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In recent years, plenty of people who’ve risen to fame with the help of the internet have harnessed OnlyFans to capitalize on their online celebrity—and it’s pretty easy to see why that’s the case when you look at how much money users are spending on the platform.
OnlyFans was founded in 2016 and harnessed the Patreon model that gave Creators and Influencers the chance to offer their followers exclusive content behind a paywall, and over time, it cemented itself as the premier destination for people with an interest in buying and selling, um, mature content.
In 2021, OnlyFans attempted to crack down on what most people would argue is its primary appeal by announcing it would ban “adult content” from the platform, but it swiftly reversed course thanks to the backlash it received from the community that allows it to thrive.
It’s not that hard to understand why that was the case when you take a look at how lucrative OnlyFans can be for people with a sizeable following; YouTube star Corinna Kopf made $1 million in two days after joining it, and Twitch streamer Amouranth once managed to take home $2 million in a single month.
It’s also very hard to imagine OnlyFans will revisit its ill-fated decision to try to change course when you consider how much dough it’s generating on an annual basis, as a new report highlights just how much of a behemoth it’s managed to become.
According to Insider, OnlyFans recently provided the world with a look at its finances in a filing that shows it raked in around $5.6 billion in revenue in 2022 (an approximately 16.6% increase from the $4.8 billion it posted the previous year).
As the outlet notes, the company takes a 20% cut from its creators, which means it walked away with more than $1 billion by giving them a platform to distribute their virtual wares.
Not too shabby.