It’s not due to the attention celebrities have paid to the site what’s drawn Lena’s attention is how the pandemic has encouraged more and more people to set up shop on the site. In the past six months, Lena’s noticed some changes to her daily routine. In addition to producing, directing, and performing, she also does her own marketing, including coming up with her video captions, text for the DMs she sends her fans, and any other copy she uses to draw people to her page.
But Lena has more responsibility than she would if she were just being hired to show up and perform.
On OnlyFans, videos tend to be anywhere from a couple of minutes to 20 or 30, as opposed to the 20 to 40 minutes that’s more common in professional porn, making it easier to have a shorter, less structured day on set. The days on set aren’t as grueling as they would be at a traditional porn set. Lena doesn’t shoot daily - the week we spoke, she planned to shoot content on Tuesday and Thursday - but when she does, she’s producing, directing, and performing her own content, coming up with titillating scenarios that will entice her fans and keep them clicking. (She also posts content on some non-OnlyFans platforms, like ManyVids, as a way of diversifying her revenue, but prefers OnlyFans because the site’s 20 percent commission is a significantly better deal than the terms offered by more adult-focused platforms.)Ĭreating that content is another layer of work. “And then I’ll post little updates of cute videos or cute pictures on my feed daily,” she says. Lena will post two or three videos per week, with one made available to all her paying subscribers and the rest sent out in the DMs as a pay-per-view offer.
In Lena’s case, it’s actually two OnlyFans accounts: a free one that helps her attract more fans and a premium one that fans can pay a monthly membership fee to unlock, with additional videos available on a pay-per-view basis. Despite the common assumption that getting rich on OnlyFans is as simple as posting a tit pic and waiting for the cash to roll in, running a popular OnlyFans account is a lot of work. “Having a platform that is becoming more of a household name and recognizable is really great because it doesn’t seem like this weird, shady 18-plus scam, like a lot of other websites seem,” she told us.īut the fact that OnlyFans has been a significantly more welcoming platform than Snapchat doesn’t mean that making it big on OnlyFans has been easy. And for many of Lena’s fans, sharing their credit card info with OnlyFans felt like a significantly more legit transaction. The platform didn’t just tolerate porn, it seemed to openly accept it, welcoming sex workers - and their eager customers - as they created accounts and increased the company’s revenue. With OnlyFans, all those worries were a thing of the past. And Snapchat wasn’t happy about the arrangement either: Adult content is banned by the app’s Terms of Service, and while private accounts have an easier time flying under the radar, Snapchat’s content moderation team has gotten fairly good at identifying and suspending sex work-related accounts. Fans balked at the idea of buying a membership through an unfamiliar website, anxious that they were being set up for a scam.
Before joining OnlyFans last year, Lena largely relied on Snapchat to deliver her adult content, selling access to a locked account through a standalone website - a messy, imperfect system. Despite the site’s mainstream marketing - which highlights fitness influencers, makeup artists, and chefs among its users - there’s one very specific population that most people associate with the site: sex workers.įor Lena the Plug, one of OnlyFans’ most popular content creators, the site’s appeal is obvious. That level of celebrity attention would be notable for any burgeoning social media site, but it’s all the more impressive for a platform like OnlyFans. That same month, former Disney Channel star Bella Thorne broke site revenue records, reportedly earning $1 million in her first 24 hours on the site. In April, Beyoncé gave the site a shout out during her verse on Megan Thee Stallion’s “Savage ” in August, Cardi B set up an account. But it’s only in the past year that the service has started to gain mainstream attention. OnlyFans - a subscription app that allows people to charge fans for access to photos, videos, and other content - has been around since 2016. OnlyFans creator Lena the Plug filming at home.