving the outfits she wore when she went out. Feeling controlled and overwhelmed, Davis began to search for a way out.
As she pulled away, he took new extremes.
Girls that knew Davis began receiving messages from what appeared to be Davis’ Instagram account. The messages instructed them to solicit nudes of themselves to the account that could be given to Davis’ sugar daddy for money.
What the girls were not aware of was on the other side of the chatbox, Davis’ sugar daddy had made a fake account using her likeness to gain their trust.
“It was scary,” Davis said. “I felt completely violated.”
Davis became aware of the situation when one of the girls contacted her directly to ensure it wasn’t a fake account. Had that not occurred, Davis said she never would have been aware of the situation.
When confronted, her sugar daddy denied it was him, but later admitted to it. She is unsure how many people were contacted on the fake account and how long the account was active.
“I've cut him off a couple times and a few months will go by or a few weeks go by and he'll still try and come back,” she said. “This particular time, I think with the way I reacted, he kind of knew, don't come back.”
Evolution of OnlyFans
Since its inception, OnlyFans has undergone several changes. Many of those changes are in direct response to a growth in popularity due to COVID-19.
The growth in popularity has also led well-known celebrities to become creators. This growth in popularity has made it more difficult to find success on the site as it becomes more competitive.
Graph courtesy of The PourquoiPas
OnlyFans was initially founded in 2016 by Timothy Stokely and by 2019, the site had around 60,000 content creators.
When COVID-19 pandemic hit, many were left without an income and on lockdown at home. This caused a spike in users and creators on the site, and by March of 2020, the site had 26 million registered users and just over 350,000 total content creators.
The site now has more than one million content creators and more than one hundred million registered users. According to OnlyFans.com, the site pays out more than $3 billion to content creators annually. A 20% cut of each creator’s earnings is taken by the site.
Check out how much you could earn on the site:
To keep up with growing demand through COVID-19, the site decided to cut its lifetime referral bonus intended to bring new content creators to the site. The bonus was a commission of 5% of the new creator's revenue to the creator who referred them. This additional revenue came directly from OnlyFans, meaning neither creator lost revenue by participating. In an email from the site, this change was directly attributed to the explosion in popularity. “During these unprecedented times, OnlyFans has been growing all over the world, creating steady income and much needed social interaction for millions of people,” the email read. “Each day, we are excited to see how many Creators and Fans are counting on us to provide a robust and open platform for all.” The email goes on to say the referral bonus includes a 5% payout of the referred accounts earnings for the first 12 months. This is limited to the first $1 million of the referred creators earnings. This oversaturation has made it difficult to gain a following on the website as competition continues to grow. Even well-known celebrities, such as former Disney star Bella Thorne, have made content on the site. Within 24 hours of starting her subscription service, Thorne managed to make more than $1 million; an all-time record on the site. “To witness a celebrity gentrifying a platform and making obscene amounts of money without acknowledging the plight of sex workers is truly a slap in the face,” said Aussie Rachel, a sex worker and OnlyFans content creator in an article from RollingStone. Some took to Twitter to share their thoughts.
This boom in popularity has caused content creators to search for new ways to promote their content.
According to Dr. Angela Jones, associate professor of sociology at Farmingdale State College SUNY, this can result in many workers going out of their comfort zone to produce desirable content.
Jones said some of these methods may be harmful to the individual.
“Depending on the particular markets, for example, if you are a man who is performing for other men, very often there's an expectation that you are doing anal shows and that you're doing that with larger sex toys,” Jones said.
One of the research participants that Jones had spoken to said that after 10 years in the industry, she had times where she had to take a break due to the marketing becoming so saturated.
“In order for me to maintain the level of income in order to remain competitive, she said, ‘I felt like I was starting to have to consider doing forms of work that were uncomfortable to me,’” Jones said.
As someone who has been in the sex work industry since 2014, this is one of the fears a sex worker who goes by the screen name "Jessie Sage" has for younger people entering the industry.
“There's a lot of ways in which being online protects you from, like, assault, assuming that you don't have stalkers that show up at your house,” she said. “But it doesn't protect you from pretty intense stigma that keeps you out of other forms of work.”
Sage said she worries for those who are involved in sex work short-term because it is not uncommon for sex work experience to prevent someone from holding another job. This has been the case for some sex workers, including 24-year-old Kristen Vaughn who shared her experience in this article for Buzzfeed.
For Sage, sex work has become a full-time career, allowing her to avoid these work-related situations; however, the stigma she experiences firsthand comes instead through interactions with peers and family members.
Committing full-time to the industry
Sex worker "Jessie Sage" has made sex work her full-time career since meeting her husband PJ. As someone who has been in the industry for several years, she said she has experienced firsthand the long-term benefits and hindrances of being in the industry.
Photo courtesy of Jessie Sage. Sage had been pursuing a Ph.D., but as she went through a divorce her whole life turned upside down. As a single mother and little time on her hands, she had to drop her academic pursuits.
When Sage left her life as an academic and began pursuing an office job, she quickly realized it wasn't the line of work she wanted to be in. Then she met PJ. At the time, PJ was working towards his Ph.D. while also working as a webcam model, a form of sex work that uses live web cameras and broadcasts to an audience. For his dissertation, he interviewed cam models about their job and experiences. “It was a totally new world to me,” Sage said.
Jessie Sage wears lingerie and poses with her husband PJ during a photoshoot.
Photo courtesy of Jessie Sage.
PJ’s research piqued Sage’s interest and she suggested webcam modeling as a couple. He discouraged it at first out of fear that if their relationship did not work out, she might regret being in online pornographic content. They decided to give it a try, and webcam modeled together for a few years. Eventually, Sage realized webcam modeling wasn’t the medium she wanted to pursue because of how impersonal it felt. “I’m a person that if I go to a party, I'll find one or two people that I think are really interesting and stand and talk to them the whole time,” Sage said.
While PJ was conducting interviews with sex workers, one shared their experiences as a phone sex operator. Sage said she remembered hearing about all the reasons this worker hated webcam modeling and reasons why she enjoyed working as a phone sex operator much more. Many of the thoughts PJ’s source shared resonated with Sage, so she decided to try out working as an operator. She still webcam models occasionally and also creates content on OnlyFans, but has mainly worked full time as an operator for the past five years. Her work in the industry has allowed her to care for three children and given her the flexibility to support her youngest son who has autism. Without the ability to work from home, she said she is unsure how she would take her son to the daily therapy sessions he is able to attend because of her schedule. Through her work, she has found phone sex operating isn’t only about sex for clients. “Because I would talk about philosophy and feminism in my profile, people would call and say, 'This isn't about sex, but like, what do you think about X, Y and Z?’," Sage said. Some call in interested in talking about current events or ideas. Others, who recognize Sage is married, want to speak with her about their own relationships and how to discuss sexual desires with their partners. “The reason people like going to therapy is because they can come in and just say what they're feeling and the therapist isn't going to shut them down,” she said. “I think sex workers provide a similar role in terms of their like erotic lives.”
Sage has become relatively open about her line of work and has written articles about her experience, including one about how one of her sons feels about her job.
Although she is confident in herself and proud of her work, it is not uncommon for Sage to experience judgment from family members and peers.
PJ works in Peepshow Media's at-home studio where Jessie Sage and PJ record podcasts, write articles and share news about the sex work industry.
When her family first became aware of her line of work, her mother often expressed that she felt the sex work industry is harmful and degrading to women. PJ’s side of the family also expressed concerns of their own. “PJ's parents were coming from a very Catholic, socially conservative position, which is ‘you're probably going to go to hell’, and ‘how can you do this’,” she said. She said her family members have become more accepting of the career, but choose not to discuss it with her. Although these interactions were hurtful, she has since found even more ways to be confident and open about her career. Along with doing online sex work, Sage is the co-founder and managing editor of Peepshow Media, an independent, performer-centered source for stories and news surrounding the sex industry. Sage said she created this platform to report on the industry the way she always wanted to see.
Worlds Colliding:
Separating sex work and personal life
As sites like OnlyFans encourage creators to become public about their work on the site to gain a bigger following, separation between social life and sex work has become increasingly difficult.
The necessity and pressure for self-promotion has led many to use personal social media to gain subscribers on OnlyFans, causing the boundaries between sex work and personal life to blur.
As OnlyFans continues to grow exponentially in popularity, creators must find new ways to bring ‘fans’ to their site.
For many, that means promoting accounts on social media, leaving little room for privacy and anonymity. This is one way Mahala Abshire, a pre-business student at West Virginia University and OnlyFans content creator, has found success on the site.
Within the first few days of making an account and sharing her link on both her personal Instagram and Snapchat, she had made $100. In the last year, she made more than $50,000 on OnlyFans.
When she began self-promoting, she had 2,000 followers on Instagram. She decided to turn to TikTok to grow her platform further through short-form videos. Here, she found an audience and has accumulated more than 400,000 followers on the app.
“I’ve worked so many jobs that this has been the best one I have ever had because I don't have to answer to anyone,” she said. “I don’t have to go anywhere at a specific time.”
Davis has been recognized in public and has previously been approached at bars and clubs by subscribers. She explained when going on dates, those who have seen her promoting her OnlyFans account tend to ask her for sexual favors in exchange for money.
“A lot of them see that I'm public with my OnlyFans, so they're public with how they feel about it,” Davis said. “They'll kind of be like, ‘how much for anything’?”
This has caused Davis to avoid going on dates altogether, which she said is not too much of a concern for her. She said she enjoys focusing on earning an income and doing well in school.
Finding financial independence
and self-confidence
Some creators have been able to earn a living off of sites like OnlyFans, as is the case for Abshire. While the site has given financial freedom to many creators, it has served another purpose as well. Sharing photos of themselves has helped Abshire and Davis both to appreciate their bodies more than ever before.
Photo by Brooklynn Slaughter
Abshire has been able to grow her OnlyFans account enough to earn a livable income. Within her first year on the site, she had saved enough to finance her first car.
“That made me really proud of myself because I feel like had I not been able to put such a down payment down, I wouldn’t have been able to get a car by myself without a cosigner,” Abshire said. “I am thankful for OnlyFans for allowing me to do that because that’s the only way I could make that much money in a short amount of time.” Much of her income has also gone towards investing, paying for housing and helping her pay for her college tuition.
Mahala Abshire poses in front of the car she was able to purchase
using her income from OnlyFans. Courtesy of Abshire.
"I'm just saving up as much money as I can," she said. Davis uses her income from OnlyFans mainly for additional spending money. Her current job as a behavioral therapist allows her to live comfortably on the income she makes, leaving her friends to question why she still works on OnlyFans. Her response is that the purpose sex work serves her has extended beyond financial gain. “I've struggled with my body for my whole entire life,” she said. “I've been super insecure, I've had a lot of struggle being body positive in any way.” Davis was hesitant to join OnlyFans for this reason, but quickly received support. “Once I get [content] on there, and everyone is kind of complimenting me, it's a good feeling,” Davis said. “I get good vibes from the uplifting comments.” Jones said this is the case for many online sex workers. Interviews she conducted with those in the webcam modeling industry shared similar messages about affirmation, empowerment and pleasure. This was especially true for trans-feminine users as well as users with disabilities. “When you exist in a world that is continually fat-phobic and ablest– I’ve heard a lot of this for people with disabilities, especially people with physical disabilities– working in the space and having people not only pay you, but constantly showering you with compliments, that this is great for one’s self-confidence," Jones said. Abshire said she has also come to love parts of her body that she used to hide. “I used to nitpick discolorations or cellulite or anything like that,” she said. “But, I've learned by putting myself out there that people don't really notice these things. It's more of an internal thing.”