A few weeks ago, I saw an article about a woman making $20,000 per month selling nude photos online. Her platform of choice was OnlyFans.
I was interested. So I starting investigating how to make money with Onlyfans.
What is Onlyfans?
This platform allows anyone to setup a social media profile where they can share pictures and images with fans. Similar to Facebook and Instagram, the idea is to share content you can't post elsewhere, such as X-rated content.
However unlike traditional social media profiles, you charge a subscription fee to let your fans view your content. Usually this is around $3.99 up to $39.99 per month.
Additionally, once someone has subscribed, users can message customers with special offers such as unlocking new videos for $X amount of dollars and asking for tips and gifts.
Who Uses Onlyfans?
The platform has been popular among adult entertainers, as well as amateur adult stars from countries such as USA, UK and Australia.
More recently, as seen in this BBC article, everyday men and women are using the platform to make money from home by simply sharing photos of themselves.
Some individuals such as this couple, have created their own businesses by sharing adult content on the site, earning far more than they could possibly make from regular employment.
What Type of Content Should You Post?
While most users on the site simply post images and videos of them in clothes such as bikini's, there's a large number that will happily share X-rated content.
It's entirely up to the individual user what they are prepared to post. Some Influencers such as Beth who starred in the BBC docuseries Naked4Sale have said, 'some of her followers have requested more explicit content that she's willing to do.'
Which is what subscribers are likely going to request given they are exposed to such content from other Onlyfans performers.
If you're not comfortable uploading such content, you might not be suited to this platform, or you may be constantly hassled by followers for additional content.
How Much Does Onlyfans Cost?
Influencers don't pay to list themselves on the platform. Instead the platform takes a commission on every sale. Currently this around 20%.
Subscribers pay a monthly fee which ranges from $4.99 up to $49.99 per month. You set the price you wish to charge your subscribers.
Many Influencers will offer a low introductory price to get signups. It's not uncommon to see these as low as $2 or $3. However, most Influencers make most of their money by sending private messages with custom content that can be unlocked for $5 or $10.
Some adult entertainment performers will often messages such as photo reviews for tips, as well as private access to Snapchat or live streams for additional fees.
If you're in the adult business, Only Fans is a very easy way to make money online.
How Much Money Can You Make?
It's not uncommon for those with 1 million followers on platforms such as Instagram to attract 1-5% of subscribers over to OnlyFans. Assuming you did that and with a $4.99 monthly fee, you could make between $49,900 to $249,500 per month.
By remember, this is a passive subscription model so as more and more people signup and less leave, your monthly income will increase.
Some of the largest OnlyFans members are making over $50,000 dollars per month. Probably a lot more than they get for shooting videos or working a day job.
The OnlyFans Referral Program
Whoever came up with this is an evil genius. You can earn 5% lifetime commissions on all income earned by any user who joins OnlyFans via your referral link.
You can get paid for every user, every payment, every month for a lifetime. So imagine promoting a celeb's OnlyFans account, you would earn 5% of that monthly fee.
But what makes this even better is the ability to promote future accounts. If you have a popular account you can promote someone else's account and earn 5% on their sales too.
How To Make Money With OnlyFans
- Earn money as a user
- Earn money with the referral program
Earning Money As A User
The easiest way to make money from OnlyFans is to create an account and share your photos, videos and tutorials with your potential customers.
Most users seem to have around 100 photos, a few videos and update this content a few times a month to keep their content looking fresh.
Charge a low monthly fee, lower is better. Also offer an incentive for new subscribers.
Send regular messages to your subscribers with upsells such as videos and images. Until they pay to unlock this content, it will be blocked.
To avoid losing subscribers, you should continue to post free content rather than focusing purely on upsells. Also if you're going to charge $5 for a video, make sure it's worth that. A lot of subscribers will leave if they feel like they've been cheated!
OnlyFans doesn't offer any refunds to unhappy users so they are more likely to go online and trash talk your profile to warn others.
Earning Money As An OnlyFans Affiliate
If you've got a large following on your own profile, you can always promote the Onlyfans official website, or a specific performer or user.
While the site is well known among adult entertainment stars, you can promote normal channels as well. Some examples include fitness programs, celebrities and actors.
However, it's a well known fact that OnlyFans is for X-rated content so whether you'd want to be associated with promoting that sort of content to your followers is up to you.
If you own websites that focus on celebrity gossip, news articles or male health and fitness, you might find that the OnlyFans affiliate program fits in well with your target audience.
Disadvantages of Using OnlyFans
Of course there's a few downsides to using this platform. There's nothing stopping someone saving your photos and videos and uploading them to other websites.
Additionally there's nothing stopping someone from sharing your content with others. Once it goes into the public domain it can be hard to remove it, if at all.
What will your friends and family think? Of course they will find out and if you're sharing adult content what would their thoughts be? You might need to have that discussion first.
Lastly, you'll need to think about your long term goals. While the cash might be great now, what happens if you need a job in the future? Many employers will likely not hire you if there's images and videos of you out in the public domain.
Verdict
OnlyFans is a great platform for those looking to make money online from home by simply sharing photos and videos online. However to get to those huge numbers such as $20,000 per month, you'll need to share adult rated content.
As for affiliates, they offer a decent 5% lifetime commission on all sales of the users you refer. This means you could earn a nice little passive income stream by promoting this program.
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Last Updated on April 13, 2020 by Rhys Dale
Rhys is the owner and chief editor at Im Rhys and is living in Chisinau, Moldova. With over 15 years experience in eCommerce and Affiliate Marketing he has started many successful 6 and 7 figure businesses. After successes with USA and China dropshipping, he expanded into building 70+ micro affiliate websites in 30 different niches that generate money on autopilot. He now helps his wife to run her social media agency as well as travelling the world at every opportunity.
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