In 2021, American model and television personality Blac Chyna was the top-earning creator on OnlyFans, with an estimate of 20 million U.S. dollars in earnings from the platform per month. Actress and creator Bella Thorne ranked second, with an estimate of 11 million U.S. dollars earned per month on the platform. Rapper Cardi B. followed, with 9.34 million U.S. dollars in revenues on OnlyFans in 2021.

Where online pornography meets the creators economy OnlyFans experienced staggering growth in 2020, when the global coronavirus pandemic drove audiences worldwide to move their lives online. Traffic to the OnlyFans website kept increasing through the end of 2021, reaching 39.43 million visits in January 2022. Launched in 2016, the London-based platform OnlyFans hosts video and photo content available for free and via monthly subscription. While it was not purposely launched to host adult entertainment material, the platform became increasingly renowned for sexually explicit content as the sex services industry moved online and independent workers looked at content creation to support themselves during the pandemic. Despite the company announcing a ban on porn in March 2021, it backtracked on this statement only a few months later. OnlyFans global net revenues are estimated to reach 2.5 billion U.S. dollars in 2022.

Monetization tools for creators Effective content monetization is crucial not only for creators, but also plays a role in online platforms’ success and market presence. Professional and semi-professional creators that can focus on producing engaging content represent the backbone of the social media economy, with hosting platforms relying on user-generated media to attract views and drive ad presence. According to a survey of digital content creators conducted in 2021, 60 percent of content creators had not chosen to monetize their content yet, while less than one in 10 reported earning over 10,000 U.S. dollars. Among niche creators who managed to successfully monetize their online efforts, approximately 23 percent of respondents reported selling their own physical products. Affiliate marketing deals were also among the leading monetization methods for non-niche creators, with 10 percent of respondents in this group reporting earning revenues online.

Among the possibilities that Web 3.0 has promised to bring, direct monetization and follower support might represent the most important digital gig economy development of the next years. A number of digital creators have also started showing interest in crypto payments, with 40 percent of creators who use images as their primary media deeming them crucial or nice to have.

As of August of 2022, the highest earning OnlyFans accounts ever were the musicians Bhad Bhabie and Cardi B, having earned 59.8 million U.S. Dollars and 46.7 million U.S. Dollars respectively. The highest paid non-musician was Blac Chyna, having earned 39.3 million U.S. Dollars.

In 2023, London-based Fenix International Limited, which is the parent company of online video and community platform OnlyFans, reported that the platform generated 6.63 billion U.S. dollars in gross revenues for the year ended on November 30, 2023. This represents an increase compared to the previous year when the company reported 5.5 billion U.S. dollars in revenues. Launched in 2016, OnlyFans reported gross revenues of 238 million British pounds in 2019.

In 2023, the popular online video and user-generated content OnlyFans, owned and managed by the London-based Fenix International Limited, generated over 60 percent of its annual net revenue in the United States market. The company generated 214 million U.S. dollars from the rest of the world, while 230 million U.S. dollars were generated in the European and UK markets.

In December 2024, users in the United States amassed approximately 178 million visits to the content creator website OnlyFans. The United Kingdom followed, with approximately 20 million visits to the photo and video sharing platform during the examined month. Users in the Mexico and India amassed around 15 million and 14 million visits to the OnlyFans website, respectively, during the last examined month.

In 2023, the popular online video and user-generated content OnlyFans, which is owned and managed by the London-based Fenix International Limited, reported that the platform generated over 1.3 billion U.S. dollars in net revenues during the year ending November 30, 2023. This represents a staggering increase since 2019, year in which the company reported 44 million British pounds (or 49.9 million U.S. dollars in net revenues). OnlyFans has become ubiquitously popular in 2020, due to the global outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic that pushed creators in several industries - including the adult entertainment industry - to rely more heavily on online environments.

In February 2025, OnlyFans received approximately 179,522 requests to open creator accounts on the platform, 36 percent of which were approved to post on the platform. During the second half of 2024, the entertainment and video platform OnlyFans received around 1.1 million requests submitted to open creators' accounts, but only 396,272 were approved to open an account on the platform.

On June 15, 2023, Twitch announced the launch of its Partner Plus Program - which allows streamers with at least 350 recurring paid subscribers for three months in a row to earn 70 percent of their net subscription revenue. Twitch's new partner program came right before influential live streamers xQc and Amouranth left the platform to onboard competitor's live-streaming hosting service Kick. OnlyFans, which allows users to stream live content from creators as well as pre-recorded videos, shared 80 percent of fans' payments with creators. Streamers’ revenues According to Kick’s estimations, streamers with 5,000 subscribers would be looking to earn around 23,750 U.S. dollars, thanks to the platform’s low commissions. Launched between the end of 2022 and March 2023 under the advisory of live streamer Trainwreck, Kick allows content creators to earn 95 percent of their revenues on the platform, with the service taking only five percent of streamers' subscriptions. This represents one of the lowest commission fees among this type of online video platform, with Twitch's streamers who are not eligible for the new partnership sharing 50 percent of their revenues with the Amazon-owned host, and YouTube's content creators sharing 30 percent of the Super Chat and Super Stickers received from viewers during a live streaming session with the Google-owned service. In 2022, only 22 percent of U.S. content creators who made money from creating internet videos reported making more than 1,000 U.S. dollars. In case of live-streamed content, the share of U.S. live streamers making 1,000 U.S. dollars and more were merely seven percent of the total. Kick’s rise Kick is a live streaming platform launched between the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023, proposing itself as a competitor to giants YouTube and Amazon-backed Twitch. Between January 2023 and April 2023, the platform grew from nine thousand channels to 67 thousand, with popular live streamers Félix Lengyel (better known as xQc) and Amouranth adding to the ranks in June of the same year. Adin Ross, who was known for streaming Grand Theft Auto V games on Twitch – was the most popular streamer on Kick during the first quarter of 2023, gathering approximately 125 peak viewers during his live streams. PaulinhoLOKObr ranked second, with around 62 thousand peak concurrent viewers for hist streams.