In Part 1, we explored how the business model of the adult entertainment industry was transformed by the internet. In this installment we will explore how porn studios now are faced with ever-increasing competition from platforms that give more power to performers than ever before.
The internet has changed everything for porn, again.
With the arrival of platforms like OnlyFans in 2016, the adult entertainment industry has been undergoing a shake-up the likes of which it hasn’t experienced for more than 25 years.
In the late 1990s, a seismic shift — this new thing called the internet — shook brick and mortar studios and their distribution infrastructure so hard that many of them came crumbling down.
This new disruptor, OnlyFans and sites like it, have shaken the industry yet again, and the craters left by failing porn empires have already started to scar the industry landscape.
In the before times, performers were reliant solely on working with studios for a paycheck. Those studios decided when you worked, and with whom, and what the setting and style of the scenes were going to be.
Now, democracy reigns supreme as OnlyFans performers can create their own content, in their own style, with collaborators of their own choosing. Instead of a flat fee for a scene, they own the product entirely and have their own direct-to-consumer pipeline where they not only get to decide how much to charge, but they also get to keep most of the profits.
By the Numbers
To understand the wholeness of the change, here are some numbers:
By 2019, OnlyFans had 13.5 million users (between content creators and subscribers). But it really took off during COVID and continues to grow.
There are, according to the web traffic company Statista:
- 5 million OnlyFans content creators
- 230 million OnlyFans paid subscribers
Revenue In 2023:
- In its 2023 earnings report, parent company Fenix International reported revenue of $1.3 billion
Those numbers, while incredible, make sense when you consider the amount of traffic the platform generates.
According to Semrush, a web analytics company, in April 2025, OnlyFans received 427.31 million visitors, ranking it the 53rd most visited website in the U.S., and the 75th most visited site in the world. To put that in perspective, Target.com is the 50th most popular site in the U.S. and the 187th worldwide. Entertainment giant ABC’s website is way behind, at 1,724th in the U.S.
And that’s just OnlyFans. There are at least seven other sites for adult content where the creator is king. Of the alternatives, the most popular is JustFor.Fans, but it can claim only a fraction of the traffic, just four one-hundredths of a percent (0.04%), according to Semrush.
My Kingdom for Some Context
To understand how this disruption occurred, a little history is needed.
For decades, the adult entertainment industry operated on the old Hollywood studio system. Performers would be exclusive to one studio. Just like old Hollywood, formulas or pairings that proved successful would happen again and again, often with only minimal changes.
If a scene became very successful involving a performer dressed as a mechanic and another as a customer needing his dipstick checked, then you’d likely see that pairing again in a number of similar scenarios. A plumber would show up for some pipe work. A carpenter would install his caulk. A dentist might drill his patient. While high on the cheesy scale (and creating completely inaccurate expectations of what a tradesman is willing to do when he comes into your home), the scenes worked, and performers got paid.
In this system, studios like Vivid or Wicked held all the power. The performers the studios liked would often have to sign an exclusivity contract if they wanted to work again. This committed them to only film scenes with that studio. On average, that commitment would last one to three years.
In the old days, studios relied on middlemen for distribution, like bookstores and adult theaters. With the normalization of the internet, a new direct-to-consumer model arose, cutting out the go-between.
The speed of innovation accelerated, and many studios didn’t have the in-house skillset to adapt. Those slow to migrate their content online and figure out how to monetize it paid the price, and innovation wrote their obituary.
However, some studios wouldn’t have to adapt to a new distribution model because they created it. Studios like SeanCody joined the adult content world with a ready-made e-commerce platform, a library of pre-filmed scenes, and a production apparatus that was sure to provide enough content to satisfy a thirsty subscriber base. In short order, SeanCody dominated the marketplace.
Porn became an e-commerce platform, but the way in which those innovative companies created content remained largely the same.
While some companies still relied on the old “I’ll fix what needs fixing” fantasy scenes, SeanCody went a different direction — a reality version of what you might call “Twunk on a Futon.”
But whether the scenes they created were fantasy or reality-based, the old studio system was still in place, with its exclusive contracts and complete control of content creation and models who created it.
A Major Disruption in the Force
Of course, OnlyFans changed all of that. Once exclusive to studios, performers found they could create their own content at their own pace and launch their own brand.
While some were able to cash in on the notoriety their previous studio work had provided, others had to build their brands on their own. In either case, OnlyFans is responsible for building more small businesses than the U.S. government.
That’s not a joke. In FY2023, the Small Business Administration provided Type 7(a) loans to 57,300 small businesses. In contrast, in 2023, OnlyFans added more than 936,000 content creators, who are, for all intents and purposes, entrepreneurs.
That’s certainly how performer Adam Snow approaches it. He’s been on OnlyFans since 2019 and benefited from a backlog of content he’d created as an amateur filming random hook-ups.
“I had decided in 2016 that maybe one day I would become a ‘porn star,’” Snow told OUTvoices. “So in 2016, I started asking people I was hooking up with if they wanted to record. You’d be surprised at how many people said yes!”
When Snow finally joined the OnlyFans platform, he had amassed more than 200 amateur sessions in the three years he had been recording. He was able to upload all of them to the platform.
While he was sure this was the path he wanted to pursue, he wasn’t sure if he wanted everybody to know about it. This duality of purpose caused him to set his monthly subscription significantly higher than most.
“It was providing a little extra money, and that was enough,” Snow said. In his real life, he was a general contractor.
Snow’s perception of his side-hustle would change when he met fellow performer Rocco Steele.
“I met him on a cruise and we started talking,” Snow said. “He told me if I wanted to do it, be a performer, then I had to do it right. That meant to go all-in and take it seriously.”
Snow would have to shift his mindset to not caring whether people knew or what they saw him do, and change his subscription rate to an amount that was more accessible to more people.
“So I jumped into it,” Snow said. He has since lowered his subscription rate significantly and has seen a significant jump in subscribers.
The Daily Grind
To maintain those subscribers takes a lot of work and a lot of time.
Snow says that for each 30-minute video you might see on his platform, it takes upwards of six hours to make. It all becomes a numbers game.
“I might send out 100 DMs on Twitter to performers I want to work with,” Snow explained. “Of those, maybe four or five wind up filming.” Then there’s the travel. Snow lives a two-hour drive from the nearest airport and then winds up traveling all over whatever city he’s in to meet with different performers.
In addition to the time spent setting up the actual scenes and shoots, once he arrives, he sets up the cameras. He has a final communication with his fellow performers, who are also going to post the same footage on their own corner of the platform.
It’s a lot of work.
That’s why performers like Snow like to shoot a lot of content in a short amount of time.
On a recent trip to London, Snow set up twelve collaborations in seven days.
Content creator Milo Miles says grouping several collaborations helps to streamline the process. “Anything a creator can do to make it easier is always a good thing,” he says.
For all the work that goes into setting up the collaborations and filming them, Miles says that’s the easy part.
“The part that comes after that is the real work,” he explained. “Documenting the collaboration on spreadsheets, making sure the consents for distribution are all signed, then overseeing the administrative work to get the content edited, scheduled, and deciding how we’re going to promote it, that all takes a lot of work. People only see the tip of the iceberg, the finished product.”
Miles says there is a strategy, a formula for being a successful content creator in the adult industry that people don’t know about. “They don’t see the 2 a.m. wake-ups, trying to figure out posting calendars, promotional language, and setting up more collaborations,” he said.
Miles started his online porn presence just three years ago after leaving his post as an elected official near Toronto. He says the skills he honed as a politician “were surprisingly transferrable” to his new career.
“In politics, you have to learn to communicate, to market yourself and convince people to ‘buy’ what you’re selling,” Miles said. “Whether you’re building your following on OnlyFans or social media, it’s the same thing.”
Although he’s only been at it for three years, Miles has already grown his subscriber base to more than 750 across the various paid platforms.
Miles says that when you’re on your own as a content creator, you become a brand, and whether you’re successful or not comes down to a little bit of luck and a whole lot of effort.
He says you have to be part social creature, part bookkeeper, and part tech genius who understands how the internet works.
“The most successful content creators have mastered how different social media platforms work,” Miles said.
And Now, Back to the Studio…
Part of these skills and practices, setting up multiple collaborations, knowing who to contact, and how to work social media to build your brand, is knowledge that has been self-taught. But some of it, for both Snow and Miles, has been taught by Carnal Studios, the company they both have signed exclusivity agreements with for studio work, which they do to grow their subscriber base.
Unlike the studio contracts of the past, Carnal’s exclusive agreements don’t prevent performers from filming their own content for platforms like OnlyFans.
“In fact, we encourage it,” said Carnal co-founder and performer Legrand Wolf. “We are one of the only studios in the world that will list our performers’ Twitter, Instagram, and OnlyFans links when we release a video.”
He says rather than seeing their own entrepreneurial efforts as competition to the fantasies these performers create with Carnal, Wolf sees it as extended promotion.
“We want them to view us as a marketing partner,” he says, and he’s serious about that. “The most valuable thing we can offer a young entrepreneur are the tools and mentorship they need to be successful,” Wolf said.
As part of that effort, the company hosts twice-monthly “Carnal Academies”, where they offer performers any help they need to grow their individual brands.
Carnal even helps set up non-studio collaborations with its “Carnal All Stars” opportunities, where content creators can meet up with dozens of other creators in an environment conducive to shooting scenes of their own.
This kind of branding and support sets Carnal apart. “It’s why we have more performers under exclusive contracts than any other company right now,” Wolf said. “We’ve created a culture that allows our performers to thrive, and when they do well, we do well.”
Adam Snow agrees. Before going exclusive with Carnal, Snow had done studio work for two other companies. One was very impersonal and regimented. He felt the company cared more about getting the shots than the performers making them.
“Carnal cares more about the performer,” he said. “They pay attention to how the performers are handling the scenes, and they allow them to make adjustments so they can make their performances great.”
Both Miles and Snow have done hundreds of Carnal scenes, including some with each other. For Miles, the studio relationship has included a lot of mentoring. He credits the skills he’s learned with making him a better entrepreneur.
The New Normal
In the democratization of the adult industry that OnlyFans has forged, the power dynamic has shifted heavily in favor of the individual and independent content creators.
Studios that couldn’t or wouldn’t adapt found themselves on the outside looking in.
But while the performers are now in charge, as Miles and Snow have explained, they work harder than ever.
Before, the business end of porn was all work done by the studio — setting up the shoots, maintaining regulatory documentation, editing, promotion, and distribution. Now all that work falls on the content creator. So, too, does the need to constantly produce material.
“The pressure to continuously post content is informed by the desire to maintain your subscriber base,” Miles said. “A lot of creators will say it’s easy to get subscribers to join, but it’s much more difficult to keep them.”
OnlyFans and sites like it appear to be here to stay. Companies like Carnal and performers like Snow and Miles have figured out how to co-exist for mutual benefit in this new world order. Even Carnal co-founder Wolf has his own space on OnlyFans.
As the adult industry continues to face challenges of piracy and adapting to innovation, one thing is clear. Those who can adapt can thrive. Those who can’t will wind up a footnote.
Milo Miles Socials:
Instagram: instagram.com/milomilesx
OnlyFans: onlyfans.com/milomilesxxx
JustforFans: justfor.fans/MiloMilesxxx
Adam Snow:
Instagram: instagram.com/palmersome
OnlyFans: onlyfans.com/adamsnowxxx
JustforFans: justfor.fans/adamsnowxxx
BlueSky: bluesky.com/adamsnowxxx
Legrand Wolf/Carnal Media
X: x.com/RealCarnalPlus
X: x.com/wolflegrand
OnlyFans: onlyfans.com/legrandwolf
Instagram: instagram.com/carnalplusofficial
Instagram: instagram.com/carnalplusinsider
Instagram: instagram.com/imlegrandwolf
