Why OnlyFans Isn't in the App Stores
May 13 2021 - 5:37PM
Dow Jones News
By Georgia Wells
The money-sharing deal that powers OnlyFans wouldn't work if the
website operated as an app on the world's biggest app stores, the
social-media platform's chief executive Tim Stokely said Thursday
at The Wall Street Journal's Future of Everything Festival.
OnlyFans lets people post videos, photos and other content and
enables them to charge viewers subscriptions. It keeps 20% of the
subscription revenue that creators earn on its platform and gives
them 80%.
Distributing OnlyFans through Apple Inc.'s App Store and
Alphabet Inc.'s Google Play store would require additionally paying
those companies the 30% cut they take from digital subscriptions.
That would mean creators wouldn't be able to keep as much of the
money they earn, Mr. Stokely said.
"It's really important to us to be able to pay creators the
highest commission possible," said Mr. Stokely, who is based in
London.
There are now more than 300 creators on OnlyFans who have earned
more than $1 million, Mr. Stokely said. He said the site had paid
out more than $3 billion to creators.
Apple also bans apps that serve adult content from its app
store, but OnlyFans has developed a free streaming app where
creators can post their content if they comply with the rules for
the Apple and Google's app stores and other platforms such as
Roku.
Mr. Stokely founded Fenix International Ltd.'s OnlyFans in 2016
as a paid social-media site for adults with more liberal content
policies than the traditional social platforms like Facebook and
Instagram. To recruit creators, he said he emailed influencers,
making pitches that if they had two million followers, and 1% of
those followers paid $10 a month for exclusive content, then they
could earn $200,000 a month on OnlyFans.
OnlyFans is better known for its porn stars than its fitness
buffs, but the site's growth is due in part to the company's
efforts to diversify its creators. The site now has more than 120
million registered users, Mr. Stokely said.
The Covid-19 pandemic supercharged the growth of social-media
and entertainment platforms as people stuck at home turned to their
phones and screens to fill their days. Mr. Stokely said OnlyFans
was already adding users before the pandemic, a trend accelerated
by the health crisis.
The site also got a boost from popular entertainers, Mr. Stokely
said. In early 2020, Beyoncé mentioned OnlyFans in a remix of
rapper Megan Thee Stallion's song "Savage." Later in the year,
rapper Cardi B said she was joining OnlyFans as a way to show fans
behind-the-scenes footage of her most recent video.
Users flocked to OnlyFans. and more artists joined the platform
as a result, he said. In February, the fashion designer Rebecca
Minkoff used OnlyFans to post behind-the-scenes looks at New York
Fashion Week.
OnlyFans has achieved this growth as a desktop and mobile
website, at a time when apps are becoming the dominant way people
consume online content. Mr. Stokely said he didn't think being a
website during the era of apps had held his company back, because
OnlyFans has the look and feel of traditional social-media
platforms.
Asked whether OnlyFans would join the Apple or Google app stores
if the companies allowed the adult content, Mr. Stokely said he
couldn't imagine a scenario in which OnlyFans would pay creators
less than 80% of the revenue their subscribers pay.
"It's a key ingredient for why OnlyFans continues to prove
popular for creators," Mr. Stokely said.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 13, 2021 17:22 ET (21:22 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2021 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG)
Historical Stock Chart
From Mar 2024 to Apr 2024
Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG)
Historical Stock Chart
From Apr 2023 to Apr 2024