Click. Pay. Porn.
This seems to be the way paysites are. I have talked to models who make money from these sites. I have talked with one model who works her ass off and it is to her advantage. She posts erotic material so I can imagine its effective for her. Another model I spoke with said her followers were crude and unsupportive and just wanted her to post increasingly erotic material. She found it frustrating because she is predominantly a fine art model. I am talking about Onlyfans here because Patreon is more selective about what they host.
I toyed with the idea of a Patreon page and I started one nearly a year ago. My intention was to post about my methods, my editing and photography in art nude. I gained a few followers who paid various platform rates. A couple said they liked the photography insights and tutorials. The others repeatedly asked for nude shots of models who I have worked with but don’t post nude work. They followed me for quite a few months repeatedly asking for more of these models. Incidentally, these models were the youngest models I have worked with. Both in their early twenties. I guess that doesn’t surprise me but it wasn’t what I wanted my page to be about.
Slowly but surely I succumbed to the persistence and posted less about photography and more images that were more erotic or nude in nature. Now, I don’t have much of that work because it isn’t what I choose to shoot. It’s not like I have images that I won’t post, it’s that I never took those type of images. What frustrated me was that I was slowly moving away from what I wanted my page to be about.
It’s hard to have a paid page that covers photography because there is so much available for free in terms of tutorials and lessons. I have noticed a distinct lack of art nude tutorials however so that’s why I aimed at that genre. I would have a person sign up and unsubscribe a few days later. Or I got requests for more erotic material. To date I have one subscriber left at the lowest tier who likes the photography discussion. The others have slowly left because I don’t post what they want.
This seems to be the same pattern as some models I spoke with. If they don’t post erotic content, the money goes away. It’s really not a lot of money either. $10-$20 bucks a month seems to be what most most models charge for access to their page. Mine is between $5 - $10.
I have decided to keep the page going but to return to what I wanted the page to cover. The photographic process of artistic content. I just laughed because even I am starting to call it content and not art. But that’s what it is in the social media world. I am a content creator using photography as my medium. I am not bitching because I knew full well what my Instagram page is and I do well out of it. I now offer paid tutorials one-on-one to photographers, I do more TFP shoots and have sold a few prints from the page. By the way, TFP isn’t a bad thing. Professional models get upset by it because they see their time as valuable but so is mine. If I can offer imagery that a model wants personally, then why is a time-for-time deal bad? To me it just shows my work is good enough to be wanted.
So, I will keep my Patreon page going and trust me, it’s not for the tiny amount of money it makes but it’s there for those who are interested in my process and for my work as a photographer. Really, it’s no different than this blog. I don’t charge here either and have more readers than I ever imagined I would. I believe in multi-channel marketing sure, but I also believe in giving back where I can. If people enjoy the read, why not let you all read? I’m not special or unique. Sometimes my work can be but I enjoy the process of writing and taking photographs. Any money I do make only goes back into the process of shooting and I am far from breaking even, let alone profiting.
Thank you to all of you that do read my thoughts and subscribe via email here. I am going to say if you have any questions at all, please comment here and I will be happy to do a post about it. Thanks again.
I can definitely concur with this. I have at times dabbled with Pay sites like Patreon, OnlyFans etc, only to be drawn into that standard demand for more explicit work. That's what pays and what is required to compete and make $. Models often find the same pressures as they try to make a living as a model without posing nude, only to be pressured into implied, then topless and artistic nudes, and eventually understand that to compete and make money, they need to sell explicit themed work. I recently did a little experiment on my own website by adding a few galleries and videos with explicit content along with my regular work which is nude and art nude. It's no surprise that those with explicit content are the ones getting the majority of the hits. I try to walk that line that incorporates both artistic and more explicit work, but attempt that the explicit work has some artistic merit. I'm probably fooling myself and just succumbing to the same pressure and demands that everyone faces. I only have one paysite right now - Fansly, and it's pretty quiet. I am focusing on my own website which is free and allows me to post what I want uncensored. Curating for the audience I want is always a challenge.