The adult content-forward website OnlyFans enjoyed explosive growth shortly after the COVID-19 health crisis struck; years later, that blossoming has only gotten bigger and brighter.
When the porn industry essentially shut down overnight in March of 2020, queer adult film star Michael Boston did what many in the business did: He joined OnlyFans. The then-26-year-old went from professional studio lighting to creating, directing, and marketing his own content.
The move turned out to be quite lucrative.
“I’ve been able to buy more shoes and live comfortably in this new house I just moved into in L.A. because of my OnlyFans revenue,” Boston told me in 2020. He estimated he’s made tens of thousands of dollars from the site — his large fan base gained from an illustrious studio career helped — and the amount has only ballooned since.
NSFW “fan content” websites — such as Just For Fans, Manyvids, and, of course, the juggernaut of them all, OnlyFans — have enjoyed a boom in popularity since COVID-19. In March 2020, Mashable reported OnlyFans had 26 million registered users. By August 2020, Variety reported that the number had nearly doubled to 50 million in less than six months. Financial reports published in 2024 from the company show OnlyFans has over 305 million registered users — an over six-fold increase in just four years.
To put that figure into perspective, OnlyFans continued rise is ascending faster than Instagram, Facebook, and Tiktok … by multiples of three or four, depending on the platform.
Unlike traditional studio porn where watchers are subjected to what companies deem to be worthwhile positions, bodies, and fantasies, OnlyFans puts the power back in the hands of creators and subscribers. This new digital space allows people to explore sex work and body positivity, as well as have a more intimate, personal connection with performers. Users can cater their porn consumption to match their sexual fantasies, desires, and preferences — akin to, say, how playlists are made on popular music streaming services.
Boston has said his self-shot-and-produced content shows his fans he’s a real person, not just a body on the screen.
“There are fans of mine I talk to almost daily, who boost my confidence, and I boost theirs,” Boston said. “I feel really connected to them, which is something I can’t say happens with studio porn. I can cater content to what they want and get an idea of what works and what doesn’t. Plus, who doesn’t like to be told they’re sexy as fuck on a daily basis?”
Making the kind of money he makes hasn’t come without hard work: Boston is responsible for producing, editing, uploading, and marketing content. With the platform still taking on average 20% of his gross earnings (a common commission rate shared by many creators on the platform), it’s vital he gets his work in front of a large audience effectively and connects with them enough that they want to pay.
“You have to kind of be a jack of all trades these days,” Boston said. “You can’t just expect your account to make money lying around on the internet.”
LGBTQIA+ advocate, fashion designer, and Latinx adult film star Boomer Banks agrees, having said, “If you’re white, and you have a body, people will pay for you to show it off.”
Another challenge is dealing with the overshadowing celebrity culture that’s managed to flood the platform. OnlyFans is famous for featuring people like Cardi B and popular YouTubers on their homepage and explore pages, while largely ignoring the sex workers that make up the backbone of the platform. Gen Z star Bella Thorne reportedly made more than $1 million in a week, and MTV’s Tana Mongeau has previously boasted on Instagram about earning $3 million in a month. (Her most requested and expensive content? Feet pics.)
In 2021, the company was actually in the process of banning adult content on its platform amid concerns raised by companies that host payment process methods on the platform, e.g. JP Morgan Chase, which would effectively gut the $2-plus billion annually made through on-platform transactions. Thankfully, OnlyFans reversed its intended ban on “sexually explicit” content and has no intention to bar such media hosted on the platform in the foreseeable future.
Nonetheless, lesser-known entertainers continue to join and grow their audiences on the site amid obstacles.
“I saw people are making money on this platform, and I saw it as an opportunity there,” Banks said.
Regardless of where his adult content is posted, Banks still believes strongly in “self-accountability” and boundary setting. “You have to have your own house in order to get everything else together to make a career like this not only get off the ground but have longevity. I’ve been sober for over 15 years, and having that level of self-accountability and life experience has been so important.”
JetSettingJasmine, co-founder of Royal Fetish Films is another performer who shifted to OnlyFans during the pandemic. JetSettingJasmine recently launched a new adult content website for Royal Fetish Films that compliments the OnlyFans branch of the business; RoyalFestishXXX.com hosts website-specific content and offers a more dynamic user interface experience for customers.
Nevertheless, she continues releasing content across a wide array of aggregate digital mediums and other subscription-based services.
“We’re still on every platform you can imagine and we’ve pivoted our live shows to cam shows, while also taking advantage of digital audio services, like podcasts,” she said.
Jasmine partners with Pineapple Support, which provides sex-positive therapy to adult film workers and generally works to dismantle stigmas against sex work.
“If we can use our fingers to type out documents, our biceps to pick up trash, then we should be able to use the more intimate parts of our bodies as a means to sustain ourselves,” Jasmine said. “Some people find sex work as an alternative to dead-end jobs. It’s all about highlighting your strengths and problem-solving to navigate an ever-changing world, but doing so in a safe and legal way is crucial.”
The pandemic also created a separate shift for adult content creators: seeing how their newly adopted trade skills could exist outside the space. Many performers that went entirely online — Jasmine helped people navigate the transition to building OnlyFans careers — had a baptism by fire of sorts, amassing extensive knowledge in multi-applicable skills like marketing, video and picture editing, copywriting, and more. (It’s not uncommon nor unheard of nowadays to hear of former OnlyFans creators now working in high-up brand marketing positions or creating their own agencies built around the skillsets they mastered while creating subscription-based adult content.)
OnlyFans continues to offer content creators the ability to tailor media to fans. Jasmine said it’s been “incredibly satisfying” for entertainers to curate specific fan content or include in DMs to subscribers. (Fans can pay extra for these DMs; subscribers can also send a tip for what content they’d like to see.) OnlyFans has broken down walls between adult performers and consumers of their work, supporting creators and giving fans a glimpse into the lives of people they pleasure themselves to.
I know that gets me off.
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