Tim Walton
COVID-19 has some economies crashing, but others are skyrocketing including the lucrative business of selling nudes. Yes, a naked picture of yourself, on popular platforms such as OnlyFans.
As the Coronavirus has sent millions of American’s to the unemplyoment website and waiting for stimulus checks, others are cashing in on becoming an ‘independent content creator’ on the popular growing site. There users have been posting their own nudes and cashing in from it.
OnlyFans, is a platform which is best described as a Facebook page, that you have to pay to subscribe to in order to see each user’s private posts, photos and videos.
Just how much has selling nudes gone up? According to a company email to HuffPost, OnlyFans has seen a user increase of 75%. They’ve additionally seen new user sign ups of 170,000 new users per day.
Curious to how many users that is? That’s more users signing up in one day, than any single country (besides the USA), has had total cases of COVID-19.
A similar site, Patreon, reported 50,000 new content creators signed up for their site in March alone.
“It’s a way to empower myself. I’m my own boss. I set my hours, make my own rules and I am in control.” according to one creator, who goes by Brittany for privacy reasons. “I make about $2000 per week. It’s more than I ever expected and now I’m not just surviving quarantine, but I’m thriving it.”
Content creators charge between $4.99 and $49.99 per month and can sell additional content on their page and receive tips.
For Nikki, a university student who lost her job when schools closed, sees her OnlyFans as a business. “I put in about 30 minutes per day on my OnlyFans and I’ve made about $400 in the first 2 days.” she said. “It’s more than I made in 2 weeks at my job before. I wasn’t going to even try this. Then my friends did it and now we are all self-employed when others can’t even pay their bills”.
For some, it’s not about just getting by or even thriving. One of OnlyFans’ top creators, posted about how she makes an average of $17,000 per month. With so many people in front of their computers this month, she jumped to nearly $25,000 in income for March, and already at $12,000 in the first 11 days of April.
Not all people are using OnlyFans and Patreon to make fast cash. Some are selling other work, or access to their skills. One creator is selling drawing class tuturials, while another is using her platform to sell lessons for musical instruments.
For those users, sales have seen a decrease as consumers have less disposable income.
