6 ms·

I have a buddy how likes to tell how he "had the idea for Onlyfans first" but I advised him not to pursue it. The reality is that OnlyFans wasn't the first to

I have a buddy how likes to tell how he "had the idea for Onlyfans first" but I advised him not to pursue it. 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.

doix 2y ago
Yeah, I'm sure millions of people had this idea. My friends and I talked about it at some point as well. The problem is the payment processor. How the heck do you accept adult-content related payments? That is the hardest problem to solve when it comes to these things in my book.
- creer 2y ago
  Second is the issue of promotion: how to you become known to enough fans to make it worth it. The sites offer a true service of discovery.
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    Seemingly, it is posting a variety of content on Reddit that incentivized people to click on usernames which then advertise the OF.
- paulpauper 2y ago
  Payment processing for porn has existed a long time. The problem is trying to convince people to pay for porn. The assumption was free tube site would replace membership sites, as the was the trend already.
- mattfrommars 2y ago
  Payment is the hardest part in this space. Somehow OnlyFans had the privilege to use Stripe for all their transactions. It's beyond knowing the business model, I guess the founder were at the right place and right time and knew the right people to make this venture succeed. Also, the marketing, how the heck did these guy blow up so fast. The funds for marketing and all, it's not cheap!
  - roenxi 2y ago
    If someone has a serious pitch to the tune of "I've got enough leverage with key players in Stripe to make an adult site work", everything afterwards would get pretty easy. Finding money to advertise is no problem, these sites are in a great position if they can work around the payment systems. The difficulty becomes the moat.
    - duggan 2y ago
      As far as I understand it isn't Stripe setting policy on this, it's Mastercard/Visa. Though presumably, ultimately, it's really government.
      - avianlyric 2y ago
        It’s a bit of a mix. Mastercard/Visa do set some policies around this, but only due to, quite frankly undemocratic, political pressure. There been a few documented cases of particularly puritanical US politicians sending letters and making arbitrary public claims to “embarrass” Mastercard/Visa into restricting certain types of perfectly legal commerce. The impact of these policies is a bit arbitrary, as Mastercard/Visa generally aren’t in the business of restricting commerce (and thus their cut of the profits). So they tend to have short lived, but high impact, consequences on specific individuals or groups. Really though, the primary reason why a company like stripe don’t want to be involved with these types of business, is the very high levels of fraud and chargebacks that come with the territory. Turns out people get embarrassed about porn appearing on their bank statements, and often put in dubious chargeback claims. Not to mention many banks have their fraud controls set to a hair-trigger for anything porn related. The end result is processing these transactions is normally very expensive and high risk, due to the fraud and chargebacks. Which in turn put you at high risk of being kicked of the Mastercard/Visa networks. Mastercard/Visa mostly don’t give a shit what you’re selling, as long as you pay your dues. But they do get very upset when it looks like your business might threaten the perceived safety of credit/debit cards. As usual, protecting profits is treated much more seriously, than preventing any perceived moral failing. As for governments, they officially don’t care. Selling porn is perfectly legal in the western world, so it only individuals in government who choose to abuse their positions to enforce their personal moral code on others (beyond what the law requires) that creates any kind of government “policy”.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- qingcharles 2y ago
  OnlyFans banned adult content at one point: https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/24/22639356/onlyfans-ceo-tim-stokely-sexually-explicit-content-ban-banks https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/24/22639356/onlyfans-ceo-tim... Recently they've tried to launch OFTV to try and build up more regular (non-spicy) paid content, but it's a tiny fraction of their revenue I would imagine.
paulpauper 2y ago
It was covid Otherwise, paid porn was already on the downswing due to the rise of free tube sites. Onlyfans somehow got men paying for porn again.
- debacle 2y ago
  Onlyfans is more than porn. DMs with your "star" (her assistant), exclusive content, and other parasocial interactions create a kind of connection that is a lot deeper than just porn. When you can combine that experience with AI generated content, you will create something that I don't think anyone fully understands the ramifications of yet.
  - knallfrosch 2y ago
    Even "assistant" (singular) is misleading. It's 30 men in the Philippines mashed together with AI-bots.
- darth_avocado 2y ago
  It was 100% covid. The strip clubs were closed, the strippers and the patrons moved to the online strip club.
__rito__ 2y ago
This is relevant: https://x.com/cyantist/status/1832921451986632777 https://x.com/cyantist/status/1832921451986632777 A similar app creator talks about her experience and why it failed.
- ashconnor 2y ago
  It's worth listening to the Hot Money podcast which goes into detail of how OF makes money: https://www.ft.com/content/762e4648-06d7-4abd-8d1e-ccefb74b3244 https://www.ft.com/content/762e4648-06d7-4abd-8d1e-ccefb74b3...
- comebhack 2y ago
  https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1832921451986632777.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1832921451986632777.html
- joenot443 2y ago
  Highly recommend this thread. I think these kind of honest post-mortems from founders are super valuable and Cyan's delivery is frank and charitable. It seems she and Justin Mares are running some kind of micro-funding for passionate <25yos. $2k to help young people develop themselves; super cool. https://www.inflectiongrants.com/ https://www.inflectiongrants.com/
  - luuurker 2y ago
    > Highly recommend this thread. Shame that Twitter doesn't let people without an account to read it.
    - joenot443 2y ago
      It is a shame. The accountification of the web is a huge bummer, I'm totally with you on that.
- marcellus23 2y ago
  Wow some of those tweets are long. Twitter lost something when it removed the character limit.

doix 2y ago

Yeah, I'm sure millions of people had this idea. My friends and I talked about it at some point as well. The problem is the payment processor. How the heck do you accept adult-content related payments? That is the hardest problem to solve when it comes to these things in my book.

creer 2y ago
Second is the issue of promotion: how to you become known to enough fans to make it worth it. The sites offer a true service of discovery.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  Seemingly, it is posting a variety of content on Reddit that incentivized people to click on usernames which then advertise the OF.
paulpauper 2y ago
Payment processing for porn has existed a long time. The problem is trying to convince people to pay for porn. The assumption was free tube site would replace membership sites, as the was the trend already.
mattfrommars 2y ago
Payment is the hardest part in this space. Somehow OnlyFans had the privilege to use Stripe for all their transactions. It's beyond knowing the business model, I guess the founder were at the right place and right time and knew the right people to make this venture succeed. Also, the marketing, how the heck did these guy blow up so fast. The funds for marketing and all, it's not cheap!
- roenxi 2y ago
  If someone has a serious pitch to the tune of "I've got enough leverage with key players in Stripe to make an adult site work", everything afterwards would get pretty easy. Finding money to advertise is no problem, these sites are in a great position if they can work around the payment systems. The difficulty becomes the moat.
  - duggan 2y ago
    As far as I understand it isn't Stripe setting policy on this, it's Mastercard/Visa. Though presumably, ultimately, it's really government.
    - avianlyric 2y ago
      It’s a bit of a mix. Mastercard/Visa do set some policies around this, but only due to, quite frankly undemocratic, political pressure. There been a few documented cases of particularly puritanical US politicians sending letters and making arbitrary public claims to “embarrass” Mastercard/Visa into restricting certain types of perfectly legal commerce. The impact of these policies is a bit arbitrary, as Mastercard/Visa generally aren’t in the business of restricting commerce (and thus their cut of the profits). So they tend to have short lived, but high impact, consequences on specific individuals or groups. Really though, the primary reason why a company like stripe don’t want to be involved with these types of business, is the very high levels of fraud and chargebacks that come with the territory. Turns out people get embarrassed about porn appearing on their bank statements, and often put in dubious chargeback claims. Not to mention many banks have their fraud controls set to a hair-trigger for anything porn related. The end result is processing these transactions is normally very expensive and high risk, due to the fraud and chargebacks. Which in turn put you at high risk of being kicked of the Mastercard/Visa networks. Mastercard/Visa mostly don’t give a shit what you’re selling, as long as you pay your dues. But they do get very upset when it looks like your business might threaten the perceived safety of credit/debit cards. As usual, protecting profits is treated much more seriously, than preventing any perceived moral failing. As for governments, they officially don’t care. Selling porn is perfectly legal in the western world, so it only individuals in government who choose to abuse their positions to enforce their personal moral code on others (beyond what the law requires) that creates any kind of government “policy”.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
qingcharles 2y ago
OnlyFans banned adult content at one point: https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/24/22639356/onlyfans-ceo-tim-stokely-sexually-explicit-content-ban-banks https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/24/22639356/onlyfans-ceo-tim... Recently they've tried to launch OFTV to try and build up more regular (non-spicy) paid content, but it's a tiny fraction of their revenue I would imagine.

paulpauper 2y ago

It was covid Otherwise, paid porn was already on the downswing due to the rise of free tube sites. Onlyfans somehow got men paying for porn again.

debacle 2y ago
Onlyfans is more than porn. DMs with your "star" (her assistant), exclusive content, and other parasocial interactions create a kind of connection that is a lot deeper than just porn. When you can combine that experience with AI generated content, you will create something that I don't think anyone fully understands the ramifications of yet.
- knallfrosch 2y ago
  Even "assistant" (singular) is misleading. It's 30 men in the Philippines mashed together with AI-bots.
darth_avocado 2y ago
It was 100% covid. The strip clubs were closed, the strippers and the patrons moved to the online strip club.

__rito__ 2y ago

This is relevant: https://x.com/cyantist/status/1832921451986632777 https://x.com/cyantist/status/1832921451986632777 A similar app creator talks about her experience and why it failed.

ashconnor 2y ago
It's worth listening to the Hot Money podcast which goes into detail of how OF makes money: https://www.ft.com/content/762e4648-06d7-4abd-8d1e-ccefb74b3244 https://www.ft.com/content/762e4648-06d7-4abd-8d1e-ccefb74b3...
comebhack 2y ago
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1832921451986632777.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1832921451986632777.html
joenot443 2y ago
Highly recommend this thread. I think these kind of honest post-mortems from founders are super valuable and Cyan's delivery is frank and charitable. It seems she and Justin Mares are running some kind of micro-funding for passionate <25yos. $2k to help young people develop themselves; super cool. https://www.inflectiongrants.com/ https://www.inflectiongrants.com/
- luuurker 2y ago
  > Highly recommend this thread. Shame that Twitter doesn't let people without an account to read it.
  - joenot443 2y ago
    It is a shame. The accountification of the web is a huge bummer, I'm totally with you on that.
marcellus23 2y ago
Wow some of those tweets are long. Twitter lost something when it removed the character limit.