• OnlyFans saw creators increase by 47 percent to 3.1 million who collectively drew in $5.6 billion in payments.
• However, fans only grew 27 percent from 187 million to 238 million.
• The platform’s parent company is cognisant of emerging threats from other social media sites, but remains confident of its unique product.

During the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing lockdowns, many people stuck at home and without work turned to OnlyFans to make ends meet.

The popularity of the platform has seemingly not waned as reported by parent company Fenix International this week in its strategic report for the year ending 30th November 2022. By the end of November last year, OnlyFans had 3.1 million creators, a 47 percent increase compared to 2021.

These creators drew in $5.6 billion in gross payments (before taxes, refunds etc are calculated) making OnlyFans a cool $1 billion in the process.

During this period the number of fans grew 27 percent from 187 million to 238 million. While this is respectable growth, OnlyFans’ reputation means that it’s audience will inevitably cap out and plateau and with that, so will revenue.

Cognisant of this, Fenix International notes, “As the creator economy continues to grow, there is an increased focus from traditional social media platforms on attracting content creators to their platforms. The Group can combat this risk by continuing to take a creator first and safety focussed approach to business decisions earning creator loyalty and trust.”

While not explicitly mentioned we suspect the “traditional social media” in question is X or Twitter. The social network has offered the ability for X Premium subscribers to put content behind a subscription paywall. The platform also recently paying Premium subscribers a share of its advertising revenue once they meet certain criteria.

However, creators on X only get advertising revenue share for views from other Premium subscribers. This may present a problem for creators hoping to get paid large sums regularly as Mashable reports there are at least 827 615 X Premium subscribers, but likely no more than 950 000. With Musk’s claim that Twitter has 540 million monthly users, that means little under two percent of users are paying for X Premium.

Where OnlyFans has a benefit over X or Twitter is that fans are headed there with the idea of paying for content whereas on Twitter, advertising is the main driver of revenue. For now at least.

OnlyFans continues to be a unique destination for creators, especially those creating adult content and for the time being at least, it continues to prove a popular destination.