18 ms·

The burgeoning business of OnlyFans consulting

77 points by pavanyara 5y ago

ivraatiems 5y ago
This article reads like PR for its subject, to be honest, and I've never heard of the site that it's from. Is The Hustle at all reliable?
- ufmace 5y ago
  It kind of is PR, but you can still take some useful information from it. It does seem pretty plausible that a "gold rush" on Onlyfans-type content is in full swing, and if you want to make more than pocket change and are not already famous, you're going to need some marketing hustle.
- jjoonathan 5y ago
  My immediate take was "you know the gold rush is over when shovel consultants start pushing ads your way." "The Hustle" sounds like a shovel consultant.
- harrisonjackson 5y ago
  They were recently (last year?) acquired by HubSpot. I'm not that familiar with their recent content but I am a fan of their team and the HustleCon youtube vids. Their founder has a podcast that is good fuel for anyone that likes to chat about startups, business, VCs, crypto, etc. The cohost had a startup that was acquired by Twitch. They're pretty entertaining together and the content is consistently good. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/my-first-million/id1469759170 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/my-first-million/id146...
- darkwizard42 5y ago
  The Hustle is a pretty common site shared on HN. I would say its mostly focused on 5 minute reads that give a slightly-deeper-than-google overview of a topical subject. They have had some good pieces in the past but are definitely in the quick morning read category.
vmception 5y ago
> To date, she estimates she’s dispensed advice to 26k adult content creators — college students, single moms, retail workers, and white-collar professionals. > There’s a misperception that online sex work is easy money. But in the vastly populated digital tundra, getting visibility is no simple task. People want to argue with me when I mention that over the last year I've been able to correctly assume people (women, because thats who I talk to) have a subscription service, and they've found it refreshing when I asked. An erotic subscription service about their body. I've never gotten it wrong. They're just not telling you about it. Many men make it their entire identity to make sure everyone knows they wouldn't pay* for anything related to visually sexually stimulating entertainment, but the analytics data shows a very broad distribution of society of every background does subscribe and/or pay later in the funnel. It's not even gendered as many performers are consumers too as they do market research on competitors, cross promote, and also reshare earnings - tipping others because they had a good day. (And many non-performer consumers are women as well, organically funneled or just friends). I think the platform earnings from performers resharing is not well discussed as people quizzically wonder about why OnlyFans grows so much. Its extremely strange to me that people are willing to normalize the supply side, but pretend the demand side is some marginalized man far away instead of a fairly consistent distribution of everyone around them. I'm fine with helping normalizing the demand side instead of "Nordic model-lite". *Also, many subscriptions are actually free. It's a funnel. See, the consulting article above. I don't say "hey! you look like you have an OnlyFans" I say "I wanna subscribe, I like supporting local businesses", I've literally gotten anything from private snapchats, patreons, patreons for non-sexual hobbies, Onlyfans, etc, all in person so no bots. Good rapport too! And you don't have to actually pay anything, but now you know the link or the top of the funnel to browse, or consider it. My new go-to supporting a direction of empowerment that conveniently matches my carnality is "support local". It was really frustrating when I was in a tech hub and many of the people only supported an exclusionary form of empowerment that didn't include performers or sex workers (or gogo dancers, or atmosphere models or anything that any one female developer somewhere on Twitter once said 'no' to). Not only did I dislike that the performers were never asked and just assumed to be irrelevant, privileging one kind of professional's goals over the other without even a discussion of greater inclusion, it was also just simply boring for me. How many times do I have to hear the groupthink that all performers are coerced people with no interest/capability in choosing that for themselves when I know that a couple of the empowered people in the office are also erotic performers or some subset of sex work. People are glad they can confide in me instead of simply resorting to a geofence. It just took me a while to recalibrate the wording for a more impervious and durable consensus, and 2020, erotic content creators are my favorite part of the pandemic.
teslabox 5y ago
While the rise of OnlyFans is potentially more lucrative for the people who in years past might have gotten a one-time payment from Playboy/Playgirl, for society OnlyFans is a symptom of late-stage degenerate capitalism. During the last financial crisis I ran across Money and the Crisis of Civilization [0], a piece about the monetization of services which have traditionally been performed for free: child care, meal preparation, etc. While I'm not opposed to women making more than a one-time fee for showing their nipples to the world, I don't think it's sustainable. The vast majority of OnlyFans' payments go to a very small percentage of the "content creators". And how many of those who actually pull in 6 figures will be able to bank it for after they inevitably lose their looks? Could meaningful work be subsidized so women who don't actually want to show their nipples to the world can get by without feeling pressured into trying to make a quick buck? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29190513 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29190513 (just submitted pls upvote thx. :) Some quotes: > In ancient times entertainment was also a free, participatory function. Everyone played an instrument, sang, participated in drama. Even 75 years ago in America, every small town had its own marching band and baseball team. Now we pay for those services. The economy has grown. Hooray. > Essentially, for the economy to continue growing and for the (interest-based) money system to remain viable, more and more of nature and human relationship must be monetized. For example, thirty years ago most meals were prepared at home; today some two-thirds are prepared outside, in restaurants or supermarket delis. A once unpaid function, cooking, has become a “service”. And we are the richer for it. Right? > > Another major engine of economic growth over the last three decades, child care, has also made us richer. We are now relieved of the burden of caring for our own children. We pay experts instead, who can do it much more efficiently.
- Mikeb85 5y ago
  > the monetization of services which have traditionally been performed for free: child care, meal preparation, etc. The idea of paying for meal preparation outside the house goes back at least 5000 years. Bars, restaurants and food vendors have been around at least as long as written history.
  - tuatoru 5y ago
darkwizard42 5y ago
As with any new subject/market there will be those that dig/pan for gold and those that sell the shovels. When app-based dating took off, there were people who reviewed your profile and customized it for you (including crafting messages to prospective partners). Someone on reddit (can't find this right now) started a whole business on this when she was so desperate for money she took to reviewing profiles for $5
doodlebugging 5y ago
...OT and not substantive comment deleted.
- vmception 5y ago
  I didn't react to this post but I can tell that its mostly just that it isn't substantive, so double check the HN guidelines. Its not the story or potential reality - which also doesn't help here - its that your post doesn't add anything, which is a community enforced requirement here that enough people pay attention to that they don't feel the need to respond. Like, maybe if this was an Ask HN thread about being a startup payment processor for OnlyFans while simultaneously moonlighting on the platform, then your short story would help add to the discussion. So even though the divineness of the topic did prompt the selective enforcement, it is really just that young adult fiction isn't the kind of comment useful in the general threads.
  - doodlebugging 5y ago
    Thanks for the clear explanation. I appreciate it.
short12 5y ago
Show boobs That will be one thousand dollars please
- nodejs_rulez_1 5y ago
  If I had to guess, it's more about some quasi-girlfriend experience or something like that. I think they can even "meet a fan in a hotel" for the right "donation". Though that might have been Twitch. Hard to tell these days, I am not a simpologist!
  - curryst 5y ago
    I've got a friend in the space, your first part is kind of on track. You can't just post to OnlyFans, you also have to advertise yourself on Twitter, Reddit, etc, etc. You also have to make sure that content walks the line, where people are interested enough to sign up, but that you're not showing enough that people are just going to your Twitter instead of subscribing. Then you've got the big fish, and interacting with them can be difficult, so advice on how to interact with them in a "quasi-girlfriend but not a hooker" way. I.e. if you're not engaging enough, they stop paying you, but if you're too engaging then you end up with stalkers and shit. Speaking of which, I would imagine these consultants probably provide advice on managing stalkers. Not revealing personal info, making sure the background of your photos doesn't reveal where you live or anything, etc. Lastly, consultants will probably help connect you with actual photographers and stuff to help increase the production value of the content. I don't understand this weird aversion to OnlyFans so many people have. Some people spend $5 on Starbucks in the morning to start their day off right, some people spend $5 on OnlyFans to start their day off right. For every creepy incel, there are probably 100 normal-ass people that spend $10/month to have a feed of new spank-bank material delivered to their phone.
crobertsbmw 5y ago
I thought only fans was shutting down the sex work portion of their platform? Was that just a PR stunt?
- commoner 5y ago
  They called off the plan after finding new financial partners: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28300797 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28300797

77 points by pavanyara 5y ago

This article reads like PR for its subject, to be honest, and I've never heard of the site that it's from. Is The Hustle at all reliable?

ufmace 5y ago
It kind of is PR, but you can still take some useful information from it. It does seem pretty plausible that a "gold rush" on Onlyfans-type content is in full swing, and if you want to make more than pocket change and are not already famous, you're going to need some marketing hustle.
jjoonathan 5y ago
My immediate take was "you know the gold rush is over when shovel consultants start pushing ads your way." "The Hustle" sounds like a shovel consultant.
harrisonjackson 5y ago
They were recently (last year?) acquired by HubSpot. I'm not that familiar with their recent content but I am a fan of their team and the HustleCon youtube vids. Their founder has a podcast that is good fuel for anyone that likes to chat about startups, business, VCs, crypto, etc. The cohost had a startup that was acquired by Twitch. They're pretty entertaining together and the content is consistently good. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/my-first-million/id1469759170 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/my-first-million/id146...
darkwizard42 5y ago
The Hustle is a pretty common site shared on HN. I would say its mostly focused on 5 minute reads that give a slightly-deeper-than-google overview of a topical subject. They have had some good pieces in the past but are definitely in the quick morning read category.

vmception 5y ago

> To date, she estimates she’s dispensed advice to 26k adult content creators — college students, single moms, retail workers, and white-collar professionals. > There’s a misperception that online sex work is easy money. But in the vastly populated digital tundra, getting visibility is no simple task. People want to argue with me when I mention that over the last year I've been able to correctly assume people (women, because thats who I talk to) have a subscription service, and they've found it refreshing when I asked. An erotic subscription service about their body. I've never gotten it wrong. They're just not telling you about it. Many men make it their entire identity to make sure everyone knows they wouldn't pay* for anything related to visually sexually stimulating entertainment, but the analytics data shows a very broad distribution of society of every background does subscribe and/or pay later in the funnel. It's not even gendered as many performers are consumers too as they do market research on competitors, cross promote, and also reshare earnings - tipping others because they had a good day. (And many non-performer consumers are women as well, organically funneled or just friends). I think the platform earnings from performers resharing is not well discussed as people quizzically wonder about why OnlyFans grows so much. Its extremely strange to me that people are willing to normalize the supply side, but pretend the demand side is some marginalized man far away instead of a fairly consistent distribution of everyone around them. I'm fine with helping normalizing the demand side instead of "Nordic model-lite". *Also, many subscriptions are actually free. It's a funnel. See, the consulting article above. I don't say "hey! you look like you have an OnlyFans" I say "I wanna subscribe, I like supporting local businesses", I've literally gotten anything from private snapchats, patreons, patreons for non-sexual hobbies, Onlyfans, etc, all in person so no bots. Good rapport too! And you don't have to actually pay anything, but now you know the link or the top of the funnel to browse, or consider it. My new go-to supporting a direction of empowerment that conveniently matches my carnality is "support local". It was really frustrating when I was in a tech hub and many of the people only supported an exclusionary form of empowerment that didn't include performers or sex workers (or gogo dancers, or atmosphere models or anything that any one female developer somewhere on Twitter once said 'no' to). Not only did I dislike that the performers were never asked and just assumed to be irrelevant, privileging one kind of professional's goals over the other without even a discussion of greater inclusion, it was also just simply boring for me. How many times do I have to hear the groupthink that all performers are coerced people with no interest/capability in choosing that for themselves when I know that a couple of the empowered people in the office are also erotic performers or some subset of sex work. People are glad they can confide in me instead of simply resorting to a geofence. It just took me a while to recalibrate the wording for a more impervious and durable consensus, and 2020, erotic content creators are my favorite part of the pandemic.

teslabox 5y ago

While the rise of OnlyFans is potentially more lucrative for the people who in years past might have gotten a one-time payment from Playboy/Playgirl, for society OnlyFans is a symptom of late-stage degenerate capitalism. During the last financial crisis I ran across Money and the Crisis of Civilization [0], a piece about the monetization of services which have traditionally been performed for free: child care, meal preparation, etc. While I'm not opposed to women making more than a one-time fee for showing their nipples to the world, I don't think it's sustainable. The vast majority of OnlyFans' payments go to a very small percentage of the "content creators". And how many of those who actually pull in 6 figures will be able to bank it for after they inevitably lose their looks? Could meaningful work be subsidized so women who don't actually want to show their nipples to the world can get by without feeling pressured into trying to make a quick buck? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29190513 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29190513 (just submitted pls upvote thx. :) Some quotes: > In ancient times entertainment was also a free, participatory function. Everyone played an instrument, sang, participated in drama. Even 75 years ago in America, every small town had its own marching band and baseball team. Now we pay for those services. The economy has grown. Hooray. > Essentially, for the economy to continue growing and for the (interest-based) money system to remain viable, more and more of nature and human relationship must be monetized. For example, thirty years ago most meals were prepared at home; today some two-thirds are prepared outside, in restaurants or supermarket delis. A once unpaid function, cooking, has become a “service”. And we are the richer for it. Right? > > Another major engine of economic growth over the last three decades, child care, has also made us richer. We are now relieved of the burden of caring for our own children. We pay experts instead, who can do it much more efficiently.

Mikeb85 5y ago
> the monetization of services which have traditionally been performed for free: child care, meal preparation, etc. The idea of paying for meal preparation outside the house goes back at least 5000 years. Bars, restaurants and food vendors have been around at least as long as written history.
- tuatoru 5y ago

darkwizard42 5y ago

As with any new subject/market there will be those that dig/pan for gold and those that sell the shovels. When app-based dating took off, there were people who reviewed your profile and customized it for you (including crafting messages to prospective partners). Someone on reddit (can't find this right now) started a whole business on this when she was so desperate for money she took to reviewing profiles for $5

doodlebugging 5y ago

...OT and not substantive comment deleted.

vmception 5y ago
I didn't react to this post but I can tell that its mostly just that it isn't substantive, so double check the HN guidelines. Its not the story or potential reality - which also doesn't help here - its that your post doesn't add anything, which is a community enforced requirement here that enough people pay attention to that they don't feel the need to respond. Like, maybe if this was an Ask HN thread about being a startup payment processor for OnlyFans while simultaneously moonlighting on the platform, then your short story would help add to the discussion. So even though the divineness of the topic did prompt the selective enforcement, it is really just that young adult fiction isn't the kind of comment useful in the general threads.
- doodlebugging 5y ago
  Thanks for the clear explanation. I appreciate it.

short12 5y ago

Show boobs That will be one thousand dollars please

nodejs_rulez_1 5y ago
If I had to guess, it's more about some quasi-girlfriend experience or something like that. I think they can even "meet a fan in a hotel" for the right "donation". Though that might have been Twitch. Hard to tell these days, I am not a simpologist!
- curryst 5y ago
  I've got a friend in the space, your first part is kind of on track. You can't just post to OnlyFans, you also have to advertise yourself on Twitter, Reddit, etc, etc. You also have to make sure that content walks the line, where people are interested enough to sign up, but that you're not showing enough that people are just going to your Twitter instead of subscribing. Then you've got the big fish, and interacting with them can be difficult, so advice on how to interact with them in a "quasi-girlfriend but not a hooker" way. I.e. if you're not engaging enough, they stop paying you, but if you're too engaging then you end up with stalkers and shit. Speaking of which, I would imagine these consultants probably provide advice on managing stalkers. Not revealing personal info, making sure the background of your photos doesn't reveal where you live or anything, etc. Lastly, consultants will probably help connect you with actual photographers and stuff to help increase the production value of the content. I don't understand this weird aversion to OnlyFans so many people have. Some people spend $5 on Starbucks in the morning to start their day off right, some people spend $5 on OnlyFans to start their day off right. For every creepy incel, there are probably 100 normal-ass people that spend $10/month to have a feed of new spank-bank material delivered to their phone.

crobertsbmw 5y ago

I thought only fans was shutting down the sex work portion of their platform? Was that just a PR stunt?

commoner 5y ago
They called off the plan after finding new financial partners: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28300797 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28300797