Kate Kennedy is an artist who works in the adult entertainment industry, but she hasn't had sex in months. “It's probably the longest I've gone without having sex in my adult life,” she says.
It's because Kennedy is a new kind of porn star. Or maybe she's a porn star in a new kind of porn: the one run by a social media website called OnlyFans. The site is the latest change in the adult industry, and Kennedy is among the legions of porn stars and social media influencers using it to sell sexy homemade content during the pandemic. The platform's sudden relevance has clarified one thing: the porn industry has changed again, and it will likely never be the same as it was before COVID-19.
OnlyFans, launched in 2016, allows users to post original content and sell it to people who want to see it. There are chefs who share cooking videos and fitness instructors who run workout classes, but the site has mainly become known for pornstars who have amassed giant followers. Most of these artists charge upwards of $5 for a one-month subscription (the maximum a creator can charge is $50 per month), plus an extra charge for custom photos and videos. Tipping is encouraged.
Like many performers who have spoken with Men's health, Kennedy spends hours every day preparing and filming content. She learned how to do this by watching YouTube tutorials and chatting with cinematographers, but adds, “You're not trying to turn on a stage production of The Phantom of the Opera-it's just me masturbating. But there are always different rules about the origin of light. There's a whiteboard calendar in her apartment with ideas for themed shoots, like "graduation."
Men's health
Kennedy spent years in the adult industry, but she says she's now done enough on OnlyFans so that she doesn't have to go back to "studio work" if she doesn't want to. She says she made five times more money in April than in February, although she declined to give a figure.
The Internet bubbling with anecdotes from performers to the rhythm to do six or seven figures in a year. These anecdotes are rare and probably exaggerated, but Men's health spoke with a number of artists from OnlyFans who said their income had increased during quarantine.
The adult industry tends towards something like OnlyFans for years – a platform that gives artists more control. Stars don't have to work with other people or plan and travel to shoots when they can record it all in their bedroom. In fact, many of them were already using Internet premium accounts. These operated on a similar business model to OnlyFans, but the internet has rules against pornographic material, so pornstars selling nudes still risked being kicked off the platform. The Internet “has gotten people used to the end of a monthly subscription paid directly to the artist,” says Kennedy. But she adds that as a platform, OnlyFans “works more like Instagram. »
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Some Instagram stars have found thatOnlyFans offered a valuable alternative to the Facebook-owned platform, which prohibits nudity. In an email, OnlyFans said his best players included Jem Wolfie and Mario Adrion, both of whom have large Instagram followers. (Wolfie is a fitness model with 2,7 million Instagram followers; Adrion is a model and YouTuber with 219000 followers.) Wolfie said she can earn up to $30000 a day on OnlyFans, and the platform said she has earned over $5 million since joining OnlyFans. last August.
But the reason why OnlyFans recently appeared in Beyoncé's remix of Megan Thee Stallion's 'Savage' and a long New York Times article It's the wave of new creators that reflects the worsening coronavirus pandemic and the boredom of a homebound global population. “In February, we are seeing an increase of around 15% month-over-month in new registrations on the platform,” said OnlyFans in an email. “March and April saw a 75% increase.
Some new creators already had online followers on other platforms, but others had to create an image on OnlyFans from zero.
Among the creators ofOnlyFans with no history in the adult industry who found success on the platform, there was Savannah Solo. She started out aiming for “sexy” marketing, but that didn’t sound appealing, so she adopted a quirky persona linked to viral videos on Twitter like the 21-second clip she dedicated “to all the boys in high school. who says I was ugly. In the video, she waits a moment before poking: “I mean, yeah, a little, but my nipples are making more money than you are now. »
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She says she had 'very, very little success' when she opened her account OnlyFans January 1st. Now Solo says she's the top 1% earner half on the platform because she ditched the sexy marketing strategy for a down-to-earth approach. But as for going further in the porn industry? "It's not something I would ever consider, but I know a lot of very successful people who have used OnlyFans as a head start to dive deeper into the business, and they're doing just fine.”
Ideas like brand diversification may seem too Madison Avenue for a conversation about OnlyFans, but those theories are gratifying in a gig economy — one in which the porn stars are comedians and the writers are podcasters and we fantasize about an unemployment rate once again below 5%. The gig economy and those living under its lack of roadmaps have always had to adapt; OnlyFans is just another way.
During the conversations, the interpreters ofOnlyFans were hesitant to make predictions about the future of the platform. Like the rest of us, they live in a new reality where there is no certain future. Kendyl, who has been a stripper for two years and moved to OnlyFans during the pandemic, plans to return to dancing when the pandemic subsides. “I made a month's rent in a month, which is cool, but I could do it in a day at a strip club,” she says.
Mark Schechter, one of the biggest agents in the adult industry, says the boom inOnlyFans has not been lost on potential competitors. “I get hit daily, if not on an average week, with new platforms coming to market,” he says. He thinks that OnlyFans will "of course" remain after the pandemic, but added: "It's a spike, it's nothing more than a big spike and a big spike in consumer usage and consumption. »
Mark Spiegler, another top agent, also expects OnlyFans have competition. “I'm sure another platform that will change the industry again, once again, is coming,” he says. Like Schechter, he receives emails “every two weeks from someone who has a new platform. Most of them are nothing, but some of them might be successful. »
The societal impact ofOnlyFans is not easy to define. It found a space in our conversation, but we don't know if it will become anything more substantial than a trend. Adult performers often say the newfound popularity is good, at least for destigmatizing professions that fall under the broad category of “sex work.” They sometimes think that the influx of creators ofOnlyFans and the popularity of the platform will push us towards a more common acceptance of these professions. The influx of previously online influencers onto the platform – people like Blac Chyna and Single Chad Johnson of Nation sparked "sex work" conversations in the tabloids.
“The more humanized sex workers, the better… with more people joining the platform, I think it could have the potential to make sex work more normal,” says pornstar Angela White, who is generally in the top 50 models on PornHub.
Kennedy agreed with this assessment. “The more we standardize healthy and ethical consumption of adult content, the less stigma there is overall,” she says.
This will perhaps be the most lasting legacy of OnlyFans.
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