What's up, everybody?
This is Cortland from IndieHackers.com, and you're listening to the IndieHackers podcast.
More people than ever are building cool stuff online and making a lot of money in the process.
And on this show, I sit down with these IndieHackers to discuss the ideas, the opportunities, and
the strategies they're taking advantage of, so the rest of us can do the same.
This is a fairly unusual episode of the podcast.
I'm here with the two of you, Ayla and Savannah Solo, and we're talking about OnlyFans, which
is kind of at the intersection of the creator economy and porn.
And porn is not a subject that has ever come up on the IndieHackers podcast before, so
you two are blazing new trails here.
Welcome to the show.
Thank you.
Thanks for having me.
Thank you.
Also, I'm excited.
Me too.
I should do a disclaimer for listeners.
People always tell me to do disclaimers.
I've never done one before.
So if you are a listener and you're not comfortable hearing about sex work or listening to women
talk about making a very healthy living from porn on the internet, no big deal, you don't
have to listen to this.
Although I recommend that you listen to this because I think it's cool.
Both of you are very successful.
Ayla, you've shared that you're in the top 0.08% of creators on OnlyFans.
How much money have you made on the platform before?
My highest earning month was $105,000.
Crazy.
And Savannah, I don't know if you've shared, but I know that you were able to buy a house
last year, sort of infamously with your OnlyFans earnings.
Yes, yes, I was.
I got to the top 0.06%, but my best month is $64,000.
So these are crazy numbers.
I come from the tech industry where there's a decent amount of envy.
Somebody have a successful startup and people be like, oh, I'm so happy for them.
And then underneath, you could tell they're seething, they're kind of jealous.
But what I've seen of both of you, just reading through your profiles, Ayla, you did a huge
AMA on Reddit a few years ago.
There's envy when you're successful on OnlyFans, but people don't hide it.
They just let it out immediately.
They are not afraid to talk about how jealous or how you shouldn't be making the money that
you're making.
It's crazy what you two are able to put up with.
Yeah, the perception is that it's easy.
I think a lot of people are like, well, if I were a woman, I could just go make that
much too.
Yeah, for sure.
And I think when people start selling pictures of their butt, they think, oh my God, I have
the best butt that's ever existed and everyone is going to want to look at this.
But then they forget that you can just Google butts for free and convincing people to pay
to look at yours is really an art form in and of itself.
I feel like you're calling me out here because I just signed up for OnlyFans this week as
a creator and I've only uploaded one photo and it's a photo of my butt.
So if you're an indie hackers listener and you want to see what my butt looks like, I
should, what should I charge like 20 bucks for it?
Absolutely.
Depends on how artistic you did it.
I think it was tastefully done.
It's very subtle.
You got to really hype it.
Yeah.
I thought that's what we were doing right now.
Like this is, this is the hype.
You guys are going to teach me your tricks though, because you're both super good at
marketing on OnlyFans.
You're both huge on Twitter.
Savannah, my girlfriend's a huge fan of yours on Twitter.
That's how you got on my radar.
You've got about 230,000 followers and Ayla, you have two separate accounts on Twitter
that are each at about a hundred thousand followers.
So both of you clearly know what you're doing and you're going to have to teach me a few
things.
We absolutely can.
I think between the two of us, you're in pretty good hands, decently good hands here.
So for people who don't know, OnlyFans is, what's the best way to describe it?
It's almost like a Twitch or a YouTube, but for porn.
And so it kind of exploded onto the scene in the last couple of years and it allows
you to basically post photos and videos for a subscription fee for your fans when they
can actually interact with you.
It's not just normal porn, but it's interactive.
People can DM you and you can message them back.
It's pretty cool.
And I think it's sort of changing the porn landscape because it's allowing individuals
like the two of you to basically make a living for yourself.
And if you're good at marketing and you're good at taking photos and you're good at basically
connecting with your fans on a level that makes them want to feel connected to you,
you can actually clearly make a transformative living for yourself.
I was looking at the revenue numbers, I think they did like $400 million in revenue last
year.
That's a good thing.
A lot, a lot, a lot of people are on OnlyFans and I'm curious how the two of you came to
be on OnlyFans.
So maybe Savannah, let's start with you.
Okay.
So I have like a bit of a fun story about how, well, not fun at all.
I don't know why I said that.
How I came to be on OnlyFans was I had a boyfriend who I had been with for a really, really long
time.
I graduated from college with a business degree and couldn't even get like a job at the bank.
And he was like, I don't know, why don't you sell your nudes?
And I don't think he thought, I don't know, maybe, maybe he wasn't actually serious about
it because I was like, sure, I'll do that.
And then I did it and he dumped me.
But jokes on him.
Wow.
I'm doing great.
And so he's like the only boyfriend I've ever had and he really, he really failed it.
Like, yeah, he's probably one of the people who turned off the episode when I gave the
discussion.
Right.
I often joke that the nicest thing he ever did for me was get me into porn and dump me.
But I mean, I had never imagined myself doing this before that.
And so OnlyFans sort of fell into my lap and now I'm all up in OnlyFans' lap.
So it's mutual.
Do you feel like your business degree has in any way contributed to the fact that you've
done so well on OnlyFans?
Are there like crossovers between what you learned?
There's stuff I noticed as far as like marketing, but business degrees are kind of a joke anyway.
I don't know.
I mean, I would like to say yes, but I know a ton, a ton of people who have no college
education who are just doing great on OnlyFans because they just in their own special way
know how to draw people in.
Ayla, what about you?
How'd you get into OnlyFans?
That's a similar story, but this was much longer.
Years ago, I was dating a guy who was like, hey, we should try a camming together, like
the live stream version.
If someone listening doesn't know, like, camming is sort of what was the primary way of making
money for online sex workers before OnlyFans, where it was typically like focused on live
streaming, whereas OnlyFans is a little bit more asynchronous in time, so like you can
post a photo, for example, and people view it later.
So I was dating a guy and he was like, hey, you should try camming, because at that point
I was like sleeping on a couch, I had just finished working at a factory on an assembly
line floor for a year, and I had been homeschooled and didn't have a college education.
So I was really desperate trying to look for any kind of way that was not a factory to
make money.
So he suggested this and then ended up, I ended up breaking up, but then I kept going
with it.
So I was a cam girl for many years, and then OnlyFans came along.
I had been taking a break from sex work at that point, but a lot of my friends were like,
you should really try this OnlyFans thing, we're making a lot of money.
So I switched over, and yes, it was in fact a lot of money.
Yeah.
There's something very inspiring about seeing people make a ton of money from something
that like really gets you off your butt to take action.
I mean, it's the entire concept behind this podcast is if I share stories of people making
lots of money, other people are like, oh, I should start a business like that.
That sounds great.
Yeah.
Yeah, for sure.
My ex had been showing me earning statements of girls.
I saw one earning statement where a girl had made like $45,000 in a month, and I couldn't
imagine making $45,000 in a year.
I could not imagine myself getting a job where I made $45,000 in a year, and she just had
done it in her living room in a month.
And I was like, you know what, if I can make $2,000 a month off of OnlyFans, I'll never
look for a regular nine to five ever again, like that'll be it.
There was no part of me that was ever anticipating it to pop off the way it did.
Yeah, that's pretty life changing.
Yeah, same here.
When I was first starting, I was escorting actually in person doing in-person sex work.
And I was like, okay, I'll maybe consider quitting in-person sex work if I happen to
like make more doing this on OnlyFans.
But I didn't really think that was feasible.
And like, my first month I made $13,000, and I was like, that's a really surprising amount
of money to make on OnlyFans, like, that could change my life.
But then it just kept going.
I had no idea.
That's nuts.
I was listening to a podcast actually with the guy who's giving OnlyFans tips.
His goal was like, I'm going to record 100 podcast episodes in 100 days.
And his 100th episode, he was like, here are three of my biggest tips.
And one of them was patience.
He was talking about how like it just requires patience to get into the game.
Like if you want to, you know, hope to succeed on OnlyFans, you need to basically stick with
it.
But apparently that wasn't the case for you, Ayla.
How did you make $13,000 in your very first month?
I was already established on Reddit, which is a lot of what a lot of girls use to advertise.
And I had already been very active and advertising on Reddit for years before that.
So it gave me a jumpstart.
But I did do a survey of a couple hundred girls on OnlyFans and found that earnings
tended to taper off around eight to nine months.
So after working on the platform, about eight to nine months is around when you kind of
hit where you're going to be for a while.
That makes sense.
There's this concept called the Lindy Effect, which basically says that the life expectancy
is like anything inanimate, like an idea or a career is proportional to the time that's
already been around.
So, you know, which book is going to be read 100 years from now?
Probably the books that were already read 100 years ago.
Which people are going to, you know, be established on OnlyFans a year from now and still be going
strong?
Probably the people who've already been consistent for the last years, you know, like the most
likely people to quit OnlyFans are probably people like me who just joined yesterday or
something.
So both of you have been super established.
You're super consistent.
But I also get the vibe that, Ayla, you're sort of moving away from OnlyFans, whereas
Savannah, you seem like you're going super strong.
Oh, yeah.
That's the question that I had.
How do you maintain consistency?
Because I'm getting burned out already.
Like Savannah, how do you how do you not get burned out?
Oh, well, my my first month on OnlyFans in a drastic comparison, I made 80% of my
80 bucks in the whole first month.
So I mean, it definitely took me a few months to get it going.
But I have found recently, I had all last year since April, from April to December,
I had been going strong between 25 and $35,000 a month.
And then suddenly, this January, I decided to get on TikTok and start making like safe
for work, totally innocent TikToks, where I just might happen to be wearing a sports
bra or something else a little more revealing.
And it generated so much organic traffic that everything just doubled for me.
Just yes, out of out of the blue, out of nowhere.
And for the past four months, five months now, it has been going at the exact same rate.
And I have no idea how that happened.
But in order for me to not get burnt out, I have to do stupid things.
And not stupid, like, like endangering, but like, I have to just exist and have fun.
Because if I wake up and I force myself to try and pretend to be sexy every single day,
it's just not going to happen.
And I find that everyone can tell whenever I'm actually not into it.
Because a lot of the times people will message me and be like, actually, I kind of hated
that.
You not do that anymore?
I'm like, okay, shit.
Thanks.
All right.
Yeah, no, I won't do that again.
Ever again.
Thanks so much for your input.
But I mean, like, I'll make stupid videos in my underwear just making a dessert or just
having fun.
I think a lot of people subscribe to me just because it's pretty laid back.
And there are videos where they want to get their rocks off.
They can go ahead.
And then there are some videos where it's basically just my naked YouTube channel where
I'm just doing things and just having a good time.
And that's been really fun.
It's been freeing to not feel like I have to crank out porn every day.
I mean, it's all considered porn, but like the hardcore stuff, not every day, not every
day for sure.
It sounds like TikTok is a lot of fun for you.
I'm still not on TikTok.
I'm like way behind everybody.
Like I think I've downloaded the app, but I've opened it maybe once or twice.
It's so cool.
What's like so neat about TikTok is that it's like an organic traffic machine.
All it does is use algorithms to cater to exactly what you're looking for.
And I don't have to.
I mean, a lot of people use hashtags to do that, but I can do a video with no hashtags
on it.
And just from a handful of people liking it, they'll know that they can show this to a
million other people and they'll like it too.
And it's just so wild and it drives so much traffic.
It's so cool.
Yeah.
My friendly Jen launched her website on TikTok.
I think someone else tweeted about it.
She has a website that teaches millennials basically or Gen Zers how to find work online
and make money.
It's like, oh, here's a hundred different services here.
So they all work.
Here's how to sign up.
So OnlyFans is on there.
Even driving for Uber is on there.
And it just went super viral on TikTok and she got millions of page views in the very
first month, which is crazy because I talked to so many people running online businesses
and none of them are on TikTok.
Yeah, TikTok's the way to go.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You were doing like small business, handmade things even, and you promoted on TikTok just
a few times to the correct niche of people and your products will sell out faster than
you can make them.
It's really cool the way it all works.
My highest earning month on OnlyFans was when I was posting regularly to TikTok as
well.
It was the combo of TikTok and Reddit regular posting really just doubled everything.
It's crazy that Savannah, you were willing to push through those early months of only
making like 80 bucks.
There's this good idea.
There's a book called The War of Art by Steven Pressfield and he talks about the pain of
being an artist and how hard it is to get up and write every day or paint every day
or something because it's hard sometimes.
And his prescription is like misery.
He's like, the Marines, they just embrace misery.
They brag about going through this terrible process and that's what makes them get up
and do it every day.
It's like they almost pretend to like the suffering.
Your approach is almost the exact opposite.
You're like, nah, not about the misery.
I would love to just dress up wherever I want and make fun TikTok videos.
I don't know.
I was trying so hard in the beginning to just be like really sexy and I don't like to put
myself down, but I also am not like, I'm not the face of sexiness.
And so I had to mix in some fun with it.
And initially I started making funny videos about being an OnlyFans creator and that's
what got my feet under me at all because other people were just sharing my funny videos about
what it's like to just look at weiners all damn day.
And so that was really surprising.
I wasn't expecting those to pop off.
It was really just like stress relief for me because it was either that or I was going
to scream.
And so I ended up just having fun with it.
And from there on out, once I was advertising, even though it was an accident, once I was
advertising with just having fun, people would subscribe and be like, I'm actually a little
disappointed that your content isn't more fun, that it's just all sex stuff.
And I was like, dude, I don't really know what to tell you about that.
But if you guys want me to just have more fun, you got it, baby.
Be careful what you wish for because you're going to have 16 videos of me getting margarita
drunk in the bathtub in a row.
I'm going to talk shit for three hours on live.
I mean, that's really the way to go.
I think like a lot of girls kind of don't understand this.
They think like, oh, if I'm going to do OnlyFans, I need to kind of show my titties and be this
like void of personality husk that just wants to drill over a penis.
And that's not what men are looking for.
Like men are really looking for like a connection with a human being, which is why that works
so well.
I think I kind of actually went the opposite direction of you a little bit.
Like when I first started, the only thing that I did was like very silly, funny content.
Like I was a naked mime and I did like the abducted by gnomes photo shoot and all this
stuff.
And then over time, I realized that like when I was less funny, I made more money.
And so it kind of like beat the creativity out of me, not all the way.
Like I still have to be funny to some extent to survive, kind of like what you said.
But I feel like a lot more jaded.
Why do you think that is?
Why does your income decrease when you were less funny?
Because it seems like the exact opposite of Savannah.
Yeah, I mean, it's possible that there's like a really nice middle ground.
Or you can still be do funny while being sexy.
And I haven't figured out how to do that.
This is when I was camping, right?
And so you can sort of get really fine tuned life feedback, how many tips you earn per
hour, based on how attractive like, but based on what you're doing, like over time, you
get to know exactly the kinds of things that earn more money.
And as I like, kind of increased how sexy I was and decrease the sporadic coopiness,
the margarita in a bathtub for three hours, like really speaks to me, Savannah.
When I started like decreasing that, I started making more money.
And that kind of built a lot of resentment in it in me.
I was like, Oh, like if I actually want to make a good living with this, like, I need
to suppress the parts of myself that are really having fun.
And that caused me to get burned out with camping eventually.
So I'm like really given some hope actually hearing you talk about how having fun seems
to be so successful for you, Savannah.
Like, it makes me wonder if I can sort of pull this off again on Onlyfans.
I'm super curious how like your revenue like breaks down in Onlyfans, is it all people
subscribing to you and paying a monthly fee?
Is it people paying you like one off transactions for photos?
How does it work?
Exactly.
For me, it's about 60% subscription, and the rest 40% like tips and videos.
For me, I would say it's probably closer to 90% subscription and then like a 10% on like
video purchases, or tips, but what's your sub price Savannah?
It's $6 for the first month and then $7.50 recurring.
Wow, it's that's impressive to have that high a subscription percentage with that lowest
sub price.
It's a lot of people.
I often joke that I'm the Walmart of Onlyfans, I am like the Dollar Tree for porn.
And so I just get a ton of people, it is all volume.
And then I like to leave, I'm always running the $6 for you know, like the $6 sale all
the time.
And it's open to expired subscribers as well, even though they think it's not so that they
feel like they've cheated the system by letting their subscription run out and then subscribe
again for $6.
But the jokes on that, I did it, I did an experiment where I went and I did it only
and I set the settings to our only first time subscribers could get the $6 deal and my subscriptions
fell by like half.
And I was like, okay, gonna have to turn that back on.
It's interesting how it's interesting how people whenever they even whenever it's $1.50,
they feel like they've really gotten the deal of a lifetime.
I would much rather have the people coming in, resubscribing for six bucks, even if they
turn it off and resubscribe every, every month for again for $6.
And I miss out on the buck 50 or more since Onlyfans takes 20% off the top.
Ayla, what is your pricing strategy on Onlyfans because it sounds like you're pretty surprised
by the way that Savannah does it.
Based on like the way that I understand how most girls do like the impression I've got
from hearing girls talk about it is that there tends to be like two strategies for pricing
on Onlyfans.
One is you have a really low sub price for entry and then you have a lot of like markups
once you do subscribe, like you sell a whole bunch of videos or you do trips or something.
And the other strategy is to have like a really high sub price for entry and then you don't
do quite as many once you're in.
I kind of do like a mix of both I have like a 23 sub price and again, like 40% of my income
is from videos on top of that.
So I'm really surprised to hear the low sub price plus like such a high income with also
no videos that means you must have like a really high amount of both like volume and
people resubscribing.
Yeah, I do have a really good like subscriber retention rate, which I've been very blessed
with.
They tend to be really chill and they just let it keep recurring.
But yeah, there's part of me that wishes if I could go back in time and price myself a
little bit differently.
Right before like it started, my page started getting popular.
It's part of me that wonders if maybe if I had done that if it would still be as successful.
But I think, I think in all honesty, I think a lot of people when their first impression
of me is like, Oh, okay, like because I don't do any nude promotion and stuff.
So they quite literally have to subscribe if they want to find out anything and I feel
like people wouldn't chance it if they're if my subscription price was higher.
Not knowing they might be like, well, she might not look appealing to me at all.
And then I'm, and then I'm out a lot of money.
But then I bait and switch them because turns out I look great stick around.
But I do I do a couple of like videos a month.
This last month, I didn't do one at all.
And I felt terrible about us the first month in like a year that I've done that but I will
do videos under $10 like supplemental like the the porniest of the porn stuff I do still
send out in DMS.
And that's not really just because I don't want people to see it but because my content
gets constantly leaked the stuff that is the most explicit I still feel like, you know,
if I even just price it five bucks, like or three bucks or whatever, always under $10.
People are still happy to pay to look at that if they they really want that.
And it does keep my stuff from getting leaked quite as often because whatever goes on the
feed immediately ends up on the sexy butthole, e-girl, whatever website.
I mean, I've got like a service of people who fingerprint my videos and like immediately
identify those leaks so that I don't have to look at it or conceive it or remember that
it exists and is happening.
But it's still like, man, there's a pain in the butt.
Rabbit trailed really hard.
Sorry about that.
Yeah.
Well, now it's fascinating to hear about the sort of the trade offs and the way that you
do the pricing.
And so if you're doing basically non explicit content, presumably like on TikTok and Twitter,
and then you're giving people like the low sort of barrier entry, like low pricing so
they can actually not feel like they're taking a huge risk, that makes a ton of sense.
And for me, I guess I only have one photo and you probably couldn't guess it.
I even haven't only finished my Twitter, so I got to go with like the high price point
and just milk that one photo for all I can.
You absolutely should.
You've already got a following.
You don't have to start from scratch.
You just profit.
You just profit.
So was that like a turning point for you, Savannah?
Were you?
Oh shit.
Looks like we lost Ayla.
Looks like she dropped.
Can you hear me?
Should I reload?
No.
That sounds good.
Yeah, maybe start reloading the page.
The noises you're making.
Okay.
All right.
Give me a second.
I'm just getting beep.
Wow.
I guess it's better than her internet completely cutting out.
She's still kind of here.
It's better than nothing.
Oh man, before I bought this house, I mean, obviously I've never bought a house before,
but I was so excited that I liked the bathtub.
I forgot to ask about the internet speed or even like Verizon's speed here.
And so I got into this house and like my first night here, it was like me, my twin mattress
and like a box of pizza, no wifi because we had just had a hurricane hit and like I couldn't
do anything.
I might sell, wouldn't even load my Spotify and I was just like staring at the ceiling
with my pizza.
I was like, I guess I'm just going to go sit in the shower for the next six hours for something
to do.
Yeah.
It's hard to be an OnlyFans creator.
If you don't have internet, seems pretty crucial.
I was driving back and forth to my mom and dad's house to upload my porn for like a month
and a half before the wifi people out here, can you hear me now?
Yes.
Yeah.
You sound pretty good.
Okay.
Fantastic.
Yeah.
I moved into this house.
I was like, Oh, this house is beautiful.
It's going to be great for OnlyFans content.
Turns out the internet is not great.
So I'm trying to use my phone data, which is usually fine, but occasionally it cuts
out.
Are you on a, are you in the house that you had the party in?
Oh yeah.
The party was great.
You keep talking about your butt cheeks being on OnlyFans, but they were definitely out
at the party.
Well, I was convinced to wear chaps and I'll be honest.
I had no idea what chaps were.
I was like, sure.
I'll wear those as long as they're not assless chaps.
And then I got them and I learned that all chaps are assless chaps.
It's like actually a redundant term.
There is no such thing as ass for chaps.
So yeah, my butt was out.
Oh no.
What are we even talking about?
We are way off topic.
Okay.
OnlyFans.
OnlyFans is cool because it's like, we talk on this show a lot about people, like creators
making money on other platforms.
So we talk a lot about sub-stack.
You have these like newsletter authors who are just like charging a subscription fee.
There's also like a whole new, I think, array of basically ways to make money coming online.
For example, you're both really big on Twitter.
Twitter just added a tip jar.
So now people can literally just like tip you on Twitter once they roll out the feature
to your account and they're eventually going to have, uh, you haven't heard about this.
It's pretty cool.
It's not rolled out to everyone yet.
I did not know this.
It's brand new.
Okay.
So there might be like a little link on your profile.
You could set like a tip amount or something, or now you can disable it or enable it and
people can tip you whatever you want.
But then they're going to do super follows, which is going to be very similar to OnlyFans
where you can basically have paid subscribers to your Twitter account.
And also you can like make certain tweets private and people can pay to access those
tweets.
So I'm curious, you know, you are aware of this and you know, now that you are, do you
think it will change whether or not you use OnlyFans?
Can OnlyFans survive in a world where Twitter is basically copying all the paid features?
What percentage is Twitter taking and can you lock not safe for work posts on Twitter?
It seems really important.
Twitter is not taking any percentage, but the problem with the tip jar on Twitter is
is that it's going through like PayPal, Venmo, Cash App, apps that famously discriminate
against sex workers.
So if PayPal finds out that you're selling your nudes over Twitter, they're going to
shut down your PayPal account and take all the money that's in it.
Yeah.
I mean.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
And so I mean, in concept, it's really cool.
And I mean, like Cash App is a little bit, is a little bit sneakier and a little easier
to fly under the radar, but you still run the risk of getting all of that money taken
out.
Not saying that you don't get, have the risk of, you know, your OnlyFans account getting
shut down, but it is really all up to the credit card companies and the payment processors,
but they're going to allow you to sell on Twitter.
And I think Twitter will see more restrictions against sex work as far as like using the
Twitter tip jar for paying for sex work and things of the like adult, just anything in
the adult industry.
I think there'll be more restrictions on the tip jar because people are going to make use
of that.
But I also saw where someone sent a tip to someone through the Twitter tip jar since
it rolled out a few days ago.
And if you do it over PayPal, PayPal immediately sends that person your real name and address
if you have it linked to your PayPal, which would be absolutely disastrous for most sex
workers.
I feel like they should have thought this through, even not with sex workers, like even
if I weren't doing sex work, I still have stalkers, like that seems like an incredible
security breach.
I don't think PayPal is really designed with like individual creators in mind, you know,
it's for like business, like what's your business address, etc.
And so like the fact that it's being shoehorned into the Twitter tip jar, it creates like
all these unforeseen consequences and risks that Savannah is talking about.
I really hope they do crypto, it would be fantastic if you could tip somebody with crypto,
because like you can't discriminate against sex workers with cryptocurrency.
It's fascinating, like maybe the last few years has been such a huge push towards decentralization,
crypto and the blockchain being at kind of the forefront, and like all of that should
help theoretically sex workers a ton, because almost like every primary payment processor
on the internet just doesn't allow sex work on their platform.
It's part of why OnlyFans is so big, it's because they've like figured out how to do
it.
And it's hard for anyone else.
Like even my employer Stripe is one of the biggest payment processors on the internet,
if not the biggest, they own this podcast, they don't allow basically pornographic material
on their platform.
You can't use Stripe for a porn website, right?
We'll see how they feel about this episode.
But point is, like it's not easy to do.
And so the fact that like OnlyFans is on the up and up, and that also that like Twitter
might allow crypto on the tip jar, and when they do the super follows thing, like it might
allow crypto there is like pretty cool for sex workers.
I wonder like how popular is the blockchain and cryptocurrencies for sex workers?
Like in the community and in sex worker chats, do you feel like this is ushering in a new
age where you have more freedom to do what you want on the internet?
I hope so.
I mean, there's a lot of people working towards that direction.
Like for example, like NFTs have been stuff that sex workers are starting to sell.
And there's like spank pay, which is a really easy way to accept crypto payments like specifically
designed for sex workers, you just sort of like I have my spank pay link in my not safe
for work Twitter.
And so sometimes people just go and tip me there.
And so I'm hoping stuff like that like really blossoms.
I mean, I think like porn is like a very clear use case example for why crypto would be good.
And so a lot of people are looking at it.
Oh, yeah, for sure.
And especially since Visa and MasterCard have pulled the earlier this year from Pornhub.
Now the only form of payment on Pornhub if I'm not misinformed is just cryptocurrency.
And that's the only one left.
Which I mean, it would be it would be super cool if if we moved more toward cryptocurrency
because there there's not regulation on it the way credit card companies are have to
regulate what you sell.
I mean, even on OnlyFans, there are so many rules about what you can and can't post.
And those rules are regulated by the credit card companies that they can do they can also
do chargebacks, which you can't with Bitcoin in cryptocurrency.
So someone buys all the porn I have and then they're like, actually, I want all that money
back that I still got the porn, didn't I?
They can just go to their credit card company that someone hacked their card or whatever
and then they get all their money back and I'm just out of porn.
It's like it's pretty tragic.
The fact that I mean, like one of the entire premises behind the show is that like if you
were a founder or creator of some sort, like you can kind of chart your own path.
You can be like, you know, not necessarily platform dependent, but doing sex work, you
still are extremely platform dependent and a lot of platforms are very hostile.
And even on OnlyFans, I think like OnlyFans first popped on my radar last year with that
whole like Bella Thorne scandal.
And so for listeners who aren't aware, like Bella Thorne, like was this famous actress
and she got an OnlyFans like promise everybody that she's going to post nudes and like her
account blew up.
She got I think like millions of followers or hundreds of thousands of followers or something.
And she ended up making like $2 million in like a week.
But then like the pictures she posted like weren't exactly nude or based on like, I don't
know, people felt misled.
And so they started doing a ton of charge backs and then OnlyFans had to like change
all their rules, which presumably affected everybody else on OnlyFans affected the two
of you as well.
And that's kind of an example of the fact that, you know, you are dependent on this
platform means that like your business is really at risk depending on random other things
that are completely outside of your control.
That is a frustrating part of it because a lot of that is just like out of our hands.
And I mean, OnlyFans is a platform that's been made by someone who has worked in the
adult industry as not as a performer, but as someone who has been in the industry.
And their goal is, you know, to marry mainstream social media and merge it with, you know,
adult content or things that you can put behind a paywall, you know, in that way, you know,
and to not discriminate between the two, but still all the time, they don't promote any
sex workers on any of their promotional material.
They only promote big celebrities who come on.
And the fun part about that is the celebrities get tired of posting side boob shots after
a couple of weeks after they've made a couple million dollars.
And there have been consequences that have affected the platform for everyone else.
And then they get to go home and sleep in their mansion and have had a really fun time
cosplaying a sex worker for a couple of weeks.
And then they're done.
And then the rest of us are just like, this is great.
You really just kicked over the whole table, didn't you?
The term cosplaying a sex worker is so great.
And as you said, I got furious because that is what a lot of them are doing, like sort
of like, oh, we stand in solidarity with sex workers like, look, I'm on OnlyFans and it's
like, great.
Where's your vagina?
And you're not really putting it on the line and like, you don't really experience like
the kind of pressure to actual sex workers do.
It's really frustrating.
Does this happen often?
Is it not just, I only heard about Bella Thorne, I didn't realize it's like a recurring problem
in the industry.
It's like a double edged sword because like, a creator will jump on or like a celebrity
or some sort of other social media star will jump on.
And the problem is usually they either condemn selling nudes and boast that they've just
sold ludes as if that does not also fall under the umbrella of sex work, but they're better
than us, or they end up scamming people by making them think that they're going to be
selling nudes or lies of omission and leading everyone to believe that they're going to
be selling nude content and then not doing that.
It's okay if you want to just sell ludes.
It's okay if you never want to post a nude picture on OnlyFans ever.
That is A-okay, but you got to tell people that you're not going to post your nudes on
OnlyFans, the site that's infamous for posting nudes.
You got to be upfront with that one because if you're not, then people will do chargebacks
and it'll create a scandal and it just makes everyone on the platform look like thieving,
lying sons of bitches.
If the celebrities who jumped on did it with a little bit more care and took a little bit
more time to understand what's at stake for everyone else on the platform and for all
the sex workers' lives, not just like the girls who are earning a ton of money every
month on OnlyFans, but for all the people who are doing this because they are just trying
to hang on and survive, they're valid too and it totally affects them.
It's just frustrating that when they're done, it just was a thing that they did for a couple
of weeks and then they just leave because they're bored of it and it's affected everyone
else.
Were the two of you affected by the Bella Thorne scandal and the fact that OnlyFans ended
up changing a lot of their rules?
I think they reduced the maximum price you could charge for a subscription and they changed
the payouts from weekly or biweekly payouts to month.
This is a bunch of stuff that just made it probably less profitable to be on OnlyFans.
I think some of those changes were country specific.
The ones that did impact me and I assume you too, Savannah, were the pay-to-view price
cap.
I think it was $200 and then it was brought down to $50, if I remember correctly.
I was selling stuff for quite a lot, but apparently you can.
I did contact them directly and they will raise a limit on you specifically if you request,
but I had to learn that through the grapevine.
It's not said anywhere inside of OnlyFans, but that was definitely a direct impact.
That is really interesting.
I didn't know that.
Oh man, the inner workings of OnlyFans and their customer service team is such an enigma
to me.
It is Pandora's box.
I feel like whenever Jesus finally comes back, he'll tell me what's going on at OnlyFans
support and then I'll finally know, but there won't be time to tell the other girls.
It doesn't make any sense to me.
I read somewhere that OnlyFans, right whenever they had blown up, had had only like 20 employees,
which makes sense as to why it took them 21 days to respond to any of my support emails.
Even from the outside, just looking at the website, I signed up.
There's no real onboarding experience.
The entire thing is really ugly, quite frankly.
It's like a Twitter clone, but that is designed for mobile, but there's no actual mobile apps.
Yeah, I mean, that's not allowed.
The app stores won't allow OnlyFans at all.
Right, and so you're stuck with the website, which is a terrible experience.
I know there have been examples of platforms and companies that when they go public after
doing very well, they offer some stock to the creators on those platforms.
Would you two want OnlyFans stock?
Do you think OnlyFans is here to stay?
I think it's here to stay.
The campsites, for example, enjoyed like a 10 year pretty solid life cycle and they're
still going.
I think the traffic is less due to OnlyFans.
And so I would not be surprised if OnlyFans followed kind of a similar cycle, like we're
seeing the rise of a very profitable model.
And I don't think we're going to get like another OnlyFans for a while.
I think so too.
I mean, I haven't been in the industry more than a year and a half, but I mean, I really
feel like OnlyFans has caught lightning in a bottle.
And if they just did the bare minimum to spruce it up, it would be so unbelievably good and
profitable that people would just never leave.
They would have no reason to.
I mean, that site moves like you're walking through pudding.
It is so sluggish and frustrating.
However, millions of people, millions and millions and millions of people use the site
anyway just because just the model is so good.
And it's so simple for people who don't, I guess, don't really require all the frills
and bells and whistles.
But I guess it's up to the creator to furl up their own page and make things fun for
the subscribers because the site is not going to do any of that for you.
I made $400 million.
They should hire a designer and some developers already.
Hopefully it's on their to-do list.
Yeah, it's crazy.
So the guy who I think owns OnlyFans now who got it, Leo, he's the owner of MyFreeCams.
And MyFreeCams was the highest earning campsite.
I think either the highest or very close to it for a very long time.
And that site looks like it's still out of the 90s.
If OnlyFans sucks, MyFreeCams is kind of like you're walking through a pile of shit.
It's an awful user experience.
And I don't know how they got that far.
They're just like, okay, I guess it's making money.
We're just going to leave it.
So this makes me a little more pessimistic about OnlyFans.
OnlyFans is already leagues better than any other sex work platform online that we've
seen.
But it still sucks.
It really sucks.
And my foods are so bad for sex work.
And I'm grateful that it exists.
We have come a long way.
But if the past ownership of this company by Leo is anything to go buy, I'm not super
optimistic that it will get faster.
There just isn't that much competition.
There aren't that many founders and entrepreneurs who are building websites for sex workers.
Because it's in part very hard to fit into the financial framework and get anybody to
support you to do that.
And so I guess you can come along with kind of a crampily designed, shoddily built website
and get the network effects going, and that's it.
It works.
Yeah.
For a while, I was looking into building my own website, just a unique, my own ALA.com
type deal where you subscribe and I get to control everything.
But the payment processor was where I ran into an issue.
They take 10% to 15% if you're low volume.
And I'm like, well, I wouldn't be really saving that much over OnlyFans anyway by that point.
So there's not a lot of room to maneuver right now.
What else are you doing outside of OnlyFans ALA?
Because I know that you're a little bit concerned about the fact that such a huge percentage
of your income came or comes from OnlyFans and you've got some other cool stuff.
I bought your card game that you made.
What else are you working on as sort of a creator and an entrepreneur?
There's the card game.
I'm also serving as advisor to a couple companies that are either hoping to help sex workers
or be a competitor to OnlyFans.
I think there's a lot of potential in the space, I'm really excited to maybe talk about
this in the future, although not yet.
I am working on helping advice for crosscollab.co and that is a site for creators to sort of
find people who you can effectively exchange promo with and shout out for shout out because
right now the landscape for finding good people to buy promo from is really a nightmare.
I'm also working on a book and I don't know, writing, tweeting, stuff like that, throwing
parties.
A million different things basically.
Yeah.
Savannah, have you seen Ayla's card game?
It's pretty cool.
No.
I'm so interested in this card game.
I have to know, explain everything to me.
I want to know the rules.
Can you walk us through the story of how you made it and why and how it's doing?
I've been historically obsessed with collecting questions and so for a while I would go to
parties and I'm kind of autistic and so I would try and figure out, I would just go
around with a list of questions to ask people and sort of gauge reactions.
Over time at these parties I would go through the questions and cut them out into little
pieces of paper and people eventually started telling me that I should make it into a card
game.
I collected 1,500 questions which I had asked over the course of three to four years and
ranked them by how much discussion they generated and how divisive they were.
These questions, a lot of them are especially designed to split the group 50-50 and a lot
of them are extremely taboo and irreverent.
Apparently this has ended some friendships this game.
I have heard reports.
It's very controversial questions.
This one, in a world where prostitution becomes legal and regulated, should sex workers be
allowed to refuse clients on the basis of race?
Who would even think of that?
Ayla, you've thought of a lot of this stuff and I know you source a lot of it from Twitter.
I was reading a sex worker forum actually and there were these sex workers who were
having that discussion.
There was a sex worker who was saying that she didn't feel uncomfortable.
I think it was saying Indian clients in a certain city in the US because she had bad
experiences with them.
Then the sex workers were discussing whether or not this was okay to do.
That's one example of where I got that question.
How's the card game doing?
I forgot how much I paid for it, but you're actually selling this on your website.
It's a beautifully designed website.
Thank you.
I did it.
I taught myself how to do that.
We're out of stock right now.
I'm hoping that it will be in stock by the time somebody ends up listening to this episode,
but we've been having supply problems that started due to COVID and we're shifting our
suppliers and whatnot.
That is so cool.
What a clever game, too.
That is so neat.
As soon as it's back in stock, I'm going to be purchasing a deck of my own because
that is genius.
I think it would do really well on OnlyFans, too, like tip for a question or make a video
reading a question per day or something like that.
I designed it partially with that in mind for gaming.
I can't wait to see it on the shelf at Target.
That is so awe.
This gets into the different ways the two of you basically market yourselves in OnlyFans.
Ayla, I think my brother first told me about you because not your porn Twitter account
but your other one where you're asking all these provocative questions.
It's pretty popular in the tech industry, actually.
I know a lot of founders who follow you respond to your polls because they're just so mentally
challenging and engaging.
I don't know how many people come from there to your OnlyFans.
Savannah, it sounds like most of yours come from TikTok and maybe Twitter as well.
I guess what do the two of you know about marketing yourselves and growing an OnlyFans
account that most people don't because you're in the top 0.006% of creators.
You're clearly doing something very right.
OnlyFans doesn't have any internal discovery or very little.
Everything you do, you have to push out to other platforms.
Savannah sounds like it's TikTok primarily and for me, it's primarily Reddit.
You have to find the platform where you can get a lot of organic discovery where you can
figure out the kind of content that maybe you have a little bit of an edge on for other
people and push it there.
There's a lot of other places.
I would say, for me at least, Twitter is actually less a source of traffic than other websites.
Twitter does not have very good organic discovery, especially for porn.
Some people do use it.
There's also like FetLife and Instagram.
Some people do very well on those too.
Can you describe to me your Reddit strategy since that seems to be like the place where
you do the best?
My Reddit strategy is quite involved.
When I'm doing it regularly, I've been taking a bit of a break from it recently, but when
I'm doing it regularly, I get a couple pieces of content every single day and then at night
I spend between 30 to 60 minutes scheduling it out in advance on Reddit.
I take a photo.
I have a spreadsheet with all of the subreddits and I have a scheduling.
I schedule it to a subreddit and then I jump forward a week, schedule it to another subreddit.
I have a photo that will automatically post to a cascading series of subreddits from
most viewed to least viewed over the next three months.
I just stack these gradually.
When I'm doing this regularly at my peak, I have automatic postings every morning before
I wake up because it's one of the best time to post between eight to 10 subreddits every
morning and typically between two to four of those hit the top post of those subreddits.
That's where I was getting most of my traffic.
That's nuts.
What is doing the automatic scheduling?
Is it like reading your spreadsheet and posting the pictures or is there some other app?
You have to go in and you put the link to the image that you're uploading and the time.
You actually have to do it kind of manually.
It's just automatic and the fact that it will post it for you without you being there.
It's later for Reddit.
It's the one I use, but there's also delayed for Reddit and a couple others.
That's an indie hacker who made that.
I don't know if I've had him on the podcast, but I think I interviewed him on the website.
Really?
Yeah, I created later for Reddit.
Did he know what his website's being used for?
I'm sure he knows now, but at the time I interviewed him, he didn't mention it.
It's almost entirely OnlyFansGirls, as far as I know.
Really?
That's crazy.
Small world.
I have to message him and see if I could find his old interview.
Yeah, he did an interview on Indie Hackers years ago.
He was making like $250 a month, his name's Adam, and we interviewed him.
I'm sure he's doing really well.
Do you pay for it?
Yeah, I do.
Cool.
Thanks, Adam.
Yeah, thank you, Adam.
It's empowering the Reddit marketing strategy for OnlyFans creators around the globe, and
it's pretty involved.
Ayla, I didn't expect you to have such a complex setup for how everything works.
My strategy is ass compared to your strategy.
I'll post a couple of pictures or just one picture on Twitter with a caption that's just
stupid enough to get people to look, but I do sort of just rely on every once in a while
something just pops off.
It's never the thing I'm expecting.
It's never when I'm expecting.
It just happens, and luckily I've had consistency with it happening whenever it wants to, but
I end up making an exorbitant amount of money in one day or over two days, and then I can
sort of breathe a little bit, make just some fun, silly stuff before I have to really get
back on the grind.
It's like I pedal really, really fast, and then I can just coast for 0.1 miles, and then
I can pedal really fast and just do it again.
But other than that, I've tried to do the shout for shout thing a couple of times, and
because I don't do it often on my page, I've found that it brings out a lot of whiny, pissy
baby whiners who don't like that at all.
And so I stopped doing it just because I can't handle people sometimes.
But other than that, starting out, marketing was just clawing my way out of the giant pile
of girls who look the same and do all the same stuff as me, and just trying to find
a way to make myself stand out.
But I think where a lot of people go wrong with marketing in the beginning on OnlyFans
is they just don't have enough content up on their OnlyFans, and it doesn't matter
how wonderful you say your butthole is if there's only one picture of it and you're
charging $35 a month for that one picture of your butthole just like Cortland is going
to.
The Cortland strategy.
That's right.
But with no followers and no previous social media platform, like if you're starting from
scratch and you have nothing, there's no credibility there, then you're just not going to see people
investing in you the way you wish they would.
Seth Godin has a good book on marketing.
It's called This is Marketing.
And he kind of has a five-step process to marketing.
But the very last one is show up regularly, consistently, and generously for years.
That's the content production part that both of you are clearly not afraid to do.
You just keep putting out content, you keep scheduling things on your spreadsheet, and
I think that's probably something almost no one else does.
But then as step three or step two in that list is kind of like pick a very tiny, specific
niche market and just differentiate yourself from everybody else.
You can't post the same exact content that everybody else is posting.
I feel like both of you have found your niche.
How would you describe your niche, Savannah?
The really invested Star Wars porn that someone who obviously loves Star Wars wrote and acted
in, not like I put red body paint everywhere except for my vagina, and just said, help
me Obi-Wan Kenobi.
I think a lot of my following just comes from the fact that I'm a super massive nerd, and
I think whenever guys or girls or theys who subscribe to me, when they subscribe to me,
they know that we've probably all jerked off to the same Star Wars fan art.
And I think there's a sense of camaraderie that comes with that, and so I think that's
my niche.
Sorry if that was too much to say on here, but that's where it comes from.
I actually feel like we might be a little overlapping in our niche, although for me
it's Star Trek, not Star Wars, I'm sorry to say.
Oh, perfect.
That is okay.
And also like the goofy personality type deal, like a lot of the content that draws people
to my OnlyFans in the first place is small sketches that are really creative and sometimes
off the wall, sometimes make a confused boner happen.
A lot of the marketing I had, at least I used to, a little bit less now, are around boner
boot camp.
We're going to make your penis rise up and then drop down and then rise up, and who will
remain?
Only the strongest boners will survive this boot camp.
That sort of vibe, which I think is actually pretty similar to Savannah.
We somehow managed to get kind of the same vibe creator on here.
That seems like an excellent note to end the show on boner boot camps.
A lot of people listening are trying to figure out how to do their own boner boot camps,
and would love some advice from the two of you.
What are your tips for young creators getting started on OnlyFans or on any other creator
platform who are trying to figure out how to have the consistency and creativity that
the two of you've had?
Yeah, for me, keep at it.
It's a grind.
I know that I started out well on OnlyFans, but it was a grind to get to the point where
I could start out well on OnlyFans.
I went for years with very little success.
Just be really consistent through a business, because it is a business.
You show your titties and make thousands of dollars.
You have to be very clever and deliberate and pay attention to data and feedback.
Spend your time researching.
Find different platforms.
Figure out what works for you, and be really resilient in the face of it not working.
You have to figure out exactly the specific strategy that is going to work for you.
A lot of people give up before they hit that.
I totally agree with that.
I think also don't let it affect your self-esteem whenever you're first starting out.
I think that was the biggest hurdle I had to jump over was the realization that it wasn't
just going to be titties and profit.
I think a lot of people expect it to be titties and then profit.
They don't take the time to take a breather and be like, I'm in one of the most competitive
markets right now.
Right now is a really intense time to jump into online sex work because of the pandemic,
because everyone jumped on because they needed to pay their light bill.
I mean, not that you can ever really oversaturate the market when it comes to porn, but a lot
of people jumped on, and it definitely made it harder to get yourself out into a place
where you could be noticed more for something.
Like you were saying, if you can find a niche, some sort of thing about yourself that is
just unique and market the absolute hell out of it, then do that.
Just don't get discouraged.
Keep going and find something that makes you unique.
I love it.
Just do stuff that makes you feel good.
Feel good.
Be persistent and don't let it affect your self-esteem.
I think that's sage advice for any entrepreneur.
Savannah Solo, Alo, thanks so much for coming on the show.
Can you let listeners know where they can go to find out more about what you're up to
online, find your OnlyFans, or any other projects you're working on?
If you want to follow me on Twitter, you can find me on Twitter at Savannah underscore
Solo.
I mean, I'm assuming everyone here is over the age of 18, but I'm on OnlyFans at Savannah
Solo, and then I'm on TikTok at Savannah Solo, and those are pretty much the only places
you'll enjoy following me.
My Instagram is pretty bland.
Yeah, similarly, I'm Ayla, A-E-L-L-A, girl, that's with and without an underscore on Twitter
are my two accounts.
One of them is the with the underscore is safe for work and without the underscore is
not safe for work.
And also similarly on OnlyFans, I have two accounts there.
Yeah, and there's just links to everything else if you want to go go troll.
But yeah, thank you so much, Cortland.
This was fantastic.
Yeah, thanks to both of you.