Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

With traditional adult entertainment, creators are aware of the social ramifications (e.g., social stigma, familial ostracism, difficulty dealing with the future, and so on), and there is a decent theoretical economic framework to measure that.

I am not sure if there's the same this new army of "civilians" joining OF, let alone the additional toll it will take on the creators in terms of social ostracism, future prospects, future opportunities, and mental health.

> It’s just as easy to imagine demand for the “real thing” going down due to the emergence of more substitutes as it is to imagine the premium for parasocial authenticity going up. And yet only Generative AI “creators” will truly do whatever “you” want and only for you. And unlike real ones, they speak in every language and are available at any time (and eventually, in immersive 3D).

Disagree. When (AI is) mentioned it has a negative correlation. Real content will fetch a premium

I think it says something quite dark about our society as a whole that we have basically commoditised distress and are encouraging some people often themselves in dire circumstances to prey on others to the benefits of the middle men. I find these new pimps scarier than the old sort in that they pretend to have clean hands.

The reality is that OnlyFans wasn't the first to try this model. You have to give them credit for successfully building the business, especially with several close calls between them and government regulations.

This is a baffling section where the author goes out of their way to bash browsers vs apps. Maybe there are a lot of cons to apps that browsers don't have. Basically all of the sleights against browsers in this section are not true. When I buy something from amazon, from my browser, I definitely do not need to manually enter my credit card in every time.

This is the wildest part. One company that is proving all the "why does <company> need 10000 engineers?" takes true.

OnlyFans has only about 42 employees. They didn't hire a bloated staff. That's impressive considering the sheer volume of content that passes through their servers.

It looks like OnlyFans has figured out how to do the porno business in a more or less legit way. So what's the problem?

IMO the lede is a bit buried within the article. The idea that a non-app could survive this well within the strangling iOS system should come as a revelation to the greater iOS community.

I can see how 10's of thousands of people paying $25 a month can generate millions but $25M on private messages in a year is over $70K a day - how many is she doing or how much do they cost each?

Baby steps towards the “dead internet theory”

1. COVID: The explosion in revenues during 2020 is self explanatory.

2. Product market fit/Execution: The owners having previously created other, albeit, unsuccessful platforms certainly helped with creating Onlyfans. This is a very simple idea that thousands will have had, but creating it successfully necessarily requires a good understanding of a sector avoided by most major corporations.

Second point - is this really Europe’s most successful tech company of the last 15 years?!

It's so easy to stick to international units, folks. Please. PLEASE!

If you look up the user demographics, you'll notice an obvious problem: The demographics do not include the number of users under 18.

https://techreport.com/statistics/software-web/onlyfans-stat...

Some may say: well that's because you have to be 18 to use the site. But that's not true. Anyone can signup for onlyfans without entering their age. Onlyfans only does age verification for creators.

If you think this site isn't primarily being used by teenagers, then I have a bridge to sell you.