Bryce Adams’s OnlyFans empire is based in central Florida, where workers buzz through a camera-wired security gate each morning and park outside Adams’s $2.5 million home-office-studio complex. An American flag waves from a pole above their office door, alongside a banner showing Adams in tight shorts.
On OnlyFans, subscribers pay for monthly access to creators’ videos, including many adult “collab” videos. The platform’s most popular creators, like Bryce Adams, run their business with the precision of a machine. A storyboard designer maps out the publishing plans for OnlyFans, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube. Editors optimize video content for virality, and collabs are sent to paying fans.
Adams and her boyfriend, who both use stage names for privacy, review the day’s assignments at each employee’s desk, ensuring that no posts or captions seem “cringe” or “off brand.” In a loft area, four employees text with Adams’s paid subscribers, sparking conversations that can include over a thousand messages a day.
Despite the often misconstrued nature of their work, Adams’s employees record videos and manage OnlyFans content with the same discipline as any other business. The team’s headquarters, known as “the farm,” spans 10 acres and was purchased with OnlyFans earnings. The company brings in roughly $10 million annually and pays salaries that surpass the average farmer’s income.
Beyond the misconceptions, OnlyFans has grown into a professional marketplace for creators. The subscription site has been instrumental in the rise of a new style of gig work, allowing creators to capitalize on their existing audiences through mainstream sites. OnlyFans boasts 3 million creators and 230 million subscribing fans worldwide, and payouts to creators reached $5.5 billion last year.
This fast ascent has fueled a broader conversation about the site’s promotion of feminist autonomy, and digital influencers have turned to OnlyFans as a place where viewers pay upfront for creators’ labor with intimacy being another unit of content to monetize. Despite the financial potential, the digital sex trade has led to a debate about the pressures and expectations faced by creators.
Regardless of the controversy, OnlyFans’s influence on the creator economy continues to grow, offering creators a rational choice in an often-irrational environment for gender, work, and power. As creators vie for financial freedom and visibility, they are increasingly running their operations like tech start-ups. The move from online virality to direct monetization is restructuring the landscape of online influence, with creators shifting the balance in favor of financial reward for their work.
