60% of OnlyFans creators’ revenue comes from single purchases, not subscriptions. Can SFW platforms learn from it?

OnlyFans is known for the subscription side of its business, where people–much like they do on platforms like YouTube and Twitch–pay creators a monthly fee for access to their content. But, according to public documents from its parent company Fenix International Limited, a whopping 60% of the money OnlyFans makes comes from single-time purchases.

Basically, OnlyFans creators are releasing things like videos and photosets, treating them as individual digital products–and people are very keen to buy.

That stat comes from a recent blog post by industry advisor/angel investor Matthew Ball, who dove into the economics of OnlyFans using publicly available data filed by Fenix. As a U.K.-based company, Fenix is required to disclose some information about its operations, so we’re able to verify these figures are accurate.

OnlyFans generated $6.3 billion in 2023, and like we mentioned, a serious chunk of that came from single transactions. Subscriptions are still a big part of its revenue, having grown 9% (around $227 million) from 2021 to 2023–but, in the same timeframe, single-purchase revenue grew by 70% ($1.6 billion). Ball says the increase in single-purchase revenue is responsible for nearly 90% of OnlyFans’ total growth over the past three years.

And creators are benefitting from that growth. OnlyFans’ revenue split with creators is 80/20, with 80% in favor of the creator. That’s much higher than any safe-for-work platform in our industry, aside from Kick, and it’s one of the reasons NSFW creators tend to stick with OnlyFans. (The platform does have a few competitors, but none have managed to take off the way it has.)

Of the $6.3 billion OnlyFans made in 2023, it paid out $5.3 billion to creators, up 19% from $4.5 billion in 2022. 2022 was the first year where single-purchase revenue outpaced subscription revenue (with a split of 52/48%), and this year, that gap grew even wider, to 59/41%.

This interest in digital products mirrors what we’ve seen on SFW destinations like YouTube and Patreon: people are keen to buy digital products, and platforms are, for the most part, keen to facilitate purchases, introducing virtual storefronts and shelves to display creators’ offerings. These products–things like ebooks, songs, downloadable craft and cooking guides, bonus videos, and more–are just as much creator merch as things like mugs and T-shirts, and we think it’s cool to see clear financial indication of how much they’re wanted by creators’ fans.

While we recognize that digital products might find a bit more of an eager audience on OnlyFans, given the nature of what creators sell there, SFW creators can also tap this enthusiasm by creating digital products for their niche audiences. We’ve chatted with folks like crocheters who make digital guides to recreate crafts they show on their channels, DIY-ers who offer copies of the planners they use to organize their households–and, of course, there are thousands of creator-made online courses where people share their expertise.

Digital products on both OnlyFans and SFW platforms are the same, at their core: they’re special pieces of content that let fans experience more of a creator they enjoy following. We expect to see interest continue growing in this sector of creator-driven ecommerce, and we think YouTube and other SFW platforms could follow in OnlyFans’ footsteps and put more emphasis on partnerships and tools that would let creators show off the digital products they make.