"Even with thousands in my bank, I felt deflated." Photo / File
A British student who thought sex work would be an easy way to make money tells her story.
At the height of my OnlyFans stint, I was being offered £80 ($178) for a one-minute roleplay video. Strangers would offer me big amounts of money for even stranger requests – far more than I was earning at my night-shift retail job while studying psychology at university.
I would wear nice lingerie, fun little outfits and brightly coloured wigs, perhaps in an attempt to try and anonymise myself. I’m 23 now, but five years ago, at 18, I was very much trying to find myself. I got sucked into a wormhole of feeling like I could justify anything, testing out different personas to see which one fit. In the end, none of them did.
Growing up, my parents were strict Catholics, and as a child, I went to church every Sunday and spent school holidays in Sunday school. Feeling the pressure of growing up in a household where it’s expected that you’ll do well, marry and get a well-paid, respectable job, I studied hard and was an A-grade student. But I craved freedom and couldn’t wait to get out and be independent. When I moved from Essex to Brighton for university, I finally got it.
I first made my OnlyFans account in the winter of my first term there. It was the Covid lockdown and a dark time for students. All our lessons were online, we couldn’t socialise and I was barely making enough money to cover my rent. The £1000 student loan I needed to last me for three months didn’t even cover my rent, which was £700 a month. So I got a part-time supermarket job – my only source of social interaction. I didn’t like my colleagues and even the journey there was miserable; getting the bus into the city, dealing with drunk, homeless people who would hang around the staff entrance of the shop.
My friends and I had been chatting about the videos of successful women making millions on OnlyFans and I thought, “I can do this and not tell anyone”. It didn’t seem serious. I’d be stepping into somebody else’s skin for a bit. It was almost like a joke I’d taken one step further than everyone else.
So, I made my account, only telling a couple of close friends. They all warned me to be careful. I started out posting bikini pictures, nothing worse than what I would post on Instagram. But I knew it wouldn’t last long, and within days my content moved into full-blown nudity. When I first started posting, I felt powerful. My subscribers weren’t anyone I knew, and their comments gave me a confidence boost. It was like when you do something wrong, and you know it’s bad, but you do it anyway. There was a thrill in it.
Subscribers were starting to trickle in but I wasn’t making the big money yet. By the end of the first month, I had around £450 in my OnlyFans digital wallet, which, after commission was taken, ended up being around £360. By the end of the second, it was up to around £1800, but this wasn’t even two months of a full-time wage.
I realised that if you want to make money on OnlyFans, it’s not going to happen whilst you’re keeping it a secret, and I was right. I blocked all my family from seeing my Instagram stories, and then posted the link to my account, and within two months, that £1800 had reached £20,000 .
Everything I posted was censored, and the really explicit stuff was behind a paywall, so you could only access it if you paid more. That’s where the real money is, especially if it’s a strange request you wouldn’t post normally. You get lost in it when you start seeing the money flooding in and it’s more than you would have made in a year in a normal job. You begin to think it’s worth it, that you’d be better off continuing instead of studying.
By the end of the third month, the novelty had worn off. With more subscribers comes more demands, and unless you’re a very sexual person, it isn’t maintainable. Even with thousands in my bank, I felt deflated. I was constantly having to play into men’s fantasies, and pretending to feel aroused all the time is degrading. Most of the time, I felt ugly and exposed, especially when the men would make nasty comments about my worth and looks, but I thought I had to perform because they had paid me. Everything felt dirty – I felt disgusting.
When you feel like you need to do something in order to survive, it starts feeling shameful. I was putting pressure on myself to make money that wasn’t guaranteed, and I felt like I could run out of it at any moment and not be able to pay rent or buy food. It quickly stops feeling empowering and becomes draining. I was just brainwashing myself into thinking it’s fun. It’s not easy; you always need to be creating new content to post, regardless of whether you like it or not. You spend all day on your phone replying to messages. There’s no lunch break or clocking out.
Although people who subscribe to OnlyFans can pick their username, so they can choose to be anonymous, I started to worry when I recognised a few names amongst the subscribers. I realised I might be recognised and my secret would be out. After a few days, the feeling would wash away – the really vulgar content was the stuff they needed to pay extra for, so even if they had subscribed out of curiosity, I doubted they’d see anything hardcore. Besides, my reason for keeping it a secret was because I came from a family where sex work was unacceptable. I wasn’t raised that way, but luckily nobody knew my parents’ names to be able to contact them. I thought, “nothing bad has happened yet, so it probably won’t”. Until it did.
Then, what started as fun turned into my biggest nightmare in the space of an hour.
One evening, I was filming content for my page, which was all I ever did, when my Mum video-called me. I declined, thinking I would call her back after, but she began rapidly sending me text messages, demanding I answer the phone. My heart dropped, and I couldn’t breathe. I knew instantly that I had been found out.
Frantically, I flew around my room trying to clean it, hiding sex toys, turning off my ring light. My hands were shaking as I put on my clothes, stashed my wig under the bed, and rapidly wiped off the mountain of eyeliner I had applied.
When I answered, my Mum was in tears. She kept repeating, “What have you done?” The shame that poured over me in that moment was like nothing I had ever experienced. I couldn’t breathe, I was hyperventilating, in complete and utter shock. I had thought I was being so sneaky; it completely blindsided me.
Mum didn’t just know what I was doing – she had seen it. Someone had sent both of my parents a screen recording of my page. They had paid for all my content, meaning they could show the extreme stuff behind paywalls, all the pictures and videos. Imagine how mortified I felt knowing my parents had seen me masturbating. They exposed everything.
But they hadn’t just sent it to my Mum and Dad. They had also individually sent it to every single Facebook friend my parents had, including work colleagues, people that worked for my Dad or that my Dad worked for, my hairdresser, distant cousins and relatives I hadn’t seen since I was a toddler. I was mortified. What had started out as a secret, online life had found its way to almost everybody I knew. I wanted to hide away for the rest of my life, it felt like everyone in the world had seen me naked.
My Mum went through all the stages of grief. She was devastated at my behaviour, the way I’d made my Dad feel, and furious at how this person had completely violated the terms and conditions of OnlyFans.
That was the day I completely closed my account. It’s illegal to distribute someone’s content, so I asked my parents who had sent the video, but it was too late. Whoever it was had sent the videos from a fake profile, waited until the messages had been delivered and seen, and then deleted the account.
It felt like the end of the world, and soon, it got even worse. OnlyFans experienced a data leak; if you googled my full name, a pornographic photo of me popped up on Google Images. I felt humiliated and worthless, like any power I’d had was completely taken away. I started to believe I’d ruined my entire life. I was trapped, and thought I’d either be unemployed or have to do OnlyFans for the rest of my life. It was terrifying.
When I opened my account, I was very naive about how it worked, and the only thing I really knew was that the OnlyFans terms and conditions state that you can’t share screenshots or recordings. Despite this, I reported the issue and was quickly shrugged off. They apologised but said they have no way of tracing screenshots, and without a name, there was nothing they could do. As for the data leak? They told me it was normal and would go away on its own, despite it being for paying customers. That was the nail in the coffin for me; I did not trust that website.
I also reported the incident to the police. Unsurprisingly, they said they couldn’t help me because it was my decision. Although I knew this would happen, I was still disappointed; it’s annoying when someone breaks the law and has no consequences. Just because I was profiting off of those pictures didn’t mean my parents deserved to see them. You think it won’t happen to you, and then it does, and you’re alone with no support, drowning in the mortification and anguish of your decisions.
In the five years since, I’ve managed to move on. I’m lucky that I was so young when I did it. I’ve grown up, and I don’t agree or want to be associated with it any more.
I came from a strict house and had a load of freedom dumped on me when I first moved out – I didn’t know how to act. I hated my degree and felt so lost.
Since graduating, I’ve moved back in with my parents, in a house that feels clean and wholesome. I took a gap year to figure out what I want, and I found a love and passion for chiropractic, which I now study back at university.
My mental health has improved dramatically. I think I’ve managed to find the light at the end of the dark tunnel that was my OnlyFans experience; without sex work I wouldn’t be able to fund my new degree.
I’m also a tutor, and find all the work I do incredibly fulfilling. I’m worlds away from who I was at 18.
To anyone who might be considering OnlyFans, I would say, to put it plainly, don’t. You might think it’s just taking a few pictures, but you’re creating pornographic images and films of yourself, and you have to be prepared that eventually, people will find out, including your family and friends.
There’s a misconception that you’ll spend two or three hours working maximum and make thousands, but you’ll actually be working constantly. If you’re willing to go to all lengths to tarnish your reputation, you need to make sure you don’t care what people think.
I started my account because I thought it would be a liberating, lucrative business venture, but the reality was so much darker and nearly ruined my family. It’s easy to believe the glamorous side of it, but the reality is a shame-inducing nightmare.
– As told to Beth Orchard
• LIFELINE: 0800 543 354 (0800 LIFELINE) or free text 4357 (HELP) (available 24/7)
• YOUTHLINE: 0800 376 633
• NEED TO TALK? Free call or text 1737 (available 24/7)
• KIDSLINE: 0800 543 754 (available 24/7)
• WHATSUP: 0800 942 8787 (1pm to 11pm)
• DEPRESSION HELPLINE: 0800 111 757 or TEXT 4202
• NATIONAL ANXIETY 24 HR HELPLINE: 0800 269 4389
Telegraph: Why you don't need to stop eating sandwiches.