Starting an OnlyFans Creator account is easy, but knowing how to make money on OnlyFans with no followers is more difficult.
Do you go for a small monthly subscription and try to build a regular income, or offer PPV content on a free-to-follow profile?
Unless you have an established following on a social network or cam site, it’s going to take some work to build your profile – so which way is best?
In this guide, I’ll look at the different ways to monetize an OnlyFans account, and why you can’t use them all at once. You’ll need to find the right balance for you, backed up by some shameless self-promotion on social media. Get it right and there is big money to be made…
Types of OnlyFans Creator Accounts
There are two main types of OnlyFans Creator account:
- Subscription: Followers pay a monthly fee to access your content.
- Free/PPV: Followers can follow you for free and/or pay for premium content.
On both types of account, you can earn extra income through tips, live streams, and by sending ‘locked’ PPV content in direct messages.
What’s The Difference Between Free and Subscription OF Profiles?
The obvious difference is how you make money: on a subscription profile, you get paid monthly by every follower. On a free profile, you only get paid if a follower buys PPV content.
But there’s another key difference: On a subscription profile, you CANNOT post PPV content on your main feed. If you want to sell PPV content to your subscribers, you’ll have to do it in direct messages.
I was surprised when I first learned about this, but I suppose it makes sense. For followers, it means that when they pay to subscribe, they know they’ll get access to all the content on your feed without having to pay any extra.
Popular Monetization Methods on OnlyFans
Now I’ve covered the differences between free and paid OF accounts, let’s run through the full list of monetization methods on OnlyFans, as listed on their blog.
Monthly Subscription
As mentioned above, you can charge a monthly subscription for access to your content, but this removes the ability to post PPV/locked content on your main profile.
You also have the option to offer free trials, new subscriber deals, special prices for returning subscribers, and discounts on longer subscriptions (e.g. 3, 6 or 12 months paid upfront).
Pay Per View (PPV) / Locked Posts
On free profiles, you have the option to post ‘locked’ content, commonly referred to as PPV posts. (They’re not strictly Pay Per View – once unlocked, a follower can view the content as many times as they want – so it’s really more like Pay Per Post.)
ALL OnlyFans Creators can send PPV content via direct messages. To do so, you just write your message, attach your media, specify a price to unlock the content, and then send the DM. You can send to an individual follower, or to all of your followers at once.
Tips
OnlyFans supports tips – followers can send you extra money via posts, streams, direct messages or from your profile page.
This is a good way to make some extra money around birthdays, Christmas and anniversaries, and is also used as an informal way to pay for custom content and anything else you decide to offer.
Referral Program
The OnlyFans Referral Program is worth a look if you know anyone – or think you can find anyone – who might want to open an OF Creator account.
If they sign up via your OnlyFans referral link, you’ll get 5% of their first-year earnings, up to $50,000 per Creator. If you refer multiple Creators, you can earn up to $50,000 per referral, with no upper limit overall.
Personally, I think it’s a bit cheeky to restrict earnings to the creator’s first twelve months, since it can often take twelve months just for the creator to get momentum (and income). Still, it’s better than nothing.
Top Fans
You can recognise your ‘top fans’ by sending an exclusive message to the top 1-5% of your followers, based on their monetary value to you.
This is calculated based on everything they send you: subscriptions, PPV purchases, tips and any other methods. It’s a way to say thank you, and some followers will deliberately tip more to try and get into that coveted Top Fan position.
Vault Content
As you post content, OnlyFans archives it, making it easier to see what you’ve already posted in the past.
You can access this ‘Vault’ at any time to repost old content, which is a good way to drive some additional PPV sales if you’ve built your follower count since the last time you sent out a certain video or photo gallery.
Just remember to make it clear if you’re re-sending old PPV content. While there’s nothing to stop followers from buying the same content twice, it can feel scammy if they do so without realising.
The Spring Store
The Spring Store is a way to sell merch on OnlyFans. Just set up your Spring Store and paste its URL into your OnlyFans profile, and you’ll be able to sell your own branded merch directly to your OF followers.
If you have a logo, a cartoon/caricature of yourself, or any other graphics that would work on a mug or T-shirt, this is your chance to spin that content into an extra revenue stream.
How Much Can I Charge on OnlyFans?
OnlyFans has minimum and maximum prices for subscriptions and PPV content. These are buried across several of the website’s Community Guidelines pages, but I’ve pulled them all together for you below:
- Monthly Subscription: Minimum $4.99 – Maximum $50.00
- Bundles: (Special price for 2 or more months) Maximum $250.00
- PPV: Minimum $3.00 – Maximum $50.00 per post
- Direct Messages: You can charge users $3 – $100 per DM they send to you
- Tips: Minimum $3.00 – Maximum $100 (new users) or $200 (for users who have been OF members for more than 4 months)
It’s also useful to know that each member has a daily spending limit of $500, but this too will increase over time if the person stays “in good standing“.
What Works Best?
You’ll probably find a combination of all of the above works best for you (remembering that main-feed PPV posts are not possible on a subscription account).
Obviously not every Creator’s profile will necessarily lead to many merchandise sales, and building an OnlyFans following from scratch will take some work – probably across multiple social networks.
It’s surprising how evenly split OF’s revenues are across subscriptions and other income streams.
According to Statista, in 2021-22 there was very little to call between the two sources:
- 2021:
- Subscriptions: $488.96 million
- Non-subscription: $442.78 million
- 2022:
- Subscriptions: $522.15 million
- Non-subscription: $567.69 million
That’s a difference of about $45 million each year. But in 2021, subscription revenues were bigger, while in 2022 it was non-subscription income (e.g. PPV and tips) that came out on top. So there’s really no clear-cut answer to which is worth more overall.
What Do OnlyFans Creators Say Works Best?
Statistics only tell half the story, and working as an OnlyFans Creator is a very personal experience. There’s a lot to learn from those who have already been through that experience – so let’s take a look at some different strategies to monetize OnlyFans with your home-shot porn and carefully curated nudes.
Lena The Plug
Lena The Plug has been making and selling adult content since 2016.
If you read our recent article about OnlyFans AI chatbots, you’ll know that Lena was one of the two profiles offered by Clona AI when it launched (the other being Riley Reid).
Back in 2020, Lena posted a video on her YouTube channel talking about how she makes money on OnlyFans. She praised the platform for its relatively low commission rates (OF takes 20% of Creators’ sales, tips and subscriptions) and for handling credit card transactions on behalf of Creators.
She also stressed the importance of good quality content on OnlyFans: “People have to pay in order to see it, and so you want to make the content extra exclusive and special, because there needs to be a reason for why people want to subscribe and see it.“
Lena shared a number of OnlyFans monetization tips and tricks, including:
- Focus on the parts of your profile that are visible BEFORE a user subscribes, as these are the only things someone will see when they first visit your page.
- Think about your subscription price. (Lena’s was – and still is – $19.99 per month, with a discount for new followers to drive new subscriptions.)
- Consider how many followers you expect (and how many you want). A small number of followers paying a higher subscription can earn you the same as a lot of followers paying a smaller subscription.
Lena’s advice came after 4-5 years in the industry – but what are the experiences of new models, and especially those looking to monetize an OnlyFans account with no followers?
Kara Jones
Kara Jones, known to her OnlyFans followers as Kara Peach (@misskpeach), charges $10 per month and now ranks as a Top 1.8% Creator after just eight months on the site. She offers sexting, dick ratings, solo and boy-girl content, and caters for custom content and fetishes.
But it wasn’t all plain sailing. In January 2024, Kara uploaded Important tips from a Top 1% creator on OnlyFans to her YouTube channel, where she explained:
“It has been quite a struggle. The first six months I was barely breaking $500 a month, and then I broke $1,000 in a month, and slowly, slowly, slowly, right? But then on the seventh month – last month – I was able to take some time off work, where I had two weeks of complete free time to experiment a little bit with OnlyFans and see what I really could do putting in 100% effort.“
This extra time and effort proved to be the deciding factor. In month seven, Kara cleared $7,600 US, which is over $10,000 Canadian (her local currency) in a 30-day period.
Kara added: “I never thought that would happen. And this upcoming month – so it’s me and my partner that are doing this – we’re on track to break $15,000 Canadian.“
She gave the following advice on what to post and how to price it:
- “I post everything.” Kara’s OF wall includes teasers and trailers of nude PPV videos, bikini/lingerie photos, and full nudity in paid content.
- “I have three categories for pricing.” Kara’s videos are priced at $6, $10 or $15, ranging from nude stripteases and shower vids, to fully explicit boy-girl and solo toy content.
- “I’ve labelled my videos on my page.” Kara labels her PPV wall posts according to price, so followers can click to see all her most explicit or lowest priced videos.
For new subscribers, this means Kara can direct them to the relevant category, where they can see the content they are most interested in all listed on a single page.
She also revealed that she charges $20 per minute for custom content (and that the industry standard is $10-20) with a 5-10 minute minimum, and applies the same rules to live video calls.
Finally, Kara recommended utilising social media by posting content across TikTok, Instagram Reels, backup accounts and any other social networks: “Post it everywhere, and share it with all your different audiences!“
Erin Kittens
Social media sharing proved to be the breakthrough moment for Erin Kittens, as she explained in a January 2024 YouTube video.
At the start of 2023, Erin launched a free OnlyFans page with the goal of earning over $100,000 in revenue. She promoted her profile on Reddit and built a following of 180-200 people – but then her growth stalled.
By halfway through the year, she was ready to quit, until a fellow Creator suggested posting a minimum of two Instagram Reels per day. On the first day of doing so, one of Erin’s Reels went viral, clocking up more than a million views.
Around the same time, Erin switched to a subscription account on OF, charging $15 a month. She reached a peak of about 780 followers in the second half of 2023, and ended the year with about 550 paid subscribers.
In her YouTube video, Erin said: “My whole goal from the beginning was, I wanted to create an income where I could just survive off of subscribers, not worry about customs or calls or any other additional tips – nothing, just subscribers. And I did it.“
Her full-year earnings from subscriptions alone totalled nearly $80,000, without including any PPV revenues and other income streams. With those added in, Erin smashed her $100,000 goal for the year.
This was all thanks to her viral Instagram Reel (her IG followers also rocketed from 8,000 to 44,000) and highlights the importance of promoting your OnlyFans profile, no matter which revenue model you decide to pursue.
The 3 Steps to Make Money On OnlyFans
All of this boils down to a three-step plan to monetize OnlyFans:
- Understand the different possible revenue streams (and decide which ones to try).
- Reach out to fellow Creators and build your support network to learn from others.
- Make sure to promote your OF profile via your other platforms and social media.
There’s always a degree of trial and error, and it’s likely you’ll have to change your approach to react to the market, if you remain a content creator long-term.
For more great tips and tricks on how to make money in the adult industry, read our Work & Hustle guides.
