Guide to all things Patreon, Only Fans etc Part 1 - Only Fans (Patreon)

I can only speak from my own experience with these two platforms, so my caveat is there ARE other platforms, BIM, Bentbox, hell even your own website but OF and Patreon are the two i've used.

I thought people might appreciate my take on the platforms, good and bad, and how to make a success selling your work on either.

Part 1 - only fans

My original intention when I was on Only Fans was just how I could generate a modest income from the work I produce.  I was very aware that on a shoot I'd be getting loads of stuff for me to go straight to instagram but also topless, nudes or even stuff a little too risqué that wouldn't be able to be posted to social media but models were happly uploading all this content to OF and doing very well out of it!

So my thought process went "hang on Mike, you're missing out here!" so off I went to create an Only Fans.

First thing to get in your head about OF is that you will not make the kind of money models see, it's just not going to happen.  The whole premise really of OF for models is the whole girlfriend experience, sharing selfies, candid content, chats etc.   It's ben proven time and time again that people on a models OF vastly prefer self shot content to "pro" pics.  The chat thing is hilarious by the way as out of pretty much every model I've spoken to their husband/partner is the one doing the chatting never the model herself!

So for a photographer I took the approach as it being my archive of images, censored and uncensored.  I can never share every edit I create on Instagram so everything went up there and I sold it as my archive, 3000ish images and 125 ish videos by the time I'd finished.  And I have to say for me it was moderately successful.  I averaged at anyone time around 20 fans, some months more, some less, a fair few repeat customers too which is always nice.  I lowered my price during pandemic and kept it to $5.99 a month, i started higher and tbh didnt see any massive change in number of subscribers, seemingly if people wanted to see my content they'd sub whatever the cost - I think I maxed out at $12.99 and it had been at all points in-between.  

So from an income point of view it basically breaks down to someone subscribes for $5.99, you immediately get hit with a dollar coversion rate and OF take 20% yes 20% of all your earnings,  So that $5.99 becomes around £4.35 in GBP less 20% equates to £3.48 in your pocket! So no, you aren't going to become a millionaire!

Id average around £100 a month which isnt a lot but it's consistent and all went straight back into my hobby. I bought my blackmagic video camera from the proceeds and if you're shooting that stuff anyway it's bascially free money.

So upsides are - if you'e creating that content anyway then why not. It's an easy to use platform, probably the most used, from a subscriber point of view it's quite anonymous so you will generate more followers but keep the pricing reasonable.

Downsides

You will need to be consistent and regular with your uploads, I was lucky as I've got 1000s of images in my archive, you need to be giving people something for their money I believe, so i posted most days and usually 3/4 images at a time.  You can schedule posts, what a lot of people do is spend maybe a few hours scheduling content for a few weeks and just leave it to run.  I didnt really get messages on there so from a photographer point of view you dont need to worry about engaging with people.  You gotta be realistic, people are there to see images they can't see on insta of their favourite models, no more no less.

OF take a lot of money from you in my opinion, 20% is a huge margin for basically a poorly designed, crappy and often unresponsive platform.  The tech behind it is cheap and it sucks

The biggest issue and why they kicked me off is releases.  The debarcle that OF had recently with mastercard has led them to some really dodgy terms and conditions that seemingly only apply to people uploading content of other people - ie photographers.

What you will need for EVERY model upload is a release form, their photo ID and a photo of them holding the photo ID and release form.    If you're going into this from new then it's probably not a huge issue but it's an overhead and a pain in the ass for every shoot you do.

I'm unconvinced of their GDPR status and how much I trust them as a platform to hold all that personal information.

My issue was they asked for all of the above for every shoot i'd ever done in 24 hours.  And they locked my page, so I couldnt even get in to delete my content and start from scratch.  Clearly that was an impossible challenge and I didn't even try.  Oh and when they deleted me they of course kept the money I had sitting there (about $50) as I'd "violated their Ts and Cs".  

There's a legal position here I could have taken which is about reasonableness etc, I'd never been asked before about those requirements and had never previously been made aware. Anyway $50 after their fees,its really not worth it.

Which brings me to Patreon - stay tuned for part 2!

Any questions on this please do leave a comment!