As an evolution of entertainment, OnlyFans has grown past 100 million users faster than Facebook. While Facebook offered social connection, OnlyFans now offers that in addition to exclusive paywalled entertainment mostly in the adult space.
OnlyFans now has over 170 million users. Those users pay over five billion dollars annually to content creators on the platform.
OnlyFans differs from other media sites in that it operates through paid subscriptions to content creators. Rather than hosting videos that anyone can access, content is behind a paywall on each creator’s profile.
Further, OnlyFans provides messaging between users and creators, similar to most social media websites. These and other factors seem to satisfy some deeper reasons people seek out porn, such as intimacy. OnlyFans aims to be a more special connection than a webpage or video you just open once.
There is the notion that you have exclusive access to the creators you subscribe to, which the typical person does not. This is baked into the OnlyFans platform and a large part of its allure. All things considered, OnlyFans and its style of content access aren’t going anywhere.
Now let’s break into the OnlyFans Statistics that have people rethinking pornography’s place in society.
In the time since its 2016 launch, OnlyFans has grown exponentially. It reached over 1 million users in under one year and over 10 million in under three years. Passing the 100 million users mark only took five years, which OnlyFans accomplished quicker than Facebook did.
OnlyFans may be based in London, but the US is its biggest consumer. The United Kingdom is the second largest, albeit only 7% of the user base.
OnlyFans operates more like a social media website than a traditional porn site, with each creator having a feed and sending out messages to subscribers. This aspect brings users back to check for new content or messages.
Because OnlyFans does not have a smartphone app, logging into the website is the only way to check for updates outside of email notifications.
The barrier to entry for opening an OnlyFans creator account is lower than getting started in traditional pornography, and you can do it from home. These factors, along with its trending in recent years, saw a large boom in accounts created.
As online as the United States is, ranking in the Top 100 sites is quite a feat. OnlyFans ranks among the biggest multinational banks, restaurants, and retailers.
OnlyFans quickly rose to the Top 10 adult websites as it became more widely known. That said, it’s important to note that it’s not the only site of its kind. More than ten alternative platforms provide a similar product, yet OnlyFans is the most popular by far.
This is perhaps one of the most telling OnlyFans statistics. Any website competing on a global scale is to be taken seriously, and OnlyFans has only climbed in global popularity over time.
Like in the United States, OnlyFans is also overwhelmingly popular worldwide among adult websites.
OnlyFans users visit the platform in a social manner in addition to the obvious sexual manner. Like Instagram, creators often post content that gives a glimpse into their day-to-day lives. Users feel compelled to keep up with and connect with creators.
Just like with traditional pornography, the smartphone makes OnlyFans accessible anywhere, all the time. At home, at work, in the line at the grocery store. This is helped by social media being another phone-heavy activity and the main source of OnlyFans traffic.
The global pandemic caused much spare time spent at home, leading to signups for users and creators. People already working in the sex industry had to find alternative options to in-person activities. Those suffering from loneliness sought new outlets for those feelings.
All told, the user base grew by 100 million, going from less than 20 million to more than 120 million.
The amount of money spent and earned also ballooned, reportedly going up 7x year-to-date from November 2019 to November 2020. The trendiness of OnlyFans during that period of global lockdowns, with people spending more time online, helped cement the platform and make it what it is today.
Right from their website, this OnlyFans statistic speaks to the volume of money users spend. While common video hosting sites can be visited for free, OnlyFans operates differently.
Profiles come with a monthly subscription fee, and individual content can also be pay-per-view. Private messages can even be locked behind payments. A creator can set their profile to a $0 subscription fee, leading to them making all the content pay-per-view.
OnlyFans paid out their first 1 billion dollars to creators by early 2020, and now a few years later, it is doing 5x that annually.
Since Twitter allows nudity and NSFW content, unlike every other social media giant, Twitter has cornered the market for sex workers looking to promote their work.
Reddit operates similarly to Twitter in that it allows NSFW content on certain subreddits and makes up another 15% of OnlyFans traffic from social media. Instagram makes up 12%, whilst not allowing NSFW content on its own platform.
We previously said social media is the main source of traffic to OnlyFans, and Linktr.ee is a part of that process. Linktr.ee is a service that allows creators to use one link to refer their audience to various platforms or services.
Instagram only allows one link in your profile’s bio. A Linktr.ee link can be used there, which when clicked on, will take the user to a webpage with multiple links set up by the content creator. Because this is done on many social media websites, Linktr.ee is ‘technically’ the largest traffic source for OnlyFans.
Since each content creator is more or less acting as an entrepreneur, it is up to them to promote their work. This has and continues to lead to millions of links sending users to OnlyFans, even from non-sex-related platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.
As with traditional pornography, males are more likely to consume OnlyFans content. Conversely, two-thirds of content creators on OnlyFans are female.
While most users are younger, the older male crowd (35+) averages higher spending on OnlyFans. That said, the effects on younger generations maturing in a world where OnlyFans and platforms like it are normalized remains to be seen.
The monthly subscription fee per creator varies from $5 to $50, and pay-per-view content also ranges from $5-$50. However, with PPV content, that set of images or videos is all you get. Users can tip creators anywhere from $5 to $100. Similarly, creators can send out mass private messages to users, which cost between $5 to $100 to unlock and view.
On OnlyFans, the majority of the revenue is consolidated among the top content creators. Even narrower than the top 10%, the top 1% of creators make roughly 33% of all the earnings.
Many numbers are floating around on the ‘average earnings’ of an OnlyFans creator, but only OnlyFans themselves would know this statistic accurately. Defining average is skewed by the top % of profiles earning the majority of the money.
This includes creators with a free subscription; however, those typically charge pay-per-view for content.
While there is non-nude content and profiles on OnlyFans, the far majority of it is adult-oriented and NSFW. While some content creators don’t perform sexual actions or post nudity, the platform is primarily adult entertainment.
OnlyFans is a growing platform with many lookalikes. In the same way that social media followed TikTok’s example, the pornography industry may follow OnlyFans’s example. As times change and platforms evolve, keeping in mind your use of them and how they affect you is key.
If traditional pornography has or is causing you problems in life, OnlyFans is likely to do the same. It can be easy to develop parasocial relationships. In these one-sided relationships, the user feels they have a close and intimate relationship with someone they’ve never met.
This already happens in other media such as TV, movies, or social media. But bringing sex into the mix can take it to another level. The content creators on OnlyFans have it in their best interest to get you invested in them.
The best way to deal with OnlyFans and websites like it is to see them for what they are. Then, ask yourself what they add and what they take away from your life, relationships, and self-image.
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https://civicscience.com/onlyfans-subscribers-may-get-a-direct-self-esteem-boost/
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