OnlyFans bans pornographic content from October.

With the ban on "sexually explicit" recordings, the British platform wants to "meet demands from banking partners and payment service providers," said the company.

However, the creators can still “publish content that contains nudity”, provided that they adhere to the rules of the platform.

How exactly these look like seems to be open so far.

Gustav Theile

Editor in business.

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On OnlyFans, social media creators - including many sex workers, musicians and other influencers - post content online that users can then subscribe to for a fee.

Even though some popular musicians and actors such as Bella Thorne and Cardi B have onlyfans accounts and Vice is even a news site on the platform, it is best known for its pornographic content.

According to its own information, it has 130 million users who view the content of two million creators.

Sales should increase sixfold

According to a report by the news site Axios, OnlyFans is looking for investors and is aiming for a valuation of more than one billion dollars. Investors have shown little interest so far due to the pornographic content, and clauses often forbid them to do business in certain industries.

According to an internal presentation from the end of March, from which Axios quotes, the company is doing splendidly.

The number of users rose sharply during the pandemic.

Total sales on the platform are expected to rise from $ 2.2 billion last year (just under 1.9 billion euros) this year to $ 5.9 billion this year and $ 12.5 billion next year.

The platform retains a fifth of its sales, and the company's net sales are expected to increase more than six-fold from $ 375 million in 2020 to $ 2.5 billion in 2022.

OnlyFans released an app last week that allows creators to upload content that does not involve nudity.

In the future, the platform is likely to focus even more on music, fitness or cooking content.

Lots of OnlyFans millionaires

For many creators, the platform is very profitable. According to the Axios report, more than 300 creators were making more than $ 1 million a year at the end of March and 16,000 creators were making more than $ 50,000 a year on OnlyFans. However, these numbers are now likely to have risen rapidly: by the end of March this year, $ 3.2 billion should have been paid out. According to the latest Axios announcement, this value is now well beyond $ 5 billion.

As controversial as the content is for investors, the platform has so far been an important source of income for sex workers and porn actors, on which they can market the content independently. Various US media cite disappointed OnlyFans porn actors who are now wondering how they should earn money in the future and believe that there is now room for a new provider. In the past, banks have often blocked or avoided pornographic sites. Instead, a lot of sales with sexually explicit content are made with cryptocurrencies. OnlyFans' move is reminiscent of Tumblr's: The photo platform banned pornographic content in 2018 and then lost a lot of its popularity.

OnlyFans was founded in 2016 by British entrepreneur Tim Stokely, who still runs the platform to this day. However, since October 2018 the main owner has been the US entrepreneur Leonid Radvinsky, who became a billionaire through the investment.