As I leave my house to walk the dog on a cloudy Tuesday morning, I am approached by a neighbor who cheerfully shouts down the street: “I hear you have an OnlyFans now!” I'm starting to wonder if I've made a terrible mistake.
OnlyFans has – how should I put it – a reputation. Like many online platforms, it connects content creators to their audiences. But OnlyFans is mainly known for one type of content: sex.
When friends and acquaintances hear that I – a 43-year-old father of two – have created an OnlyFans account, they are intrigued. When I explain that I only post content that is non-sexual and very safe for work, their next question is, “Why?” In their eyes, it is clear that “having an OnlyFans” means doing sexy things on the internet for money.
OnlyFans, a British organization that raked in $658 million in pre-tax profits last year, wants to break this image. For every college student raising money by sharing nudes, there's a wholesome housewife uploading DIY tips or an up-and-coming musician posting his latest songs, at least if you follow the accounts listed on the company's blog .
“Everyone's doing a little dance on the rest of social media, where it's like, 'Hey, you're not supposed to show people your penis here and you're not supposed to say crazy, wild shit,'” says John Hastings, a 39-year-old. year-old Canadian comedian, tells me over the phone from his home in Los Angeles. On OnlyFans, however, he still has people sliding into his DMs to say, “I want to see your feet, I'm not here for jokes.”
Like all the Safe-for-Work creators I speak to, Hastings has a presence on many social networks, from Instagram to X to YouTube. The audience on OnlyFans will typically be smaller than on other sites, but followers are often more engaged and – most importantly – should have a bank account linked to their profile, ready to be pried open.
“It's definitely a different world compared to the people who are on my other social media platforms,” says Dudley Alexander, an R&B artist who releases music under the name Nevrmind.
Alexander, 33, joined OnlyFans in 2019, before the site's profile soared as the Covid-19 pandemic pushed much previously IRL activity online. As such, he is a pioneer in the Safe-for-work OnlyFans scene and has amassed over 67,000 likes on his page. (OnlyFans only discloses a user's number of likes; the number of followers, which is usually higher, is hidden.)
