Metadata
- Author: Matthew Ball
- Full Title:: Breaking Down OnlyFans’ Stunning Economics
- Category:: 🗞️Articles
- URL:: https://www.matthewball.co/all/fansprofitandloss
- Finished date:: 2024-09-14
Highlights
Though OnlyFans is based around subscriptions, over 60% over consumer spending is now via transactions (and unlike say, Candy Crush, these are not micro transactions but instead add-on purchases that can cost dozens of dollars or more). (View Highlight)
New highlights added 2024-09-14
Revenue growth is propelled by growing brand awareness (including the genericization of “OnlyFans” to mean intimate creator subscription), the addition of high profile creators such as Cardi B, Bella Thorne, Denise Richards, Carmen Electa, Larsa Pippen, Tyga, DJ Khaled and Fat Joe (some of whom do not offer any pornographic content), regulatory action that has (quite rightly) forcing many X-Rated market leaders to delete the majority of their catalogues (much of which was uploaded without any compliances processes whatsoever) and undertake laborious know-you-customer processes for new uploads, and the decisions of social media networks such as Reddit and Tumblr to ban (or de facto ban) pornography, which created an addition market vacuum while also compelling creators with large followings to actively redirect their fans to an alternative. (View Highlight)
So why not building that into the platform?
many OnlyFans creators now treat sites such as Reddit, Imgur, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter as “front doors” for OnlyFans customer acquisition. (View Highlight)
these platforms tend to benefit from the investment of OnlyFans creators as it results in (often highly viral) content that they don’t need to pay, explicitly encourage, or involve themselves with. (View Highlight)
OnlyFans high revenue share rate is practical only because it does not support App Store billing (View Highlight)
Mathematically, the average creator has 74 fans who pay $24 per year (View Highlight)
The median creator, however, likely earns far less. This is partly evident in the declining average revenue and fans per creator since 2020 and 2021 respectively, despite the overall increase in spending. (View Highlight)
To minimize churn, many benefits (e.g. back catalogues) are only available to long-running subscribers. (View Highlight)