It’s probably not unnoticed that there are a rise in people signing up to create their own page on a platform like OnlyFans (or AdmireMe, AVN Stars, so on)
Along with this comes the rise in people bitching about people signing up for them.
Whether there’s a hint of fairness (“not so long ago you posted something against this”) or not (“so now everyone is a model?”) or a hint of entitlement and manipulation (“So people won’t do this unless they’re paid, huh? What happened to doing it for fun?”)
There’s a lot of thoughts this churns up within me – I’d like to share. Especially for anyone new to this or chewing sour grapes.
THIS IS SEX WORK (AND THAT’S OK)
Look, OK – yes. I get it if you’re in denial. I appreciate you’re not living up to the stereotype of a sex worker you had in your head. Whether that’s standing on street corners, or having sex for money or even getting naked. It’s still sex work and you’re still now entering that realm and sex worker concerns are now your concerns. Which, also, btw, this is also all OK for work. Sex work might not be the oldest profession; but sex is one of the oldest currencies.
While you’re continuing to deny this, why are people, or why would people, sign up to your page?
I mean, if it’s for your cooking recipes, maybe you’re actually a food blogger. But, nope, even if you’re forbidding people’s orgasms it’s still sex work.
SEX WORK IS WORK
And I mean a lot of things by this. I mean, anyone chiming “Get a real job!” – it is a real job. Whilst it comes with less support and rights than many other jobs, a job it indeed is.
It produces an income like any other job, and sex workers pay tax, national insurance, so on. They have to register for VAT if earning above the threshold in their country/territory and there are assorted countries/territories rolling out ecommerce taxes which they must pay.
It’s also work in the sense that like any other job there’s work to be done, and don’t kid yourself. It’s hard work.
And, for many arguments for and against it. Ultimately, there’ll be good days at work and there’ll be shit days at work.
If you’ve ever worked in retail you might get some lovely customers and some complete arseholes. Hey, if you work a bar job the pay for someone touching your bum or breasts is much lower and less consensual.
So, if you’re someone rolling your eyes at people signing up then, well, they’re not in it for any form of easy money and it’s a valid job as any other.
But if you are someone signing up then be assured this is work. So make sure you’ve done a little research into what your tax obligations are and keep records. It’s much easier than trying to deal with the fallout because some arsehole decided to report you.
WHY ARE SO MANY SIGNING UP?
The knee-jerk is to assume they’re “gold diggers” (which is again dumb language. If you were in a poorly paid desk or manual labour job and there was an opportunity to change jobs and make more, would you sit and be unhappy for less money rather than being accused of gold digging? It doesn’t make sense)
Whilst there is a risk people are jumping in a little ill-informed or hoping to make more than is likely, the truth of the matter isn’t so clear cut .Periods of poverty and economic downturn result in an increase in people turning to sex work. In the UK there was a direct link between the brutality of Universal Credit and people turning to it.This is not to say that sex work is bad, but that sometimes to motivations to take it through struggle rather than choice is bad. But, that’s almost the same as any job. The wrong job because any wage is better than no wage is bad.
PEOPLE AND ARTICLES TELL FIBS
I think a lot of people read an article or “has a friend” where someone made a lot of money.
Rarely will these articles tell you just how many hours they put in. They won’t say how hard early months can be. Nor will it state whether they already had their own following.
I can tell you the truth on some newspaper articles that don’t tell the full story on the person who made “x thousand per month”. As well as that being a ‘best case’ example, she also does things like clip sales, camming and a commission of sales from films they’d been in when ‘profit share’ was more common.
There’s also the problem of where some things become a glorified pyramid scheme. For example; a lot of these sites have referral schemes. So, if you have someone telling you how much money they make and want you to sign up on their code, you could ask yourself how many other people they’ve had sign up on their code and who is really generating their income.
I think if you were thinking of joining such a site and someone offered you their referral code whilst telling you how much they made; it might be nicer to ask if you’ve any mutual friends who aren’t quite doing so well whose code you can use instead.
Also. If you see someone has 100 followers, at $10 subscription, you might think “fuck, they’re making $1,000 per month”. You don’t know how many of those sign ups were free trial or discounted deals to help inflate the number.
Obviously there are people who do really well, who make that AND MORE. But the trap is especially when it’s a friend you know it can be easy to think “well if she can get that, so can I” without having all of the information.
“OTHERS DO IT FOR CHEAPER/FREE”
Always be mindful of this language. Those often present it with figures and “business advice” that doesn’t make sense. We’re not talking about “others”.
Imagine this in any scenario.
You’re selling Apples for 50p each. Someone picks up 3 apples so you ask them for £1.50.
They tell you they only have £1. You tell them well, OK, you can have two apples.
They ask about a deal. You say no, they’re 50p each. They then maybe tell you that the shop up the road sells them for 40p each; or that they grow in trees for free.
But they’re not in the shop down the road. They’re there. They wanted your apples. They’re not growing an apple tree to pick some for free.
The other shop might have apples for 40p because they’re not as big, or as good as your apples.
Regardless, the customer came into your shop KNOWING that apples grow on trees; and KNOWING the shop down the road is 10p cheaper.
This is the same. With whatever content you put up. Someone else is cheaper. Someone else is free. The person moaning doesn’t want their content, they feel entitled to yours on their terms.
But, this certainly won’t get any sales if people don’t want your content and that’s something that ties in with all the work you might need to do.
REMEMBER HYPOCRISY
One of the places I’m posting this of course is Fetlife, where there are plenty people who are speaking up against women monetising photos/videos/etc. This is a line of entitlement. They want you to do it for free.But, not only that. The majority of these people have, at some point, enjoyed some form of pornography. Which suggests they want people to MAKE pornography. Just not receive payment for it. Or have any rights for having done it. These are the kinda attitudes that need streamlined.You can be supportive without paying someone; “Good luck. I hope you do well.” or sharing articles which offer advise or warnings. But, if your friend is going to call you a gold digging freeloader because you’ve chosen to try to make a wage in difficult circumstances; you might want to reassess your friend group.If you are someone that is just against sex work; then I’m not sure why you wish to be part of a kink community (online or in person) anyway given, well. how much was built by or relies on sex workers.
SOME FINAL CAUTION
This was a good article the other day about someone who lost their job after making money on the side from OnlyFans. Do try to check how you stand with current or future employment.Also, the “hack” – the vulnerability that led to this hasn’t been fixed. Assume your content will be pirated. Assess from there what the impact of that is.Other platforms such as AVN or Admire Me may offer more security.
July 29, 2022 at 11:57 am
The issue on FetLife is that it was a community. And the people actually looking for friendship and learning in the community make and female are leaving in drives because only fans has taken over. You can no longer hardly have a real conversation n orsation with a person with similar interests or expertise in an area that you need education on like you used to for the past decade +. Men and women alike only respond “if you want me to respond. Subscribe here” that’s not at all where fet was founded. So many sex workers scream and cry they aren’t being included. Harsh treatment. How about looking at it from the other side. It has taken away anywhere for REAL people and couples to explore and discuss in a safe environment. Twitter and tons of other platforms allow sex work promoters….leave those of us trying to explore and strengthen our relationships and learn someplace we can gather with out harassment from these people asking for money via subscription.
July 30, 2022 at 7:46 pm
there’s a lot in the concern I massively appreciate – and, I wrote this 2 years ago and I can see how things further changed.
My point remains that economic downturn results in a rise of people at least attempting some form of sex work and things in the wider economy are going to get worse before they get better.
This said
Firstly Fetlife in particular have introduced new filters to allow people to filter out what FL labels commercial accounts – it’d be interesting to see how this plays out
But also. While there are a rise in people doing things like OF – I have personally been on Fetlife 9 years and many of the arguments remain the same – people were bitching 9 years ago that so many people had wishlists or asked tribute or so on and nothing has changed in that regard.
One of the problems with me with Fetlife is actually that there are many other reasons why people have left, or used the site less – and – the new filters to filter out commercial accounts got delivered very quickly after people started suggesting filters as a solution – but it took SEVEN YEARS for them to develop basic mailbox filtering settings that women had asked for to try to stop so many unsolicited messages.
As tech and time has changed people have got less value from Fetlife – and now for many it’s purpose is a directory for events, which is where they then go to partake in community.
People who are offering selling or whatever do not stop any users starting their own conversational threads.