Changing career paths is not as daunting a task as it used to be until a few years ago. Many people are choosing different paths, midway through building a career in one field if they are not happy or fulfilled doing so. Zara Dar’s journey is just like that.
A PhD student turned OnlyFans creator, she’s making headlines for uploading STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) lectures to Pornhub — and earning more from them than she ever did on YouTube.
What started as a side hustle to fund her PhD in engineering has turned into a full-time career for Zara Dar. In a viral post on X (formerly Twitter), she revealed a surprising truth about content monetization. Despite uploading the same neural network lectures to both YouTube and Pornhub, the latter pays nearly three times more ad revenue—$1,000 per million views compared to YouTube’s $340.
“People may not know this, but I publish the same STEM videos on both YouTube and Pornhub. While YouTube generally generates more views, the ad revenue per 1 million views on Pornhub is nearly three times higher,” she shared.
For instance, her neural network video has nearly a million views on YouTube but earned just $340, while Pornhub’s 32,000 views generated far more proportional revenue.
Darcy’s unconventional path began two years ago when she joined OnlyFans while working on her doctorate. By December, she announced that she was leaving academia altogether to focus on creating content, citing not only financial reasons but also the frustrations of working in the academic world.
“Dropping out of my PhD was my choice,” she explained. “Money was only part of the story—the state of academia today was the primary reason.”
This career pivot seems to be paying off. Zara says she’s made nearly $1 million on OnlyFans since starting, and she continues to upload her STEM lectures, combining education with her newfound independence.
I shared the same post on X and LinkedIn comparing the ad revenue I typically earn per view on YouTube versus Pornhub, where I upload my STEM videos. While the post went semi-viral on LinkedIn with many Top Voices reaching out to me, my account was unexpectedly blocked without… pic.twitter.com/QvbDL1pNqu
— Zara Dar (@zaradarz) January 12, 2025
Her experience only goes on to prove that sometimes the road less traveled is actually the most rewarding.
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