OnlyFans wants to bring in celebrities and sports stars as the London-based social media start-up, largely geared to pornography, reportedly aims to move closer to mainstream media and attractive advertisers.
The DIY-porn app firm this week landed a new funding that is said to have valued the business in excess of US$1bn.
OnlyFans has some 1.25mln content creators on its platform, serving more than 130mln registered users.
The platform saw more than US$2bn of sales in the past year, boosted by increased user activity during the pandemic and a slowdown among professional productions due to Covid restrictions in key jurisdictions.
It meant that the UK tech company banked more than US$400mln, according to a report by Bloomberg, which noted that the website takes a 20% fee from the transactions.
It is said that OnlyFans is aiming to rival celebrities-greetings app Cameo as a platform for A-to-Z listers to monetise their fame.
Like SFW (safe-for-work) homemade video-app Cameo, the idea is that celebrities can create and send video to users for a fee.
On Cameo right now, you could, for example, pay about £40 for a Chuckle brother to wish someone a happy birthday, or you could perhaps get John Bercow to shout "order" on camera for near £90 or, if so inclined, you could pay Nigel Farage for a video.
OnlyFans is more like an explicit-content laden Instagram, where users pay creators to watch, though the company has noted that during the pandemic it also saw a rise in non-porn accounts as fitness instructors, chefs and celebrities adopted the platform for user engagement and its direct monetisation system.
Rappers Cardi-B, Tyga, DJ Khaled are on the platform as is former Atomic Kitten Kerry Katona and ‘WAG’ Danielle Lloyd.
Creed and Black Panther actor Michael B Jordan has a page. In sports, a number of MMA fighters and boxing superstar and monetiser Floyd Mayweather have also joined up.