OnlyFans: exploitation dressed up as empowerment.

0:01Coming up in today's episode, a listener recently wrote in suggesting that Sophie and I read Margot's Got Money Troubles, which is a fabulous book, came out last year and was recently made into an Apple TV show starring Elle Fanning that has been widely discussed. The book really centres around OnlyFans and is a wonderful read and watch. So we thought we'd do a discussion, kind of springboarding off the back of Margot's Got Money Troubles, discuss the economics of OnlyFans, who's making money on the platform and how, how the business is organised and how the business itself is making money, the exploitation that seems to become the dark underbelly of OnlyFans, and what happens next for the platform as it skirts a potential IPO.

0:39Emma: Welcome to The Curve Weekly, where we read the finance news so that you don't have to. I'm Sophie Hallwright, ex-television radio producer who was sick and tired of not understanding investing, the economy, how to grow wealth, so we started this podcast. And my name is Emma-Louise Boynton. I'm a writer, author, and broadcaster interested in exploring the topics we're taught not to discuss, so that means typically taboo topics like money. But before we get into today's episode, we've got a quick word from today's sponsor. Did you know Generate have a team of advisors who will actually meet with you and help you make sense of KiwiSaver?

1:12Emma: you can book a no-cost KiwiSaver advice session via the link in our podcast show notes and thanks to Generate for sponsoring this episode of The Curve Weekly. How was your weekend? Hi Sophie my weekend was like hi my weekend was well actually my weekend was delightful I went with my boyfriend to a flea market which actually was closed which was annoying but then we found a then we found a bunch of other like antique um furniture places because we are doing up our flat at the moment and we're looking for some great bargains and we found a beautiful piece of furniture actually in the car park to our building so we are on a money saving flat do-over and it is looking stunning that's so fun it is fun it look we're turning a house into a home i mean we don't have a house emma moves in and the first thing she buys is the biggest bookshelf that anyone's ever seen to fill the entire back wall.

2:09And I think you've got to give some context to that, Sophie. I moved in with my minimalist boyfriend who had like nothing in this flat. He had the most, it was a very sparsely decorated flat. Quite nice, I will say. It was nice. I mean, sure. No, actually, I'm being unfair to him. It was. It was very minimalist. It was very calming. He's so tidy. He is like the cleanest, tidiest person. He definitely has got less tidy since I've been there, but I think that could be a... I love that you're shifting the tide from you to him. I know. I did say that to him. He froze, but he was like, excuse me. What about you?

2:44What did you do?

2:45Emma: I went on a hike around the coast towards Margate. I had a random, I was Googling on my way there. We got on a train very last minute. In the UK, if you're last minute to a train, you stand the entire journey. So that was not my finest. If you're lucky, if you managed to get on. Yeah, so we were sort of hovering, standing, trying not to fall on everyone. And then I was Googling on the way there and it was like amazing hike from this earlier train stop. So I was like, right, we're getting off. We had like motorbike helmets that we carried the entire hike, big giant bag. It was not well planned for me.

3:18Oh my gosh.

3:19Emma: But we had such a lovely day. Walked for a hike, went all the way to Margate. It happened to be Pride. So we were just dancing in the square, making friends, having frozen margaritas. It was so much fun. This sounds like absolutely heaven. before we started recording this episode, I said to Emma, right, are you in the red or green? She was like, oh, I'm really, I'm considering lying about it this time. I think I am just going to lie. I was thinking about on the way and I was like, listen, I can't just be this broke record of like, oh, guess what? I'm in the red again. But so am I if it just makes you feel better.

3:46Emma: Well, I'm just lying. I'm going to say, you know what? I've paid off my credit card bill early this month. Nice. I mean, I always pay it off in time, but I've paid it off early this month, which is like a good feeling. That's all I'm saying. Nice. Great. You know what? Selective information. Exactly. So it's not lying. It's withholding information to suggest that I'm in a non-identifiable colour. Nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Love that. What about you? Red or green? Massively red. I mean, I'm also bored with hearing myself talk, actually. Just lie. I mean, I mean. It's not the ethos of the podcast. It's just like so, it's so, if I had to follow my budget for what we did in London or in the weekends, we would be curled up in the house, not leaving to do anything.

4:26Emma: I know but it's made me realize wow I do way more fun stuff now that I'm in a relationship really yeah yeah but also I mean like I didn't pay for the train ticket he did he paid for our lunch I did small stuff like I paid for the coffee and the croissant for the train ride I paid for you know a round of drinks later in the day but it's not it's not true to my budget so I'm cheating actually massively cheating I mean great yeah you've got to be a baller on a budget You've got to live the high life. But it's almost like a baller on someone else's budget, so it makes me feel... Even better. That's like baller on someone else's budget.

5:01Fabulous. Okay, so we're both in... Well, I'm not in the red. I'm in a non-identifiable colour. Yeah. And you're a baller on someone else's budget. So I'd say that's winning. That's a reframe right there.

5:15Emma: Okay, so today's topic. We are speaking about OnlyFans. Can you get rich on OnlyFans? What is happening with the business? it has been a very interesting week I will say I'm incredibly proud to let you know that I've read this entire book that we're going to start this episode by discussing in seven days, that's a record for me Margot's Got Money Troubles which is now streaming on Apple TV you watched the show didn't you? so good, you didn't like it but I loved it I thought it was so well done I didn't read the book so I came to it from the TV show which was suddenly, I think I just heard about it everywhere we've swapped roles You'd normally be the reader and I'd be the watcher.

5:52I would usually read, totally. I will read it eventually. But also now I've watched the TV show. The TV show I do think is done really well. It's really close to the text because I didn't have a flick through. Because it was actually the show that was really buzzy. Obviously then that propelled the book, at least from a UK perspective, I think.

6:08Emma: Okay, right. Yeah, I mean, I will say I thought it was a very funny, fun, enjoyable, well-written book. I really enjoyed it. The characters were so fun. but yeah I just find watching television with my boyfriend incredibly awkward because I think if I'd watched this by myself I would have loved it I think I'm really hyper aware of the girly kind of not great acting um quite American shows when I watch it with him no I really did I I thought the main character I was like is there just too many shows being produced and so they're running out of good actors I was I was watching it feeling really awkward the main character did Do you think so?

6:48I thought she was fabulous. For anyone who hasn't watched the show or read the book yet, just a quick description. It's basically about a young woman. She's studying at college and she ends up having an affair with her professor and she gets pregnant. And the show basically follows her journey through this pregnancy. She decides to keep the baby and then has to work out, okay, how the fuck am I going to fund having a child? The professor is not great and like basically absconds all responsibility early on. And so she ends up thinking, OK, how do I fund this life and ensure that my child can actually live and ends up going on OnlyFans?

7:25And the show, I think, does such a good job at exploring with such nuance the motivations and the economic necessity that often drive people to OnlyFans and also the social stigma that really does surround people who use the platform. and I think explores this topic that is so sensationalist often is often discussed in the press and is very kind of sensationalist often just kind of reduced to sex sort of way it explores that in a really beautifully like sensitive um way which is like why I found actually so engaging

7:55Emma: what did you make of the book I loved the characters I found myself not getting annoyed at this 19 year old deciding to keep her baby it was really interesting which I know is a kind of controversial thing to say, but you look at outwardly her life. She's young. She has no money. She has a casual waitressing job. She doesn't have a relationship with who's going to be the dad. Her mother outwardly says, I'm not helping you. This is your baby. She's so on her own. And objectively, if you look at her situation, you know, she's living in her flat share with two other people with this baby crying, people like knocking on the wall, being like, came back down.

8:37Emma: and you're like, oh, wow, you just, I think a lot of the time, and maybe it's something to do with how involved we all are now with making money in our careers, but it's sort of become this expectation that everything should be perfect and really well lined up before you have a baby and that, you know, you've got to be so financially secure. And you just think outwardly, you know, it's really easy to find excuses, particularly financial ones, as to why you're not ready. And I think that this story was such a great example of all a baby needs is love and a mother that really cares for their baby.

9:10Emma: And it's by no means easy. And of course, she turns to OnlyFans to make money. So it's not, I mean, she's at the start of the book stressing so much because she gets fired from her job because she can't find childcare, which is obviously what so many people struggle with. Being able to pay for childcare, it almost cancels out your earning. So a lot of people then don't work because it's too expensive to pay. So basically what it explores is the modern issue with, yeah, like how do you care for a baby with all of the expenses that come with it and I just think that yeah it made me feel uh I don't know I've had a lot of love for the characters in the book and perhaps this is a nice example of women are very resilient and they will do what they need to to care for their baby and I love that you said that because it makes me think I before we were recording I was really curious as to the motivations of the writer as to why she wanted to write about this particular story and I was wondering if it was kind of reflecting her own story or like what it was um and I found a couple interviews that she'd done recently and your reaction I think I really from what I've read of her is kind of what she wanted to elicit in the reader so she really wanted to explore the Madonna versus whore complex which is obviously this idea this this kind of dichotomous binary that was a term coined by Freud uh like a hundred years ago about this idea that women are either um kind of slutty whores who you want to shag who are really desirable for a man or they're these kind of virginal madonnas who you can imagine being a mother and a mother and a wife they can be one or the other and so rufie thorpe who is the author of this book was really curious about exploring this dichotomy and wanting to kind of just explore how women continually get put into these very kind of narrow like stereotypes and she wrote i dreamed of writing a sex worker mother character taking the madonna slash hall complex and attempting to fuse them into one figure but it seemed impossible for so long because the cultural stigma against sex work is so strong and the pedestal we put mothers on is so vertiginously high.

11:08When OnlyFans started to blow up I noticed people were talking about it in a much less judgmental way and I thought here's my chance and I love that because that I mean it leads so perfectly into our conversation about how OnlyFans has almost been this like segue to us having maybe more expansive of more nuanced conversations around sex work and the reasons that people do it in a kind of contemporary standing. So off the back of that, I wondered first and foremost, do you think OnlyFans has made sex work more socially acceptable?

11:45Emma: 100%. I mean, I have someone who I was at school with who's now on OnlyFans. And for a long time, she grew her profile through being on Below Deck. so she had this huge profile on social media and everyone was saying to her please go to OnlyFans because she was constantly sharing it being like haha no and then she did it and I thought good on you yeah that's so cool and she has to market it on social media to people who know her family and friends because notoriously OnlyFans doesn't have an algorithm to help with marketing so you have to be confident promoting what you do for work publicly you can't keep it in the echo chamber of OnlyFans, which I think in itself has meant that you're seeing lots of different people who are doing sex work.

12:26Emma: Also, it's not necessarily physical, right? So people aren't actually having sex with strangers. They can be in control of what content they're putting out, what they price it at, who's set, you know. And so I think that the safety element is amazing. I think that the fact that, I mean, some creators have made an insane amount of money. and like going back to the book, Margot doesn't know how else to make money. And at the start, she talks about how it makes her feel sick to show her vagina online. And obviously she graduates to doing that over time and then she really starts to love her work.

13:00Emma: But it also really shows, I think, the nuance of how she's not 100 % comfortable with doing this at the start. She's doing it for financial reasons, but she's able to do it in a way and gradually that suits and fits within her own values and what feels good for her. So I don't know. I think there's a lot of normalizing that has happened. And it's only really in the last five years. I mean, OnlyFans started in like 2018 or 2016. So it's been not, not. It started 2016 and then blew up in the pandemic for obvious reasons when suddenly people couldn't go out and where everyone was correctly online and suddenly you had this explosion.

13:35One of people not being able to work and loads of people being fired, not being able to do their previous money in the usual ways. so I think it kind of benefited as a lot of online platforms did from that kind of slightly anomalous period in time but then has continued to be just such a big player in our online world but I just think on just reflect back on what you said just there I do think the the kind of seamless integration of the OnlyFans world and the kind of it's not all porn because it's not all sex um it's not all sex work a lot of it's that you know there's people who I mean foot fetish still counts as sort of sex work but there's gradations of the stuff that people do on OnlyFans but I think the fact that that performers to your point have had to rely on building their audiences across other channels to then direct people to subscribe to their OnlyFans channel because there is no explore page has created this sort of like seamless integration with other social media platforms in a way that has been very normalizing of we've kind of become I'm used to OnlyFans creators being part of our digital ecosystem, even if we're not someone who goes into OnlyFans or watches porn.

14:42And I think that has really kind of blurred the boundaries.

14:45Emma: And I think this is not a commonly spoken about thread with this conversation that A, there's celebrities on there that are not making money necessarily through sexual content. So can we actually talk about some of the big celebrities that are on there and what they're using it for? Or just this weekend, Jessie Cave did an interview with The Times. And Jessie Cave, for anyone who doesn't know. Yeah, so Jessie Cave is in Harry Potter. So she was in Harry Potter. She played Lavender Brown when she was 19 years old. She's now been an actress for 18 years. And she's appeared in television shows, including Trollied, Call the Midwife.

15:19She starred in Arcadia and the West End. She's performed her own critically acclaimed one-woman show at Edinburgh Fringe. and she's also written a sunny times best-selling novel called sunset so she has been you know outwardly like very successful within the creative industries for years all while by the way she's had four kids she's 38 and she's had four kids with her on and off partner who's now her fiance Alfie Brown who's a comedian uh they have a podcast called I think until we next break up

15:47Emma: so they their love story oh my god so they have actually also created a brand and a business around the off-on relationship, which is like the most risky thing ever. Yeah, their story's really interesting because she got pregnant after their first date and then kept the baby. And that was the kind of reason they ended up and they've now got four kids together. Oh my gosh, okay. Their story's a really interesting one. It's worth looking into. But she joined OnlyFans recently. So she's 38 years old. And recently she reached a point where she was basically in such a dire economic situation. She was like, right, I'm doing it, OnlyFans.

16:20So she says in the Times piece, I couldn't go and say work in a supermarket because I can't afford the childcare exactly what we talked about before with Margot's Got Money Travel I also don't want people shouting Harry Potter spells at me as I work in Tesco it must be so weird if you've appeared in the biggest franchise of all times you're very recognizable to people but you no longer that's not a money earner for you and the kind of the adjacent ways in which you money so this looks like conventions and things that the cast historically have done she notes that that's become a bit more problematic because of JK Rowling and being very anti-trans and she doesn't really want to be associated with that brand anymore.

16:56There's a lot, there's a lot of, um, like nuance to it. Anyway, she goes on and says, I could retrain, but I can't afford to do a degree. I had a breakdown and I thought that's it with acting. I give up, but also we have no money. It was a point of complete desperation. A year and a half later, and she's been on OnlyFans this whole time doing hair content. So she has very long, lustrous hair that goes all the way down to as she says down to her vagina my vulva um and it's this like very beautiful thick healthy hair so she's been making quite experimental hair content but she's now earned she says more uh more easily than my entire acting career within one year on only fans she has subscribers who pay six dollars a month there's more for paid messages for hair content so it's videos of her kind of brushing it while she's dressed as an elf a maid or as lavender brown fun plaiting it shaking it tying it around her waist doing anything she can with it really for people who like kind of that sort of thing so i mean i just thought the story was fascinating and really highlighted actually all the issues that this book brings up so well first of all you have a mother who is finds it challenging to get to work because the cost of child care is so extraordinarily high she her and alfie brown her partner have moved out of london now to i think they moved to liverpool I'm not outing it they said in peace they moved to Liverpool just because the housing is so much cheaper there she couldn't get a kind of quote quote normal job kind of in a supermarket because childcare is so expensive so she really turned to OnlyFans out of economic necessity she creates kind of it's not not sexual because I think there's a sexual like implication to it so there's something inherently provocative she's obviously leaning into kind of fetishes around hair but she's not having sex on camera she's not showing anything but she did note in the article that she's got a boob job last year funded by her only fans but she had a line in where she was like i felt like i needed to because this isn't gonna like last forever like what i'm just just me

18:56Emma: playing with my hair oh so she feels like she's edging towards more sexual content she didn't say explicitly in the piece so i don't want to put words in her mouth but it kind of was like brought up and then the kind of the interview didn't delve i mean i would have really pursued that line of inquiry exactly was fascinating like so you've got this boob job obviously to like you know she's had for kids that you know was something that maybe she wanted to do personally but does also seem like it was to improve her appeal and you know sex appeal on only fans so there's obviously a suggestion of like me just like wrapping my hair around myself isn't going to last forever so the implication is it might get more sexual so i think there's also you know that that blurring of boundaries and she does she said and i think this is also i guess what margot in the book really ends up having to grapple with there's a pressure to get more to go deeper down that more sexual route because you can have quite a niche offering at the very beginning but how you sustain your subscribers I mean you've got to be entertained and it's so interesting because the amount of you know we talk about has it become less or I guess more socialized and acceptable to be on the platform most people that start from a lot of the research we've done and these stories it comes from necessity but then it ends up being the main career path they have to follow because once you've gone there, it's really hard to go back and people are still so judgmental of it.

20:15Emma: So whether it's you drop out of another career that you have because people find out that you're making money this way, it is quite a risky career in the sense that if you don't make it really quite big on OnlyFans, it's hard to go back to more quote normal jobs. And so I think what would be really good is to look at actually how much are people making because there is this idea that people go on OnlyFans and then just make millions of dollars. And I mean, I don't know if it's the same within your groups of friends, but we used to throw on the idea of, oh, if it all else fails, get my toes out on OnlyFans.

20:49Emma: You know, it sort of became this thing where, oh, well, I'll just fall back on OnlyFans as a joke, as if it's just really easy to make heaps of money on there. And I don't think people realize that's just totally not the case. But I think that often it's because the people that we hear about in the press who are making money on only fans so say like the jesse cave who already had a built-in big audience from harry potter so she had an audience on her other social platforms that she could immediately convert to her only fans you have people like very famously lily allen who went on only fans and was earning i think she was i think she's she sold um feet pictures uh for for years on only fans and i think it's worth noting someone actually commented on twitter saying god imagine being i'm one of the biggest pop stars or musicians in europe and then being reduced to this and lily ann replied imagine being an artist and having nearly eight million monthly listeners on spotify but earning more money from having 1000 people subscribe to pictures of your feet don't hate the player hate the game uh she now has 10.3 million monthly listeners of so her new album has like catapulted her although you know what streaming is i mean that's a whole other conversation is so fucked but i think we tend to hear these stories of the jesse caves the lily allen the like these these creatives who have a big public profile who through like just the absolute like economic shit show that is the contemporary creative space are compelled to turn to only fans to subsidize their increasingly pitiful creative earnings but nonetheless they still are the success cases of only fans because they typically have big audiences already you know then we have that the people who've got you know massive on only fans again they have huge audiences and thus they are really able to cash in on the platform what we don't hear about is the all the other people the 99 % of people participating on the platform who don't have anywhere near that like following on that platform or other platforms and so I yeah their earning potential is capped kind of well not capped like it's so much harder to get anywhere near that like high levels of an earning that you could actually live on.

22:57So tell us about the actual data. How much is the average person on OnlyFans, so not the superstars, not the Lily Allens, how much is the average person earning?

23:06Emma: Yeah, just quickly on what you said on the sensationalized amounts. When I was looking at the different averages, you do see like at the top of any search or article, stats like Sophie Rain, who apparently earned 95 million in two years, or this girl who joined when she was 18 called Anna Paul. And, you know, it came out that she was earning$300 ,000 in one month. You know, it's like these crazy amounts where you think, why on earth would I not join OnlyFans? But yeah, it's just totally not the average. So there's this creator that I'm going to reference throughout this episode because I just think she's so great.

23:44Emma: And I have mentioned her before on the podcast. Her name's Ari Kitsia and she has over 24 million followers. So keep in mind, she's enormous. She has a huge reach. but she didn't always but she speaks about the fact she's she's gone and spoken at like harvard university so she is not only amazing at creating content online at making money on only fans but also she is a amazing businesswoman and she said in a recent interview that most creators earn 100 to 150 usd a month some like the average is between 100 and a thousand a month but everywhere the stats online and it's probably worth saying that this is not so amazingly reported on in the sense that they're not coming from very credible sources but everywhere you see it's about the average is 150 us yeah it's about 150 yeah that's what i've seen there are quite i think it's reported a lot but because the platform is private rather than public there is no like we actually don't have clear view on the stats there's quite a lot of peer-reviewed papers there's one in particularly which we can cite in the show notes, which seemed to kind of reinforce the idea.

24:51It's about 150 US dollars per month is the average amount that an OnlyFans creator earns. And it's worth saying that the people who, the people who that we tend to see reported on who are earning the like, you know, six figures, seven figures, they are in the top 0.1 % of earners on OnlyFans. They represent such a small portion of OnlyFans creators.

25:13Emma: Do you know what one of the weirdest things that I came across, though, was, and this woman, Ari, was talking about the fact that a lot of creators are encouraged to lie about what they're earning, which, and it's because it creates this mystique of, oh, what are they doing on their platform, which I thought was quite interesting. Oh, that's really interesting. So there was this one report that was talking about Carrie Katona as a mom, she's in her 40s, and she has kids, and she's reported to have earned$175 ,000 in her first month on OnlyFans. she's also a household name in the uk she's like a like it's worth noting because she's got a big built-in following because she's been she was a pop star she was in a uh atomic kitten that band yeah yeah she's like i've been in our public purview for like my entire life carrie cotone has been like a name but the thing here is that in two separate interviews so one with the times and one with itv2 like getting filthy rich in january of this year she gave different amounts of how much she earned by only about£15 ,000.

26:11Emma: But still, it made me think, I really do wonder how legit some of these numbers are that are enormous. Are they real? You know, it's hard to know. No one can fact check it. No one can tell, no one can go in and see your bank account. And I actually, I never thought about that. But it does make sense. If someone's saying I'm making a million a month, you'd be like, what is the content? Well, I need to go and see what you're producing. Must go subscribe. It's so true. But if you look at the numbers, so there's over 4 million creators. 4 million creators yeah and if you look at the amount that was paid out to creators like it's 5.8 billion which means that if you look at the average per creator yeah it's like this is obviously considering the people that earn a huge amount and then the people that are earning 100 it's about 1260 each per creator so it makes sense right there's some people that are earning extreme amounts of money and then there's people on 100 So as of the financial year 2024, over$7 billion, so$7.2 billion, was processed through the platform.

27:12Emma: So that was the amount of money that people were basically paying creators. $7.2 billion? Yes. Jesus Christ. And there was 377 million fan accounts. so basically if you were to look in the last 10 years if we look from you know 2016 when it was created to now the amount paid to creators is 25 billion so there is there's definitely a huge amount of money being made in the platform wait there's 25 million paid to creators on only funds yeah in the last in the like it's since created since 2016 yeah 25 billion yeah wow so a huge amount of money so so just in um 2024 alone so that's the most recent stats that i've seen 7.2 billion was processed through the platform so people paying to get access to subscriptions or one-off payments and just the disproportionality between the like number of fan accounts which makes sense versus creator accounts also highlights just like you're probably having a large concentration of those fan accounts funding a very very small pool of creator accounts and then the rest like having probably close to none.

28:24Emma: When you look at how much is being made, you're right. The headlines are millions and millions. Someone made a million in a month. When I looked more at some of the other smaller creators and realized that the average or like the median for an OnlyFans creator is 150 to 180 per month, A, not only is that nowhere near enough to survive, but B, if you cannibalize your entire career to try and make it, like it's incredibly risky. If you think about the fact you have to promote it via your personal accounts because there's no way to get access to subscribers on the platform. So there was this really awful article.

29:04Emma: I was reading about this Missouri teacher called Brianna Copid. She basically had to resign from the school that she taught at because they found out about her OnlyFans account. She created the account initially because she was trying to fund her third degree because she wanted to be able to be paid more as a teacher. She openly has said in an interview, I started this for financial reasons. She obviously didn't want to go more into debt, so she was trying to fund that in a clever way. But basically, she was only earning$42 ,000 a year as a teacher. When the school found out about it, she basically had to resign.

29:35Emma: And then she got another job, and they found out within five days of her starting about her account or shared on a community platform and she was fired. So she, you know, and now she says she's made, you know, she doesn't regret it and she's made a million on the platform. So, I mean, great. You know, she's, that's now her focus. But for people who don't get to that point and who completely lose the ability to make money in the way they studied, where they have a reputation and yeah, they're not earning much, but that risk, if you look at the amount of people that are making the big bucks compared to the 150 average a month, it's so risky.

30:08But I think this tells a much bigger and more pressing story about our economic environment today, because the fact that a teacher is having to subsidize their earnings through OnlyFans. And this is kind of the story that you get you come across again and again when you're looking into the motivations that drive people to OnlyFans and what we've discussed before in terms of the economic necessity of the women that we've highlighted thus far turning to OnlyFans. and I just think as I was I was thinking about something throughout the weekend and and I just thought we have reached such a crunch point societally in that typical traditional jobs no longer paying enough to actually allow people to live there's a huge cost of living crisis here in the UK for example where there's such a fundamental breakage that's happened with the social contract no longer can you safely say if you work hard at school you get a decent degree you go and get a decent job and like a you know a good job no longer can you say that that is a guarantee of being able to afford a basic like good life when i say basically i mean like housing um you know being able to afford your food bill being able to have a car being able to go on holiday once a year or something and i just think that rupture has happened across well we're seeing across the living crisis across the world housing crisis across um you know so many major cities um across multiple countries and the fact that people are turning to only fans is not surprising given that kind of broad global economic um issues and we're going to see fewer and fewer people going in traditional routes of employment because it's just no longer makes economic sense i think

31:49Emma: there's 70 percent of g &z's identify as a content creator wouldn't you if you're graduating what the hell is motivating you if you graduate you're saddled in student debt i think the kind of broader point that i i want to reinforce here is that i just feel like the growth in only fans is so emblematic of our like broader economic situation which is only getting worse and actually it's worth just noting um chloe cherry who is on one of the stars on on euphoria so she plays a sex worker on euphoria having been a sex worker herself previously she can in real life in real life yes exactly so she was a sex worker she was a porn performer before and then she's done only fact she turned only fans i think during the pandemic when euphoria filming was paused and she said she was really grateful to have that route to income um with a bit of a platform in porn before because no acting jobs were happening then she gave an interview to refinery 29 recently which is worth us bringing up because it really just encapsulates i guess the thing that's front of my mind in this conversation.

32:52So she says, Only fans and sex work have become more normalized, but it's literally only because of capitalism and the economy getting worse. It has nothing to do with empowerment or power or anything. We live under capitalism and the economy is horrible and that's why people are turning to it.

33:06Emma: What is the future of work going to look like? What will the future of business look like? Where and how? Because it is so hard to live on a salary, you know, like there's not that many people that are in control of how much they earn. And I really think that what we'll see is a shift towards so many people wanting to be their own boss and have more control over how they're making money. I think it's really important, Soph, that we talk about or that we address the dark underbelly of OnlyFans. We've talked about the kind of financial opportunities and the reasons that people go on the platform in the first place.

33:38but I think after the break we should turn our sites to the darker side of OnlyFans, the exploitation that's happening of OnlyFans creators and the cap that this ends up placing on people's earning potential on the platform.

33:51Emma: Yes and also I think let's quickly discuss what the business model is, how much money it's making because it's an insanely profitable business. It'll be really interesting to see what the future of the platform is but first I've got a quick word from today's sponsor. Okay, the stat is absolutely wild. Consumer New Zealand rated Generates KiwiSaver scheme number one for customer service with 90 % satisfaction. In second place, I will just say, only got 75%, so it's not even close. Honestly, in a world of AI chatbots, sometimes it's really nice to speak to a real person. So if you would like to book a no-cost KiwiSaver advice session with a Generate advisor, you can see a link in the show notes and just a quick thank you to generate for making this episode of the curve weekly possible right section two that sounds really boring no but this is kind of it's i feel like the start of this conversation in a way made me feel like yes it's really important to note that not everyone makes a huge amount of money on the platform but it also feels like this empowering kind of hopeful feeling where we've almost given people the autonomy to create their own incredible potential business and financial outcome through the platform but what we're about to talk about now kind of slashes that hope in half and makes me realize gosh it's so classic as soon as there's an opportunity where people can actually be thriving someone sees it as an opportunity to come in and exploit those people so I think that is it's almost like I felt amazing, great, there's all these people that can control how much they earn and they're using their platform to directly get money into their own pockets.

35:34Emma: But when you then look at what's actually happening, it's, yeah, it's not the case. And there's a lot of people that are being massively financially and otherwise taken advantage of. At the end of July, there was a piece in the cut by Ezra Marcus called Revenge of the Simps, how a community of porn addicts tried to rescue the teenage cam girls they worshipped from the clutches of a violent webcam pimp. I mean, just a moment to recognize how epic an article title that is. But I wanted to bring this up because I think this article, I mean, it's totally absurd and I'll explain it momentarily. It is an absurd article, a fascinating investigation, but for me really sums up that kind of darker underside of OnlyFans exploitation and this new class of OnlyFans managers.

36:23Long story short, you have this group of people who avidly watch and are fans of girls in a cam house.

36:35Emma: It's almost like a house that has different rooms for the different creators and it's being kind of controlled by, I mean, I don't don't even know if we can use the word pimp but it's almost like they control the earnings of all of the girls that are in there so basically what happens is this group of men who watch this channel where these girls who live in this house they're all about 18 and they can create content together the kind of sexual right of sexual nature these men notice over time that there are kind of warning signs that these girls are coming um showing up with bruises that there's kind of shouting in the background and this group of men brand themselves the white knights and embark on investigating what's going on with these girls because they're worried about their safety.

37:20I mean bonkers. They end up sleuthing very successfully and finding that there is and finding the kind of uh the guy who runs this house Nikita Takalo who's a 21 year old man who models himself on extremist misogynist ideologue, Andrew Tate. And he is essentially running this house of young women who he is kind of through quite a lot of violent forces, compelling them to create content online. So this men, the white knights, the sims, basically find this man online, figure out what he's doing, tip off the police, and become kind of almost some of these weird heroes

38:03Emma: in this story. I'm finding it, I'm trying so hard not to say because there's actually nothing funny about the story. But there's something kind of hilarious. The result is this 21-year-old, prosecutors are now charging him with four counts of human trafficking, one count of money laundering, and one count of leading an organized crime group, describing a sprawling operation with numerous employees, dozens of models, and millions of dollars in profit. So he'd managed to basically create a kind of working replica of Andrew Tate's webcam enterprise, hidden in luxury apartments and kind of a suburban mansion in the Seattle area.

38:39He is now being held. I think he's got, there's a kind of$5 million bail over him. So he's being held, he's been arrested. So these white knight sleuths of the internet have become kind of, you know, a huge part in this continually unfolding story. But I think whilst this is an absurd story and it's definitely worth reading, it also speaks to something bigger and that is the role of these OnlyFans managers like Nikita who are seemingly springing up across the board and who are exploiting young girls and essentially kind of forcing them to um you know he's quite well it means forcing them to create content en masse for then so they can so the OnlyFans managers can end up kind of profiting from their bodies so you see this interplay of sexism misogyny exploitation at tales old as time but using this new technology and that I think is fascinating because he is not alone he is one You know, the more you go into it, there are so many of these OnlyFans managers.

39:37Emma: If you zoom out and think about like a marketing agency or any agency, whether it's a talent manager, it is quite normal to have or to think that a talent manager, an agent is going to catapult your career, that they have contacts, that they're going to X, Y, Z, increase your earnings. For a lot of these creators who know that they have to rely hugely on their own marketing and they have to create a business around it. So while they might think, oh, I'm great at creating content, I have no idea about the rest of it. So they outsource the power to these people who are telling them that they can help them make even more money.

40:10Emma: That is actually a business model as old as, you know, talent has been around. And generally an agent might take 20, 30 percent, but a lot of these are taking 50 to 70 percent. And I think it's just worth like when you look at the way that OnlyFans make money, They only take 20 % of a creator's earnings. So that's actually way lower than other platforms. If you look at Twitch, which is the online gaming, it's 50%. YouTube Shorts is 45%. Patreon's 10 % but plus processing. So OnlyFans is actually like kind of okay in terms of what it takes percentage-wise. It doesn't do a huge amount. It doesn't do anything.

40:50Emma: It's basically just distributing. It's not actually helping with any kind of like marketing or growth. But the problem here is that we were originally talking about how all these creators have the autonomy to make money and they just give 20 % away. But what's happening for a lot of these women that are being taken advantage of is that they create the content. They're signed up to management or these people that are taking advantage of them. They're taking 60 % to 70%. Then the platform's taking 20%. They're making 10%. So it's just like if you think of the sex industry and how unfair it is for a lot of people who are doing sex work in person and they're relying on someone who pays the rent for, say, a space for people to have sex in person.

41:32Emma: You know, they're taking only a percentage of that money. OnlyFans created a space where the control is with the creator and they could make as much as they want. But these men are seeing the opportunity to exploit that. and there seems to be a playbook that a lot of these only fans the kind of exploitative only fans managers are um operating in accordance to and it's i mean again a lot of it's borrowed from andrew tate's um playbook where they're kind of go so i think it's just described by um prosecutors in the andrew tate case is the kind of the lover boy method so they essentially like seduce these young girls they kind of shout them compliments make them feel so loved and adore like i can really help you get your career like you're so amazing you're so beautiful you know andrew tate notoriously would a lot of the um girls that he exploited were people that he had dated so again it's really like you see that a lot in these stories it's like they get their girlfriends to join and then they're in control of their girlfriend's account and then it sort of grows from there exactly and that was the same nikita he really pressured his girlfriend he went off to university and then she was trying to pay her way um through um through college and he kept on pressuring her no you should do this like i can make you make loads of money i can help you i can help you and then gets the girlfriend eventually she was persuaded to uh join his um to join only fans and once a lot of what they do so they do this love boy method seduces girls into being on only fans and for them managing them then they take control of their only fans logins and basically control their online presence so um some of the girls in the independent the independent reported that the women interviewed by police in the nikita piece so that's the one um reported in the cut claim that they would be forced to stream for long hours were given little in payment and could not access their own social media and only fans accounts and you just see this time and again so there was a recent documentary which we can go into in a bit more deeper detail momentarily but the bbc did of course inside the machine so really delving into kind of the machinations of only fans and they just they interviewed multiple girls um multiple women who had similarly had this very same experience of you hand over your logins and suddenly you have no power and you have no control and to your point, the managers will then put in their financial details.

43:40So the women are no longer even the payment isn't going through to their bank account. It's going through to this manager. And so once that happens, if they then lock you up your account, that means overnight, your earnings as an OnlyFans creator is controlled entirely by someone else. And that is incredibly disempowering and also really, you know, so exploitative. But in order to really understand how the OnlyFans managers are working and how they're making money off these. I feel like I need to better understand the business model of OnlyFans. Can you please explain for me how OnlyFans actually operates at like a business level?

44:16Emma: So it's the most genius business model ever in the sense that they've created the platform for people to buy and sell explicit content or not even just explicit content. But the amount of people involved in this business is unbelievably low compared to the amount of money that they're making. So it's really interesting because I was looking at the business model thinking, I mean, I hate to say it, but it's genius in terms of the amount of money that it spits off. But it is very limited by the way that it can expand by getting money from investors to grow and potentially go public one day because it falls under the umbrella of pornography.

44:57Emma: So I guess just like before we go into the business model and how much money it's making, generally a company that's this successful, that's making this much money. How much is it making? Oh, I mean. So like the company was valued at$3.1 billion in May this year, which is actually not a lot given the amount of money that it's making. So according to Bloomberg, the main guy who unfortunately died earlier this year from cancer, he earned more than$1.9 million a day from the site in 2024. That's like paying out dividends. So it's like when it comes to paying out dividends, you only really pay dividends out if there's enough and like an extreme amount of cash to spit out, if that makes sense.

45:39Emma: Otherwise, it's used for operating and for running. But this business in 2025, so like the financial year of 2025, it made$666 million in operating profit. It's only run by 46 staff members. So think about the size of this business. We've got like four people really. The fact that they're only paying like 46 salaries, but they're making nearly 700 million in a year is crazy. So it's incredibly profitable because the platform doesn't rely on, it doesn't help with marketing, it doesn't help with search, anything. All of the creators that come to OnlyFans are using other social media platforms to create or build or use or transfer their audiences to then monetize on their platform.

46:32Emma: So just as a business, it's like doesn't really have to invest in a lot of infrastructure or like techie people or anything really engineers doesn't have to like oh that is it's really crazy yeah 46 people i mean like that's insane so like the company has tried to raise outside capital and sell for a long time because the person that was running it the main um like shareholder who was like 43 um he he he died and now his widow founder no so it was founded by a father and son in like essex like in the uk and then he bought in he's like a secret billionaire that's like quite like he's really flown under the radar there's not a lot of information about him he's very secretive he has basically created this unbelievably valuable business he tried to sell before dying or get external capital in and it was sort of falling on this hurdle of the main reason that this business can't get external investment is the riskiness that it relies on like Visa and MasterCard and other processing payments to process all of these payments, but they are uncomfortable with the way that the business is making money.

47:46Emma: Visa, MasterCard, all of the payments kind of pulled out saying we're not going to have anything to do with OnlyFans. He came out saying, okay, creators can no longer create explicit content. And obviously the entire reason this platform exists is for explicit content. So creators lost like millions of dollars. It was a whole thing. There was a big uproar. Six days later, they were like, kidding, kidding, kidding. You can still release explicit content. But the main business risk, even though it's like spitting off money, is it relies heavily on external banking and processing to make money. And so it's basically, it's sold roughly 6 % of its stake to architect capital at a top level they've sold a portion of the business to invest in allowing it to almost run as its own vehicle that doesn't then rely on external banking because it's so risky if say for example again they were to say we don't want to have anything to do with you this whole business model falls apart because as we spoke about they don't really do anything you know it's like they're just processing and like housing a place for people to put their content and buy and sell but without that if if they're relying so heavily on external businesses payments it's like very difficult to IPO and a lot of investors are allergic to that it's just like a risky business model do they want IPO I mean they've tried to before they tried yeah like there was a lot of rumors about them wanting to go public but the the main not just the payment reliance but there's also just yeah the fact that they are in the pornography space means that they won't automatically get access to capital from like indexes or you know the sm a lot of investors have blanket rules over what they will and won't invest in tobacco alcohol porn are kind of the most obvious it's almost like industries most people just don't it's not even them being good people it's just almost like kind of abnormal while the payouts are insane and there's been like $25 billion paid out to creators in the last 10 years and the most insane amount of money earned by like owners and investors.

49:50Emma: The actual business is quite risky based on the fact that it does rely on these external banking. So anyway, I think what I'm interested in, you know, when we look back at the exploitative nature of these management companies and individuals that are sort of pulling money out of these creators' wallets to say like, we'll make you famous. We'll help you, you know, rise to fame, blah, blah, blah, which they're obviously not. And they're just taking advantage of people enormously. I wonder if the platform, and especially because there's all these documentaries and content now coming out about it, as a business, it's in their interest to make sure that the business can be invested in or that can be financially successful.

50:36Emma: if it's riddled with so much underbelly and darkness they don't really have much to stand on in terms of being able to sell the business as a whole even though objectively it's incredibly valuable so I just I wonder if what will happen is when they have their own ways to sort of like pay and for people to be able to transact on platform I wonder if they'll put more strict regulation in place around how people make money or not I mean who knows because I was looking into the people who have invested and also the people who started it and and and their history is in pornography you know you don't look at it and think oh what an amazing person they're making porn like you know it's power of the people it's not that it's people that have made money in porn for decades and see the revolutionary like way that now you can do it online so because on the one hand I look at only fans and I think god I wish it was like run by women and I wish that it It was a woman is a CEO woman now.

51:32I actually think it's interesting that their CEO is a woman because it is a founded by men. It is a very I think that the positioning, the like public positioning is really fascinating because you have a majority of creators are women. The majority of subscribers are men and they have a CEO as a woman, which to me is creating a face. The face of the company is a woman.

51:55Emma: It's like signaling that we wait. Yeah. Yeah, but behind closed doors, the power dynamics that seem to be quite prominent within the company, it's kind of seemingly very male-dominated in terms of who's actually a lot of the times in control of what's happening behind the scenes. I think it raises a really interesting point, the exploitation piece, and to your earlier point around the viability of the company going forward. The BBC recently did a documentary I mentioned earlier called Inside the Machine, in which it basically investigated this phenomenon of OnlyFans managers and this darker side of the site.

52:32And the investigation is fascinating and it's worth watching because the presenter interviews a number of creators and also these managers and it delves into the model that a lot of these managers are peddling. A lot of the women who are interviewed say they give, to earlier point, 50 to 70 percent of their earnings are given they I mean some of the revelations certain managers rely on incredibly violent and intimidating tactics to stop the OnlyFans creators from ever leaving so one woman had left her management and a brick was thrown through her window and then a masked man came to her house broken and strangled her on the floor she had she shows my god it's harrowing but the documentary so the documentary as i said kind of really delves into um this this exploitation that we've covered here but also looks at that question which you're highlighting around what from a business perspective one how much does only fans know what's going on with this phenomenon of only fans managers and two will it change its practices now it answers that first question and says yes it does know because there have been numerous it's known I think for the past four to five years the documentary highlights because people have been flagging to it from creators and I think also journalists there have been multiple reports by numerous prestigious journalistic institutions that have asked OnlyFans for comment on stories as they pertain to this exploitive dynamic between manager and creator.

54:05OnlyFans has been aware of this is aware of this and hasn't done anything. And the documentary really makes the point that it's not in their financial interest to do anything about it because they're making a lot of money off of this, you know, off of these creators. And these managers are only essentially fueling more talent within the platform. So it feels like they've been very slack or just, yeah, not very kind of um they've not really done much to seek to curb this behavior one of the journalists of the documentary signs up to only fans to test how much their systems actually help to ensure that the payment um for example is set up in the name of the creator and that the payments are going through his creator and the platform says they have really strict guidance as to kind of who's named and then where the money goes they're constantly regulating that the bbc journalist was able to set up an account.

55:02She was able to post some feet pictures and get two colleagues to subscribe to her channel and pay. But she put in another colleague's bank details. So the bank details were under someone else's name. And she said the money just went straight to that other person's name and no issue was flagged.

55:16Emma: If it ever did IPO and become a publicly listed company that people could invest in, it's almost like exposing your naked body for the whole world to see. So it almost shocks me to hear that and then simultaneously hear that they've been going for external capital or considered going public because why on earth would you do that but then it makes me sad to think like well maybe there still would be so many people that would invest in this business even if it was incredibly exploitative because it's just making lots of money and people actually just don't care which is terrifying the documentary actually features labor mp tonya antoniazzi alongside the anti-slavery commissioner eleanor lyons so they're featured in the doc commenting on the revelations that the documentary has surfaced and they've called for a formal parliamentary inquiry into only fans um and highlighting the kind of systemic safeguarding failures exploitation and trafficking risks tied to third-party management agencies it is a uk-based company so the fact that a uk-based mp is now going to be putting forward a kind of parliamentary inquiry into the company is a really big deal.

56:29This could lead to a kind of deeper formal investigation into the company, in which case it will be compelled to really tidy up its affairs.

56:36Emma: When Emma and I were talking before we started recording, Emma was like, I'm just exhausted with what's happening online platforms. I feel just the world is absolutely F-U-C-K-E-D. I'm sure if there's kids in the car, probably imagine not if they're listening to an OnlyFans episode. I mean, I think by this point, fuck is the least of your worries if you've listened this far with kids in the car, we're sorry. But I think, you know, when I first started thinking about this, I was feeling so hopeful about the idea. And when I read this book, I actually felt quite happy with the storyline and how it evolved because at the end of Margot's Got Money Troubles, you know, she keeps the custody.

57:13Emma: Sorry, a huge spoiler if you're planning on reading this book. But she gets, you know, full custody of her baby. She continues working on OnlyFans. Her, like, annoying professor that she had an affair with decides that he's okay with her making money that way. And it sort of has this nice sort of round off that, yeah, okay, people make money in different ways. Let's support that. You know, she's able to care for her child, make actually a lot of money. By the end of the book, she has like 30 grand in savings or something. So it felt positive. But when you dig beneath the surface, it's so sad and scary.

57:44Emma: And I just, you know, back to your point on the cost of living and so many people kind of being forced into making money in this way. It's such a scary, big world of people trying to take advantage of people that are already financially struggling, desperate to find a way out of whatever their situation is. And there's all these little crows on the side picking at the pieces. I just feel, yeah, I don't know. On the one hand, it's been revolutionary for the you know sex worker industry in terms of making it feel more normalized and it gives you know a lot of control back to creators but when you hear stuff like this it's also just like oh god of course of course something that should have been somewhat positive or given people the autonomy to make money is now turned into this absolute shit show that is really scary i i totally hear you and that and i think yeah i felt i mean particularly finishing the documentary i felt really aggrieved by the revelations that emerge within the BBC's reporting.

58:51I think my big takeaway to kind of round up, to reflect back on what you're saying and to round up the conversation, my big takeaway was the world of work to an earlier point is changing so rapidly and traditional routes to a stable and successful income and, you know, making a living in a in a kind of traditional way is really shifting and I think with that we have seen a kind of we've seen a kind of influx of tech enabled platforms create new pathways to income you know the creator economy taking off and only fans being a part of that in a way that is revolutionary and creates numerous opportunities I think the rapidity with which technology is fueling this new world of work is what gives cause for concern because governments and policy is not keeping up with just how rapidly our broader kind of working climate is changing so for me that's my big

59:49Emma: takeaway regulation so unsexy yeah no I think I think mine is probably just if you're listening to this and you are one of those people who judges sex work or only fans I would say read this book watch the show and open your eyes to the fact that a lot of people are trying to do this in a way that is caring for themselves for the people they love they're trying you know there's there's a lot more nuance the way that people are approaching sex work now and also if you work in a company that is outing people for their only fans accounts or trying to make someone feel less than or tacky or slutty for creating content like this, I think you need to probably look in the mirror and realize that there is a total crisis for a lot of people.

1:00:41Emma: If you're listening to this podcast and you've had any big takeaways or actually you disagree with anything that we've said, I'd love to hear anyone's thoughts. Oh, the other thing I just wanted to promote is we did a conversation, we did an episode with Grace Wesley, who's an amazing OnlyFans creator who is one of those people who's made a lot of money on OnlyFans. And what she shares in terms of financial dominatrix, the different ways she makes money out of her clients, and also the insanely clever business mind that she's brought to her OnlyFans really shifted how I thought about the entire industry.

1:01:11Emma: So if you want to go back and listen to that, it was such a good episode. For anyone that wants to read some further in a dialogue about this conversation, on Fridays in a couple of days' time, depending on when you listen to this episode, there will be an article that you can read as well. So we'll put that in the podcast show notes. Thank you so much for listening to The Curve Weekly. Make sure you hit subscribe or follow wherever you're listening so you're always up to date with the latest finance and investing news. And feel free to leave a comment to let us know what you thought about this episode because we would love your feedback.

1:01:37Emma: We've got new Curve Weekly episodes for you to listen to every Monday, but until then, listen to Erasing the Curve. These are our in-depth podcast episodes where we chat about all things money. We're also around all week on socials if you're hungry for more Curve content and all the links are in this podcast show notes. We hope you have a great week and we'll catch you for the next episode of The Curve Weekly on Monday.

1:02:03Emma: Okay, quickly, The Curve was created to empower and educate you about investing, but we are not financial advisors. Our platform exists for educational purposes only and it doesn't provide personalized investing advice for your individual needs and should not be relied upon to make an investment or financial decision. and always remember to do your own research before making any investment or financial decision we're here for any knowledge and support you need but the final call is always yours and thanks for being here you got this yeah we know you got this