Why does an adult website that makes more money than OpenAI, $6.6 billion a year, reject AI? OnlyFans is powered by butts, not artificial intelligence.

Why is an adult website that earns $6.6 billion a year and is even more profitable than OpenAI rejecting AI? OnlyFans are powered by buttocks, not artificial intelligence.
When it comes to OnlyFans, many people’s faces will show a meaningful smile: Oh, an adult website that can compete with the top streaming Pornhub in the industry.
Recently, OnlyFans announced its revenue for last year, shocking the AI flooded Silicon Valley community – with a total revenue of $6.6 billion, creators receiving $5.3 billion, and the remaining $1.3 billion going to the platform. After deducting all costs, the net profit reached $480 million.

The difference between OpenAI’s 2023 revenue of $1.6 billion and NBA total salary of $4.9 billion for the 2023-2024 season is very clear, although it cannot be directly compared.
The performance of OnlyFans does not rely on advertisers, but on the payment of a large number of users.
It is said that the first productive force of the Internet is to engage in pornography, but this is more or less “white whoring”. I love to watch, but I am not necessarily willing to spend money. Why are so many users willing to pay for OnlyFans?
OnlyFans, who are not empty, are the real fan economy
OnlyFans is divided into “Only” and “Fans”. As the name suggests, you can understand it as a fan economy: providing a platform for fans to pay for creators’ content.
Its homepage is harmless to humans and animals, as plain as Zuckerberg’s Facebook.
However, only by clicking on the account you are interested in did you realize that everything here is priced clearly, including pictures, videos, live broadcasts, private messages… without spending money, you will see a gray paywall in front of you.
There are two main forms of payment: subscription, monthly payment, and viewing regular posts. Pay per use to unlock additional content.

Even if the content is free, you still need to bind your credit card and subscribe to the creator to view it, after all, the next time you may pay smoothly. If you have already spent money but feel that the creator is very satisfied, you can also give a tip.
The content available on Bilibili is also available on OnlyFans, and fans can pay a different price to align their needs through private messaging, just like the first and second parties, allowing creators to customize exclusive videos and experience a more personalized experience than the aesthetic fatigue of Bilibili.
In 2021, OnlyFans once wanted to ban pornographic content due to external pressure, returning to the old path of Tumblr’s lukewarm popularity. However, due to strong opposition from users and creators, they quickly backed out. Afterwards, as long as the creator proves that they are of age and not illegal, there are no taboos.

In addition to promoting pornography, you can also see non prohibited content such as fitness, cooking, music, and even talk to celebrities here.
One benefit of celebrities joining OnlyFans is that they come with their own halo and traffic, without the need for large-scale gimmicks.
Jack Laugher, the bronze medalist in synchronized diving at the Paris Olympics, relies on OnlyFans’ side job to support his diving career – his athlete salary is only £ 28000 per year, even after winning the championship at the Rio Olympics.

Usually, Jack Laugher only posts content about wearing swimsuits, panties, and briefs, without being completely naked. Swimming trunks are equivalent to professional attire, so he and his family feel very comfortable, ‘There’s nothing you can’t show your grandmother’.
Renowned American rapper Cardi B also shares her music behind the scenes and personal life on OnlyFans, treating it as an Instagram operation that only connects with fans and emphasizes not showing her breasts. That’s it, earning $45 million and ranking second among celebrities in 2023.
In addition to pursuing sensory stimulation and celebrity interaction, under what circumstances would users pay for others? The answer is to be sincere, to exchange sincerity for sincerity.
OnlyFans not only sells photos and videos, but also people to people connections, which is most evident in one-on-one chat private messages.
For fans, especially some middle-aged and young men, chatting is a form of spiritual comfort and emotional connection that cannot be compared to tangible physical experiences, and can be used as an alternative form of psychological counseling.
Business Insider interviewed 10 OnlyFans creators, and 9 of them said that fans not only establish sexual relationships, but also get closer to friends or partners. They usually talk about hobbies, psychological issues, interpersonal relationships, and family pressure.

Although OnlyFans is headquartered in the UK, data shows that two-thirds of its revenue comes from the US, with UK and European users accounting for 16%, and the remaining 17% belonging to the ‘rest of the world’.
The paper ‘Sexual Attitudes and Characteristics of OnlyFans Users’ has a more specific user profile: OnlyFans users are mainly married white males with an average age of 29 and an average annual income of $42000.
Anyway, it’s not surprising, just like the male character in a domestic drama who smokes a cigarette in the car and goes upstairs after work.
Without psychological defense, money is willingly given. According to Fortune magazine, chatting with fans, building closer relationships, and selling “exclusive” content account for over 50% of the revenue for many OnlyFans creators.
Fans pay for the labor of creators, and creators make money directly from fans, which is simple, direct, and straightforward. This is the creator economy of OnlyFans.

Because OnlyFans does not rely on advertising or creator incentives, they do not care about other social media platforms that care about traffic sources, popular topics, user stay time, and personalized recommendation algorithms.
But without platform support, it can also make it difficult for creators to gain followers, so they will advertise on social media platforms such as Reddit, Instagram, TikTok, etc., to attract more users to OnlyFans.
The attitude of these platforms is not opposed. They usually prohibit pornography and do not directly compete with OnlyFans. As long as the content posted by creators on their platform is not excessive, it is not a problem. It is even better to occasionally produce explosive products.
Mature system, victory of a few people
As the saying goes, one can make a fortune silently. When a way of making money is made public, the barriers to entry may already be high. Relying on OnlyFans to buy a house, a car, and reach the pinnacle of life is just a myth for a few people.
OnlyFans currently has over 300 million users and more than 4 million creator accounts. In 2023, the number of employees is only 42, with a very high personnel to performance ratio. One employee is worth thousands of troops, giving the two founders a soft hand with dividends.
But when the total revenue of $6.6 billion is evenly distributed among creators, it doesn’t look so good – the average annual income of OnlyFans creators in 2023 is about $1800.
This is like the joke ‘My average income with Jack Ma is also quite high’, most ordinary people are the one who says’ I’m sorry I’m holding back ‘.

In 2020, independent researcher Tom Hollands crawled OnlyFans’ payment data and found that the top 1% of creators earned 33% of the money, with most creators earning less than $145 per month.
If you can earn $49000 a year, it’s fortunate to have already entered the top 1%.
OnlyFans has a 20% split, with 20% for the platform and 80% for the creators. While this may sound generous, it doesn’t necessarily mean that all the content reaches the creators.
Successful OnlyFans creators either start their own companies as bosses or collaborate with agencies. Similar to MCNs in China, these agencies also need to split their profits, usually by more than 30%.
Managing a creator account requires a one-stop service. A proxy agency interviewed by Nytimes helped over 30 women manage OnlyFans, including but not limited to generating traffic on other social media platforms, writing private messages, creating daily content, and ultimately selling pornographic videos.
Operators need to have a keen eye to identify fat sheep that quickly spend more than $200, and then be more considerate and considerate to extract more wool. Operators should also be able to tell sweet lies and tell some innocent fans that the video is specifically recorded for them, even though the same video may be sold to dozens of people.

These institutions eat from the bowl, not forget to look at the pot, and also look for new partners, inviting women to “go into the sea” on Instagram, with the slogan of “make a fortune together”.
The joke “Nobody knows you are a dog on the Internet” is never out of date.
At the bottom of this production chain are often outsourced chatbots, also known as’ chatters’. There is no shortage of cheap English speaking labor worldwide, most of whom are low wage workers from places such as the Philippines, Nigeria, India, etc. They work 6 days a week, 12 consecutive hours, with an hourly wage of $3, which is not as good as making hamburgers at McDonald’s.
Money is hard to earn, poop is hard to eat, this job is difficult to work in, and there is a lot of mental pressure. I have to listen to hundreds of people complaining and saying strange things, while also bearing the KPI of sales. Simply put, it’s like customer service. Coincidentally, the Philippines is also one of the world’s call centers.

With the development of AI, chatbots have become a way to liberate human labor. Even these chatbots can be trained based on past chat records and tailored to each internet celebrity’s style.
However, OnlyFans prohibits AI from replying to chats. There are policies at the top and countermeasures at the bottom, AI writes messages, and humans click the send button. Overall, it is still more efficient than before, with one person able to handle hundreds of chat partners. But it’s hard to say whether it’s easier or more painful.
OnlyFans has reviews, but they cannot control these AI. In this era where deepfakes are difficult to recognize with the naked eye, although an AI team has been established internally, OnlyFans is still dominated by manual review, but the main focus of inspection is whether there is any minor content that has been overlooked.
As a system, OnlyFans is undoubtedly very mature, grasping human needs and requiring users to pay to access content from the beginning, forming a healthy and stable paid ecosystem.
Musk’s X is also experimenting with paid subscriptions and relaxing restrictions on adult content, but OnlyFans CEO Keily Blair is not optimistic about the “OnlyFans” trend on other platforms.

Her reason is simple, whether she pays or not, it’s all inertia. Other social media users have become accustomed to content being free. If these platforms also want to try the subscription model, they need to make users feel that the content is exclusive and they can gain more value.
OnlyFans has taken the path of “spending money on everything” and knows how to quickly and systematically seize more benefits at any stage, but the creators themselves may not necessarily receive the majority of the benefits.
AI version OnlyFans is coming, what cannot be replaced by machines
In the face of OnlyFans’ unparalleled performance, there are also those who criticize, believing that OnlyFans has already reached the top and will soon decline, being gradually overturned by AI. This statement is not unreasonable.
OnlyFans currently has a negative attitude towards AI, believing that the risks and rewards are disproportionate, that chatting is not as deep as humans, and that copyright ownership is unclear. Creators can use AI to improve their content, but they do not allow accounts generated entirely by AI.
OnlyFans has a very strict qualification review for creators, and everyone must submit around 10 pieces of personal identification and social media information, take selfies with their identification documents, and prove that they are adults.

This was originally intended to prevent illegal activities, while also serving to shut out AI.
However, the outside world is already filled with AI.
Chatbots do not yet affect OnlyFans’ main business, as chatting is value-added and a hook. Users will eventually purchase real people’s pictures and videos, but AI influencers from head to toe may have an impact on OnlyFans themselves.
The data from OnlyFans in recent years reflects an interesting phenomenon: the proportion of subscriptions to total revenue has decreased, while the proportion of pay per use has increased. By 2023, it will even account for nearly 60%, and it is not a small amount, costing tens of dollars or more at once.
This is not difficult to understand. I subscribed to members of iQiyi, Tencent, and Youku, which is equivalent to choosing all the content on the website, but I may only want to watch one drama. Pay per use can better meet the diverse needs of thousands of people.
But when it comes to customization, isn’t AI better suited to its needs? They can speak various languages, be online 24 hours a day, generate anything you want, and gradually become fake and fake.
The authenticity of AI models, reaching a new level every day, ‘I have a bold idea’ seems to be achievable in AI.

When it comes to soul resonance, AI virtual companions are already a very popular track. Character AI, Talkie, and Hoshino allow you to use AI to create real characters or set original characters, with customizable appearance, personality, voice, and storyline. Personalized experience has been pushed to new heights.
Unlike OnlyFans’ tough stance, its competitor Fanvue is more tolerant and highly optimistic about AI generated creators, provided that they do not conceal the use of AI.
Among them, Pellegrini is one of Fanvue’s most popular AI influencers, with a revenue of $23000 in January 2024 and 257000 Instagram followers. This business capability is also top-notch among OnlyFans.
A football player even wrote to her asking for contact information: ‘How could such a beautiful woman not have a boyfriend?’
Open up your thinking, AI is also operated by a team behind it, and it seems to be not much different from some real internet celebrities – chatting with paid fans, providing exclusive content, while users demand the same appearance of fantasy and false relationships.
However, in the past, the materials were provided by creators appearing on camera, but now AI can tirelessly generate them.

We do not doubt the weaknesses of human nature, nor do we ignore the value of desires and emotions, but how to fulfill them and why we pay is an open question. No one can be certain that they are the most standard answer.
But OnlyFans’ even stronger momentum than AI companies seems to be resisting the reality of everything gradually becoming AI based. Human creation is still worth paying for and can afford a higher psychological price, regardless of the industry.
OnlyFans can serve as a special sample, and in the coming years, let’s continue to observe whether the emergence of more AI alternatives will lead to a decrease in the original demand for payment, or make humans cherish the labor content of manual labor more, even if it is just packaged.
The ancient industry of humanity is also a mirror of advanced technology.