Hi! While it’s slow season in SW in general (historically the holidays and winter months are slowest in the sex industry) and slow for me personally as I’ve been taking a step back to reflect, pause, and recover from burnout, I wanted to write a few things I wish I would have heard when I first started an OF. For those of you who may be discouraged, having a dishearteningly slow month, wanting to give up, suffering from OF-related depression etc. I’ve been there, I am there very often, and I want to tell you that you’re not alone 💖 This is a long post so bear with me.

Creating an Imgur gallery for a visual aid haha

https://imgur.com/gallery/RWI9NFv

There are many threads of practical advice here on how to formulaically succeed at OnlyFans — these pieces of advices will work for some people and flop for others. We’re all different visions of beauty and the way we run our accounts will greatly vary. Every top 1% and above creator will have their own methods of work. When I was starting, I encountered a lot of creators who hoarded advice and helpfulness. Why? We are all different, our markets are different, but some advice will be universal. My aim here is to do away with gatekeeping, discuss the deeper psychological aspects about OF, and humanize the cybersexual world as a whole.

✨ Tips that are universal: ✨

💖 pin your OF link to your profile on Reddit — I see many people asking why they aren’t getting more traction on OF when they don’t have their link pinned to their profile page. it lets viewers know what you offer. an “About Me” or AMA or Q&A always helps too, so people can see what you’re all about beyond just sex ;)

💖 branch out into niche subreddits, big subreddits, ones that you personally fit. what’s your niche: curvy? petite? gamer? alt? femdom? find subreddits for your type and engage with them; don’t spam post the same pic over and over again because it looks tacky, and you could get banned. if reddit is not your thing, try tiktok. it’s not my thing personally but many girls find subscribers there

💖 reddit captions are weird to navigate and the bane of my existence. I swear if I see one more fuckin post like “if even five guys like this I will fuck myself” // “would you fuck my barely legal petite body🥺” I will scream lol! I know that the shitty click bait captions will always get attention and it’s inevitable, but try and get creative with captions relevant to your pic, your niche, and your viewer

💖 try to see this from your potential subscriber’s perspective. would you subscribe to you? subscribers are human too, we want humanization to be a two way street. also remember that guys are fickle and can have very, very specific preferences — you can be the ripest peach in the orchard but there’s always someone who’s allergic to peaches or prefers radishes

💖 post on OF consistently and answer messages with diligence, but don’t burn yourself out. taking a rest will ensure you create better quality content and are in a better mood when you engage with your subs. the scheduler tool is your friend! especially when you need a break or know you’ll be away, you can schedule some posts ahead of time

💖 overpricing? underpricing? this is super subjective and I always say to price things intuitively, whatever you’re comfortable with! there is no wrong answer to this. it can be tempting to do price skimming so more people can see your content, and likewise overpricing for a presumed higher value. all those societal constructs are total BS imo and while my highest sub count was in the lower prices, my highest incomes were at the mid range prices. I do PPV very rarely like 1-2x a month and depending on the bundle of videos photos etc I’ll set it between $19-69. my monthly sub price is $12 so middle of the road. I do sales but usually in the -10% / -20% range because I find that people who subscribe for cheap are the most entitled. prove me wrong about this please, but subs who get in using a free trial will not stick around

💖 post things about your life that are important and interesting to you! engage with the parts of reddit that interest you and you may get surprising subs from strange places. ok this is kind of tricky tho cause you may get hate for just existing and having an OF 🙃 …at the end of the day I see myself as a creative who happens to have an OF, rather than basing my entire personality and life around OF. I still get subscribers sometimes from my sfw art and music accounts. don’t let OF overtake your life because it can be soul sucking and draining. let it be as joyful and fun as an experience possible. obvs easier said than done, especially if like me you struggle with mental health problems, but it’s your queendom and it should be a lovely experience for your subs (AND YOU!) to enter it

💖 use your other life experiences to translate into your OF! I have a background in academia, art world, and film industry so this helps with creating visually aesthetic nudes and having deep pretentious conversations with those so inclined for a certain type of chat

💖 creative shoot ideas: anything can be a backdrop or a prop! use your imagination and have fun with your surroundings. turn a regular daily task into a horny experience. sexuality is creativity. embody the horniness, enjoy the sexuality of life, and show your viewers what turns you on. you don’t need a big fancy house or a wardrobe of tons of lingerie and sex toys or an expert studio lighting kit. yeah those things help but us plebeian girl next doors can also be enticing. a lot of guys like a girl next door fantasy. use whatever you’ve got at your disposal as a photo or video adventure. I would totally teach a free workshop (if people were interested) of how to do creative shoots and take artistic photos/videos cause that’s really my niche haha

💖 turn off your DMs on reddit and don’t interact with time wasters. if your gut is telling you that a dude is a scammer, listen. I’ve been scammed before (a rite of passage tbh) when I had those gut feelings and ignored them

💖 BG content makes the most $$$ and being a solo creator (like myself) is like being on hard mode. faceless is also like extra hard mode, although faceless BG is lucrative. there are ways around this and there are many successful creators who have odds stacked against us

💖 take care of your health!! ok I sound like a grandma but it’s true, if you’re unhealthy you won’t be able to perform well. this goes for things like body image as well. I used to have an ED for years and if I hadn’t recovered I wouldn’t be able to be in this line of work as well — this is a very harsh line of work for people with body image conditions because our selling point is our appearance, and thin barely legal looking girls will dominate in this sadly creepily teen-obsessed culture. that said!! each and every body type will have a niche and a bunch of followers who love you — fat, thin, short, tall, hairy, bald, pregnant, mommy bod etc etc etc it can all be a fetish, the most important thing is truly loving yourself. be well, work hard, take care of our health, and believe in yourself

💖 hard work is important but luck also is a major factor of success — sometimes you just get lucky with a generous sub or a good month. I’ve also had posts “blow up” on reddit that had zero OF conversion, and others in niche ass subreddits that drew a lot of subs. luck is random as hell so do all kinds of things and see what sticks for you. I don’t believe OF success is necessarily as formulaic as we may think

💖 boundaries!! this is super important: if you’re not comfortable with doing a certain sexual act, please don’t sacrifice your personal comfort for money. you will have plenty of other opportunities to make money with something you do love to perform

💖 this may sound super fucking obvious, but make sure your OF content is exponentially better than your reddit/tiktok/social media previews. it is disappointing when “the best stuff” is on reddit and the OF contains about the same things. I rarely post gifs on here because I do a lot of videos on my OF, and I ensure the highest quality content I can. what I post to reddit is throwaways, random nudes that are still sexy, and occasionally a short gif preview. I consider reddit to be like my free OF for potential visitors, and a shitshow of a place where I scream into the void of the algorithm and post pet pics

✨ Lastly, have fun! This should be fun!✨

I’m kind of a Reddit has-been now, but in my better times I was very good at engaging with people on here and basically running it as a blog of my daily life, with nudes to entice to my OF. I got as far as I did due to luck, niche appeal to those interested in authenticity, and a psychopathic amount of overworking. My personal success to the top 1% was not an overnight one, not exponential or meteoric like some creators have or expect to have, but a slow start. Expectations are gateways to disappointment. This whole online world is superfluous — have intentions for OF that aren’t strictly money oriented. Maybe because my starting goal was not money, and the fact that this is my full time job now still surprises me, but I was even happy when I had like 10-15 subs who wanted to pay to see my stuff. While I may not have thousands of subs, my retention rate is quite good and my OF allows me a better life than any vanilla job (excluding other sex work which imo is more lucrative but also more dangerous) has given me in the past. To this day my “ranking” is fluctuant (between 1-2% if that matters to you… I’ve been stuck in some of my lowest points of the year, at 1.8% for the past few months, despite income level changing) and I try to not even bother fixating on percentages because I find that they are very inconsistent.

Your ranking could be “worse” during a month you made more money, or “better” when you made less — this aggregate is I guess based on your earnings relative to those of other creators worldwide, which is another issue in and of itself. Comparison is a thief of joy, and a competitive mindset can lead to a lot of frustration.

I think it’s important for creators to not become upset/obsessed with setbacks or slow growth, because the nature of this industry is very cyclical, and the failures are as important as the successes. Being part of the capitalistic hustle/grind shitstorm is the worst. The obsession with outdoing ourselves every month can be incredibly toxic and harmful — it’s good to have ambition and goals, but obsessively chasing money and putting all self worth into the numerical value is horrible.

We live in a system that perpetuates greed, overworking, and hustling. Burnout because of this draining system is so fucking real. People seem to forget that as sex workers we’re also humans and not machines, and need to take care of our mental and physical health by resting. In a 9-5job there are weekends off; we don’t have that on OnlyFans. Most of us probably spend 12 hours online doing our jobs. We’re privileged and fortunate to be able to do this online safe in our homes — I have done survival sex work in the IRL world and it is totally different territory. Don’t complain if you’re not a survival sex worker and privileged in other respects.

I’ve been doing OF for almost two years and camming/SW for longer, and I think this year might potentially be the year I quit. It’s been on my mind, the longevity of much longer I can do this. I deleted most of my nsfw posts from reddit recently cause of freeloaders/lack of interest in being on here, and I feel like I’m starting from scratch now but also coming to an end. At the end of 2022 I want to wrap up and resolve what I came to do on OF — I cummed, I saw, I conquered — and work on artistic projects / things that benefit others in a more community oriented way. I would like to do more collaborations. More artistic work. More destigmatizing of sex work. This Cyberhorny thesis is a start, a sort of guideline for navigating the dark psychological corners of the digital transactional sex world.

I also want to create an art grant for artistic SWers and OF creators and if I do, I’ll post it here if it’s allowed. I wish more of us gave back to the community in a substantial way. I wish us all great success so we can do that and have some forms of mutual aid!

There is no one size fits all idea of success here. We’re all doing the best we can, and whatever you aim to accomplish with your OnlyFans, I hope you achieve it.

Thanks for reading this post if you did, I hope this helps someone and I’m here to support and answer any questions. Take care! 💖✨

PS. This is the full CYBERHORNY pdf if you want to read it and dive in 💜🪢✨