When Cardi B and Bella Thorne joined OnlyFans, it went from niche adult site to billion-dollar business
- OnlyFans started as a fan site where people paid to see exclusive content, usually from adult entertainers
- After high-profile celebrities joined the site, it is seeing 500,000 new users a day and will make US$2 billion this year
OnlyFans is closely associated with adult models. Many of its most popular creators are attractive women who use it to titillate men willing to pay a few extra dollars for a particular image. But Cardi B is part of a small but growing number of more traditional celebrities turning to OnlyFans to make a little extra revenue, raise money for charity or connect with followers in a new way.
In her first material for the site, posted on August 12, Cardi B uploaded a video from behind the scenes of her photo shoot for the cover of Elle magazine. A few weeks later, she shared footage from the making of her WAP music video. The post went on to generate several thousand likes on OnlyFans and almost US$1,000 in tips.
“When Beyoncé rapped about us on the Savage remix and Cardi B joined the platform, that’s when we really started to see the growth accelerate,” said Tim Stokely, 37, the company’s founder and chief executive officer. According to Stokely, OnlyFans is adding as many as 500,000 users a day and paying out more than US$200 million a month to its creators.
Along the way, OnlyFans has grown into one of the biggest media businesses hiding in plain sight. The company has 85 million users, upwards of 1 million creators, and will generate more than US$2 billion in sales this year, of which it keeps about 20 per cent.