A quick scroll through hot girl Twitter will let you know that people are making serious money selling their uncensored content online. While you may associate the platform with selfies and lingerie, getting paid on OnlyFans is more accounting than premium accounts.
"My tagline is 'I get paid to be hot,' but there's a lot of work on the back end," Megan, aka, That Fat Babe, a social media consultant and top creator on OnlyFans, tells Bustle. "It takes a lot of understanding and responsibility."
According to Megan, raking it in on OnlyFans demands planning, business savvy, and a bunch of Excel spreadsheets. From subscription types to payout schedules, here's how to get paid on OnlyFans.
How Fans Pay You
There are four main ways to make money on OnlyFans: monthly subscriptions, pay-per-view (PPV) content, private messages/media, and tips. According to a rep from OnlyFans, most creators chose the monthly subscription model, charging their fans a monthly fee from $4.99 up to $49.99 to see their content. Additionally, performers can have a "Free account," where the monthly subscription is free, but fans are charged up to $50 for access to specific PPV posts.
On both types of pages, creators can charge fans up to $100 per direct, private message and media — like texting within the app or sending personalized and/or graphic videos or photos.
Tipping, which Megan calls the "bread and butter" of OnlyFans, is at the fans' discretion. Fans can choose to tip on a specific post or just in general. New users can tip a maximum of $100 per trip, and after four months on the app, they can tip up to $200.
When signing up for an OnlyFans fan account, fans need to link a credit card to their account. Every time they send money (or every new month of a subscription), their credit card gets charged. Fans can also purchase "Wallet Credits" to add an allotted amount of money to their OnlyFans account to pay creators and monthly fees with, rather than making a new credit card transaction every time they subscribe or tip.
How Much You Profit
Since the app started in 2016, OnlyFans had paid out over three billion dollars to creators. But creators only receive 80% of their profits. OnlyFans retains 20% of all creators' earnings to cover referral payments, payment processing, hosting, support, and all other services.
The creators of OnlyFans have two balances: a "pending" balance of their earnings that are still being processed and a "current" balance that they can withdraw. According to the OnlyFans representative, all payments from fans go to the creator's pending balance, which becomes eligible for withdrawal (i.e., moved to the "current" balance) eight days after earning.
The minimum withdrawal for most countries is $20, meaning creators can only withdraw money from their current balance or "cash-out" when there is at least $20 in their current balance. Cashing out can be done both manually (i.e., creators decide how much they want to take out at a given time) or set up automatic recurring payments on a monthly, weekly, or daily basis.
"I withdraw every $200 with a manual payout," Megan says. "You don't have to withdraw it. You can keep it in there, kind of like a bank. But until you withdraw, you can't use that money."
How To Cash Out
When performers make their OnlyFans accounts, they link their bank accounts to their profile, the same way you'd do with Venmo or PayPal. If you set up an automatic recurring payment, your earnings will transfer directly into your linked bank account. If you have a manual transfer, you can decide at any time how much money from your current account you'd like to withdraw and send a "Pay Out Request." Withdrawals take around two days to show up in your account. According to the OnlyFans rep, bank wiring (transferring your funds to your bank account) is the most common method of cashing out.
Because income taxes are not taken out of performers' earnings, they have to pay taxes at the end of the year. OnlyFans will send your tax form with your yearly income, and you file as a 1099 self-employed person. Megan suggests budgeting around 25% of your annual earnings to paying your taxes and keeping track of it all in Excel.
"It gets scary if you're not saving part of your income for taxes and you have a massive tax bill at the end of the year," Megan says. "You're not just getting loads of cash dumped into your account. Everything is taxed and overviewed by OnlyFans and the government."
Sources:
Megan, That Fat Babe, social media consultant and OnlyFans creator
