I have an embarrassing confession to make.
I’ve lost count of my failed businesses.
(But the total is more than sixteen.)
A few of them I ran while homeless.
I used to feel ashamed of this, but now I’m proud.
Why? Because those failures made me wiser, stronger, and better able to teach you eight easy, no-fail steps to succeed on OnlyFans.
These steps were learned the hard way, battle-tested in trials-by-fire, not just by myself, but by my clients.
These steps 100% work for any business that wants to grow, OnlyFans careers included.
What this guide is, who it’s for, and what you’ll get:
This guide is a short summary of “How To Make Money On OnlyFans (8 Easy Steps For 2022!)” and it helps beginners, intermediates, and even veteran OnlyFans models who want to grow their audience, brand, or wealth.
What this guide is not:
- This guide won’t do the work for you.
- This guide won’t give you excuses.
- This guide won’t coddle your mental health.
That’s because OnlyFans wealth-creation is a skill, just like cycling or swimming.
If you’re traumatized by the water, no guide will help you swim.
You either get over your fear of the water and perform the guide’s steps, or you avoid the pool until you heal your trauma.
This is a concise guide for those serious about success, and ready to change or heal themselves so they can perform its steps.
You’re about to get clear, practical, actionable steps on how to grow a successful business –from scratch– into something truly magical. (And you’ll be permanently armed with foundations to bloom any business into riches, forever.)
The steps below are simple, affordable, and guaranteed to work…
…as long as you’re eager to apply yourself. As long as you’re eager to practice each step like it f*cking matters, the same way you’d learn to cycle or swim.
If all that sounds good, here’s a brief look the eight OnlyFans success steps:
| STEP (To Succeed On OnlyFans) | Avg. Time (To Complete) |
|---|---|
| 1. Commit to a tribe you believe in. | 5 - 15 minutes. (Once) |
| 2. Commit to a niche you believe in. | 5 - 15 minutes. (Once) |
| 3. Rank your tribe’s desires. | 30 - 45 minutes. (Once) |
| 4. Refine your ‘attention-grabber.’ | 30 - 60 minutes. (Once) |
| 5. Post a ‘chunk’ of engaging content. | 24 hours. (Once) |
| 6. Outreach to tribe in ‘fishing spots.’ | 2 - 4 hours. (Daily) |
| 7. Follow-up w/ anyone who engages. | 45 - 60 minutes. (Daily) |
| 8. Finally, make juicy offers. | 30 - 45 minutes. (Daily) |
Everyone has a pipeline, and everyone controls the “tap” of their pipeline (via practice).
They also control the “blocks” in their pipeline (via problem-solving).
If your pipeline isn’t flowing money to you, you must either practice something more, or problem-solving certain money-making steps such as “reaching leads”, “engaging follow-ups”, or “juicy offers.”
But practicing money-making can only be done with decent mental health.
Below I’ll explain each step further, but keep in mind, this article is just a quick overview of each step.
If you want to know more, click the button after any lesson.
How To Be Successful On OnlyFans: Your First 7 Days
You may think you’ve already done these steps, but if your biz ain’t satisfying you…
You absolutely have not done these steps.
Or you’ve done them incorrectly, out of order, or poorly.
I know this, because I’ve yet to meet anyone who’s done them well intentionally, and still struggles to grow their brand.
Here are the steps, in proper order.
One — Commit to a tribe you'll serve.
In my early businesses, I first wanted to help “anyone and everyone.” Then I switched to “art-lovers.” Then targeted “models.” Then “entrepreneurs.”
My failure to commit to a tribe, meant that the market wouldn’t commit dollars to me.
“Your lazy ass don’t commit to labor / You pick something up, try it out, and put it down two minutes later / Then you complain about your life ’cause it ain’t getting catered / Now whoever tries to call you on your bullshit’s a hater?” – Hopsin
If you want your business to grow, you must target an easy-to-reach audience, who’s size should match your business skill.
- If you’re not great at business, target a very small niche audience like “horny Canadian Elden-Ring fans.”
- As your biz grows decently, you can expand to a medium-sized audience like “English-speaking Doms.”
- If your biz is truly thriving, you can broaden further to “All blonde-lovers” or something.
Just like swimming, commit to mastering the ‘shallow end’ of OnlyFans first.
How? By serving a (usually small) audience that suits you, and grow from there.
It has to be a tribe you *believe* in, or you’ll just ‘switch’ tribes when the going gets tough.
The result of that means you’ll lose all your progress and have to start this whole guide all over.
Two — Commit to a niche you're passionate about.
I had so many passions. I wanted to be an artist, but I loved writing too. I wanted to be a coach, but I edited pretty nice videos.
Many of my clients start out doing the same.
- They want to be a submissive, but sometimes they dom.
- They want to make softcore stuff, but sometimes they do a hardcore scene.
- They want to focus on videos, but they keep posting photos.
Then they do all six of these things because “it’s my profile, so aren’t I free to do what I want?”
Yes, you are free to do what you want.
BUT…
The public is free to do what *they* want too.
And if you make your offering unfocused or unclear, they’ll ignore you in the first seven seconds, and likely never return.
Whether your niche is lewd-cosplays, faceless insertions, or bdsm-couple-stuff…
…You must commit to a niche if you want your business to truly grow.
And your niche must overlap or “resonate” with your tribe. It either has to be something they’ll enjoy, or you have to get creative and inject it into something they enjoy.
(Even if your niche is ‘variety streamer’, choose it consciously, stick to it clearly, and study other ‘variety’ content creators so you can follow in their footsteps.)
Until you commit to a niche, your market won’t commit dollars to you.
Period.
It has to be a niche you *believe* in, or you’ll just ‘pivot’ niches when the going gets tough.
The result of that is you losing all your progress and starting this whole guide all over.
Again.
Three — Rank your tribe’s problems & desires.
For years I was so cocky, so entitled, so arrogant.
I believed that I ‘already knew’ my audience.
I surely didn’t need to waste time writing down people’s desires, challenges, or priorities.
I mean, I had ‘taste.’ People liked what I liked, right?
Wrong.
People are ‘weird.’
People are irrational.
And most importantly, people don’t care what you ‘think’ they care about.
So even if you have a natural instinct for what people want, like, and engage with…
…take the time to do the work and find out for sure.
In business, certainty is precious. Certainty’s a game-changer.
So get certain about your tribe’s top priorities. Rank them all, and you’ll almost certainly be surprised.
- You think they prioritize ‘discounts’… but what they really like is DM interaction.
- You think they hate your content… but actually they’d buy if you delivered better captions as foreplay.
- You think they care about seeing your p*ssy… but they actually prioritize teases & things left to the imagination.
- You think they want to hear about your gaming adventures… but they spend their whole day looking for content about #blacklivesmatter or covid.
I see OnlyFans creators waste time & energy creating low-priority content.
And I get it, because like me in my early days, they’ve done little research. They’re clueless about their tribe’s priorities.
They find some excuse to avoid studying their tribe’s language.
Be smarter.
Study your audience’s language, notice words and patterns that they use.
Survey what’s on their mind, ask questions and sincerely note down the response.
Rank your tribe’s problems & desires or you’ll fail to serve them, and they’ll fail to pay you.
Four — Refine your attention-grabbing ‘hook.’
I had studied marketing and I was proud of my products…
…So I was pissed when no one paid attention to my posts.
But I deserved the silence, because I didn’t have an attention-grabber.
I had made zero effort to create a ‘hook.’
Each of your content pieces will fail without an attention-grabber leading the way.
Your attention-grabber can be:
- A headline, image, or video.
- A concept.
- An impressive number.
- A testimonial or shout-out.
- A compelling story.
- A controversial opinion.
- A resonant profile photo, username, and avatar.
Or anything else you can think of.
“I wanted the fame but not the cover of Newsweek / Oh well, guess beggars can’t be choosey / Wanted to receive attention for my music / Wanted to be left alone in public, excuse me.” – Eminem
And creating a ‘hook’ is a skill that takes study and practice, just as the rest of these steps.
So you may have anywhere from ten to a hundred failed attention-grabbers in the beginning, just like getting ten to a hundred mouthfuls of water during swim practices.
Each failure, if you learn from it, should help you polish and refine your hook, until it works well.
Refine your attention-grabber and expand your wealth.
Five — Post a ‘chunk’ of purposeful content.
My content was all over the place because I posted “whatever I felt like.” Surely, my feelings couldn’t be wrong, could they?
Hint: They were.
The ten (or so) pieces of content on your grid (or feed, channel, history, or archive) are going to be glanced at by every new fan or follower who discovers you.
So whatever chunk of most content you’re displaying must be effective.
It has to do a lot of ‘work’ for you.
Which means you must replace ‘whatever you feel like’ with ‘purposeful content that gets results.’
Your content needs to be a blend of things that make viewers know, like, and trust you (a bunch of selfies aren’t going to cut it.)
- My audience didn’t feel comfortable enough to buy, because they needed testimonials on my grid.
- My audience didn’t feel connected with me, because they needed memes that humanized me.
- My audience didn’t know what I offered, because they needed promotional pieces.
- My audience didn’t share me, because they needed sexy shareables expressing their inner thoughts.
- My audience consumed and left me, because they needed cliffhangers that kept them coming back.
Make sure your content is well-crafted and posted with purpose.
Make sure it does the following for your fans:
- Impresses them.
- Engages them.
- Entices them.
Content-creation is a skill you level up to once you’ve got the other steps handled, just like leveling up to diving once you’ve got a handle on swimming.
And they both take study and practice.
Six — Outreach to tribe-members in ‘fishing spots.’
I made a hoard of beautiful, valuable content. I was a talented genius, creating works that put others to shame. I even had an attention-getting hook.
So why wasn’t anyone buying my stuff? Because I was creating in a vacuum.
Yes, I existed online, but I might as well have been in a dark, musty closet.
Because I kept to myself.
- I didn’t engage with the public with concerted effort.
- I didn’t ‘shake hands’ or ‘kiss babies.’
- I didn’t comment on others’ profiles.
- I didn’t give a kind word to any of my tribe members.
I figured “if I build it, they will come.”
That quote is bullshit.
It’s from a feel-good Hollywood movie, not a guide on how to succeed on OnlyFans.
The outreach rule is this:
For (approximately) every hundred kind words or valuable outreaches you give to others, the market will give you one subscriber.
Every successful creator you look up to, from Kim Kardashian to Belle Delphine obeyed this rule at the start.
They all reached out to hundreds of candidates, providing sincere value, and grew their audience with their own blood, sweat, and tears in the beginning.
- They persevered through rejection, judgment, and accusation.
- They knew they’d have to persevere despite haters, rejections, and silence.
- They treated it like a job, one hundred outreach Monday-to-Friday, because it *is* a job.
And where did they do it?
And where did they do it?
Where-ever the ‘fishing’ was good.
- Kim Kardashian did her outreach in clubs.
- Belle Delphine did her outreach on gamer forums and anime channels.
- OnlyFans models often use reddit, tiktok, twitter, pornhub, even Instagram (despite it’s anti-nudity stance.)
You must outreach wherever your tribe hangs out.
(It could even be offline, like in a gentleman’s club.)
It’s up to you to create a list of ‘fishing spots’ and to reach out to them regularly.
This step is simple, easy, but essential:
Say sincere, attentive, nice things to say to 100 strangers daily, persevering through haters, and your subscriber-count grows.
Failing to do this consistently, is like failing to kick your legs or move your arms during a swim.
I got stuck at this point, for eons.
I thought I finally had ‘business success’ sorted.
I’d committed to a tribe & niche, made my hook, had purposeful content, and even though it was my least favorite part… I was outreaching with valuable gifts and serving them up to 100 folks daily.
My audience was growing from this, so I assumed that was ‘enough.’
But quickly became furious.
I was doing the six initial steps with such passion, and my followers on social media were indeed growing, but I was still earning almost nothing.
I felt like “these steps don’t work, this is a giant waste of energy” so I gave up on yet another business, feeling like a suicidal failure.
But me giving up was like doing ‘most’ steps of swimming, getting halfway across the lake, and then giving up in frustration.
It was silly.
- Maybe I could’ve looked at how far I’d come.
- Maybe I could’ve celebrated all the skills I’d learned.
- Maybe I could avoid beating myself up for not quite reaching shore yet.
- Maybe there was a step or two I was missing.
- Maybe I needed to learn treading water.
- Maybe I needed to practice my breath-holds.
Doing the first six steps properly means you’re almost done.
You’re almost in control of your wealth.
You’re almost a truly successful spicy accountant.
Honestly, if you’re building your follower-base through daily outreach, you’re already making good progress.
You can definitely ‘get to shore’ (make sales), if you just do the remaining two steps correctly.
Seven — Follow-up w/ any interested tribe-members.
I was put into the ‘gifted program’ back in Grade 6.
I identified as a ‘smart man.’
I knew I was talented, and I knew I was even ‘putting in the work’ for daily outreach.
I ‘felt like’ a good entrepreneur who should be getting rich by now.
But I wasn’t.
Because I avoided following up with my tribe-members who clicked, liked, hearted, commented, or shared.
And there were plenty! I finally had people doing all those things on my profile.
I had people’s attention, interest, and they were even engaging with me.
But I was so obsessed with ‘more content’, and so proud of ‘all my outreach’, that I ignored follow-up.
Follow-up just means contacting someone again and again (under nearly any pretense.)
And of course I had excuses to avoid doing it.
- It felt yucky to ‘keep reminding’ people, so I didn’t follow-up.
- It felt disrespectful when ‘people didn’t reply’ to me, so I didn’t follow-up.
- It felt overwhelming because I was ‘already busy’, so I didn’t follow-up.
But just like cycling or swimming…
The activity of making money doesn’t give a f*ck about my feelings.
I simply had to find a way to get it done. Period.
Because sales don’t come from cold leads who’ve only had one or two interactions with you.
(No one likes Belle Delphine’s post once and then jumps to paying for her bathwater.)
Cold leads must become hot leads, only then do they turn into sales.
Sales come from fans who’ve had approximately eight to fifteen interactions with you.
So, if you reach out to them and have one or two interactions, then they’re on their way to being a sale.
But if you stop there, they’ll never make it to the finish line, and you won’t get a sale.
If you fail to follow-up, your tribe-members won’t get enough touchpoints to ever feel comfortable buying from you.
Just a fact.
If you study & practice follow-up well, you’ll move fans along their customer-journey with you, and a healthy amount of them *will* convert into a sale.
Eight — Make juicy offers to tribe-members who are ready.
I hated self-promotion, and I hated making offers to people. “What if they reject me? What if they call me a scammer or spammer? What if they trash talk me and hurt my reputation?”
None of that matters.
There is no acceptable excuse for not making offers, if financial success is your goal.
Making money and succeeding with your OnlyFans business requires making offers regularly.
And those offers must appear juicy and valuable to your tribe.
(Remember step three, ranking their desires? It applies here too.)
- You can technically make offers to cold leads, this is what ‘spammers’ do, and it may work.
- You can make offers to warm leads, this is what ‘amateurs’ do, and it works decently.
- You can make offers to hot leads, this is what ‘influencers’ do, and it tends to work best.
Personally, I only make offers to hot leads if I can help it.
As for you, I don’t care what you do, but you must be making offers regularly, and you should expect everyone, even hot leads, to say ‘no’ first.
Because human beings default to saying ‘no’ to everything.
They do this even if they’re desperate for what you offer.
They’ll still hesitate.
Especially with things that require them to change their habitual behavior.
I hope my point is clear.
If your fans don’t habitually send you money already, they’ll make excuses to avoid doing so.
So even if you have the juiciest offer in the world, something like:
“90% off today, plus new subscribers get a free sexy wall-calendar, and I’ll personally f*ck one fan…”
Fans will *still* come up with excuses not to buy.
This is why you must learn to:
Persuade and dissolve buyer objections
This is a sister-skill of making juicy offers, one that needs study and practice too.
People will object because of natural fears such as:
- Loss Of Control
- Unsettling Surprises
- Extra Work
- And more
And you have two options when this happens:
- One, let them get over their irrational fears and insecurities on their own, knowing it may take them years, letting another sale slip through your fingers, or…
- Two, you can persuade them over the hump and help them get the awesome content they’re obviously eager for, since they’re a hot lead.
If you want to succeed, you’ll choose option two, and actively learn persuasion skills.
Either way…
Making juicy offers (& dissolving objections) is a skill that takes study and practice.
But it’s one that millions of freelancers and entrepreneurs have mastered.
And you can too.
How To Succeed On OnlyFans: Postscript
If you follow the above steps well, studying and practicing each until you ‘get it’…
…you will be a stably profitable OnlyFans wealth-creator.
If you follow these steps well you’ll consistently turn strangers into subscribers.
“Apply yourself to supply your wealth / Only limitations you’ll ever have are those that you place upon yourself.” – Kendrick Lamar
You’ll take each stranger on a journey from ‘getting their eyes on your content’ to them ‘opening their wallet and sending you cash’:
- Views (Attention)
- Likes (Interest)
- Comments (Engagement)
- DMs (Trust)
- Offers (Desire)
- Wallet (Sale / Action)
I’ve looked high and low for a practical, fool-proof guide on how to succeed on OnlyFans, and found nothing even remotely useful.
This guide is different, and it will take you from beginner to skilled OnlyFans seller, if you apply its wisdom well.
I’ve made the steps simpler, clearer, and easier than any other guide.
Even a kid with a lemonade-stand can perform these steps.
But the steps do take work.
They do require no ego in the way. They do require you to persevere and serve the public.
Like any freelance or entrepreneurial endeavor, they… take… work.
“Avoiding ‘work’ while building a business is like avoiding ‘pedaling’ while riding a bike or avoiding ‘strokes’ while swimming.” – J-Ryze
It makes no sense.
But I know that people are always looking for shortcuts, silver-bullets, and ways to lower the work involved, so I’ve decided to give you some ‘bonus hacks.’
Bonus Hacks To Make The Steps Even Easier:
Any one of these steps can be accelerated.
If they’re taking too long, here’s how to approach the situation:
- Don’t whine.
- Don’t complain.
- Don’t fret.
- Don’t worry.
- Don’t distract.
- Don’t avoid.
Instead, be a resourceful human and apply yourself to solutions.
You’ve solved hundreds of problems in your life. If some of these steps are proving difficult… don’t use it as an excuse to give up, don’t say ‘making money is impossible.’
Just apply yourself and solve whatever is stopping you.
None of this stuff is rocket-science or neuro-surgery.
Making money is basic.
And if you’re having trouble coming up with solutions, here’s a few examples to get you started.
Solve blocks by aying for ads & shoutouts.
This is the fastest, easiest way to shortcut some of the steps, but it still takes work and skill.
Bad ads just burn money.
Shout-outs that speak to the wrong tribe or audience are a waste.
So even if you want to do this, you’ll still have to study and practice the skill of advertising, do the research to find a truly good promotion company, and invest significant money/time to make it happen.
Still, if you’ve got the basics of your brand and outreach down, buying ads can be a great time-saver.
Want Consistency? Chunk Your Schedule
If you want to put out a post every day this week, what is more effective?
Waking up everyday, hoping no distractions or emergencies come up, getting all the files ready, then hustling to get your post done before lunch, or…
Turning off your phone on Sunday for a few hours, making all the content ahead of time, and then organizing it into ready-to-post chunks, or even scheduling them with an automation tool to post automatically?
If you want to outreach to people, what is more effective?
Hopping from app to app, getting distracted by Whatsapp, forgetting your place, etc., or…
Secluding yourself somewhere with your list of leads to reach out to, staying in one app, and outreaching with no distractions for one, impactful, ‘power hour?’
Chunking important tasks into your schedule into one ‘batch’, rather than spread out here and there, is effective, efficient, and brings much peace of mind.
Retain Your Subscribers Through Progress-Tracking
Hopefully you can see it’s a fairly long journey and substantial work to convert a stranger into a subscriber.
But it’s much easier, more lucrative, and less steps to retain current subscribers.
Try methods like these:
- Offer your fans deals for making it to the 3-month renewal mark, 6-month renewal mark, etc.
- Keep fans aware that something special will be happening on
- Christmas, Valentine’s Day, etc.
Hold contests and don’t release the results for a few weeks.
Tactics like this encourage people to hang around, renew their subscription, and stick with you.
You can also keep track of who unsubscribes and follow-up with them offering touchpoints, interactions, and value periodically. This often prompts people to re-subscribe.
Use Well-Timed Call-To-Actions
A call-to-action is a fancy-word for an ‘instruction.’
Call to actions work because most fans want to engage further with you, but are usually ‘out of the present moment.’
They’re thinking about ‘what they have to do next’ in their day, and so without a reminder of ways to engage further with you… they default to moving on.
This is why every YouTuber or Twitch streamer reminds people to ‘like & subscribe,’ because it works.
It works for all of them, on the majority of their fans.
And it’ll do the same for an OnlyFans performer too.
Calls-To-Action usually work best at the beginning or end of a piece of content.
- At the end of a caption tell people what to do next.
- At the start of a scene give fans a reason to stay ‘til the end.
- At the end of the week, tell subscribers why to return Monday.
Take it to the next level by studying how to create engaging, emotive sentences that fire up your fans to act.
Experiment, Experiment, Experiment
Want each step to be more effective… faster?
Then do more experiments faster, fail faster, and tweak faster.
“Twisted mind of a lyricist, listen while I experiment / Visualize, it’s imperative, big surprises and scary tricks.” – NF
Instead of putting out 1 piece of content each week and seeing if people like it, put out a piece once a day, or even multiple times a day, and track the response.
The former means it takes months to learn what works, the latter means you can find out what works in a couple weeks.
Instead of writing one attention-grabbing headline and posting it, instead write ten or twenty attention-grabbing headlines and give them to an editor or test audience, then discard the losers.
Get feedback fast, fail fast, and find what works.
The more solutions you can test (one at a time), the more feedback you get, and the more you discover the ‘right’ thing for you and your audience.
Collaborations And Alliances
All the guide’s steps work solo, but the power of collaborating with others in your niche, or with a related audience is huge.
There’s hundreds of articles on how to set up collaborations just a Google away.
It’s a big shortcut.
You’ve got this.
Other common questions:
There may still be some questions on your mind. Many of them can be answered in my longer-form guide How To Make Money On OnlyFans, but I’ll address a few below.
Is it hard to succeed on OnlyFans.
No, succeeding on OnlyFans (or any platform), is as easy as riding a bike, or learning to swim. People everywhere do it.
To master cycling, you just have to embrace skinning your knees hundreds of times.
To master swimming, you just have to embrace swallowing water hundreds times.
To master OnlyFans, you just have to be willing to do the work while embracing failure hundreds of times.
The faster you get through those hundreds of failures, the faster you succeed.
It’s that simple.
Can you really make money on OnlyFans?
Of course you can make money on OnlyFans. OnlyFans is loaded with monetization options, making money is practically the purpose of the platform, and it’s also the main activity of it’s users.
The steps I’ve outlined above help you make money easily.
How do you get fans on OnlyFans fast?
The fastest way to get followers on OnlyFans is to get ‘shoutouts’ and tags from other OnlyFans creators with sizable audiences. These are often a paid service, but can be achieved organically at a slower rate.
If you don’t want to pay, you have to invest your time in the steps in the guide above.
How hard is it to make money on OnlyFans?
Being profitable on OnlyFans is as hard as you make it. I’ve taught young adults how to be profitable on social platforms, and they get the hang of it fast because they have no hang-ups, make no excuses, and pursue it with a passion. I’ve taught clients how to do the same, and they can easily take four years of therapy to get over their traumas and actually start doing the work.
Profiting on OnlyFans can happen in just two weeks, if you apply yourself well.
What kind of content sells best on OnlyFans?
Anime-themed content sells the best on OnlyFans at time of writing (2022), but it really depends on your specific niche, tribe, and passions.
I offer 69 free OnlyFans niche ideas in this article, and it also explores content popularity further.
Final Thoughts On OnlyFans Success
We’re done!
You now have clear, undeniable, guaranteed steps to create a successful OnlyFans business from scratch.
Performing them may require personal change and moving past comfort zones…
…but they’re totally doable.
They’re extremely doable steps that people have done successfully since caveman times.
All that’s left is for you to step up and do them.
So will you?
