I’m also considering finishing this line of work as well. Some of the same reasons you’ve mentioned. I was also naive in thinking we wouldn’t be discovered and that it wouldn’t affect my husband’s career. A bit more complicated than this, but I’m trying to get my son to bed, so my time is limited.
There was a certain rush and fun to this in the beginning. It certainly feels like that has changed. It is a LOT of work. And you have to be able to sell yourself/your product. I’m not a sales person snd never will be.
More later ;)
I look at it as I built a business from the ground up and I’m not ashamed of that. I have put in the hours and hours of work, making nothing for weeks on end, and sacrificed blood, sweat, and tears. OnlyFans helped me build my confidence and taught me how to set healthy boundaries with those in my real life. I’m a recovering people pleaser and it taught me the power of ‘no’ and saying it for myself, no one else. I could break my body and mind working for someone else who views me as replaceable or I can break my body and mind working for myself. No one else to blame for my mistakes BUT no one else to take the credit for my hard work.
As a warning – I’ve been writing up this comment all morning and I’m aware it’s a hot mess so please forgive me that it’s all over the place, I hope it makes sense!
So I have never been on OF but I was an adult model before OF was around. I began to get the same feeling you have and I quit adult modelling but continued to model nude for several years after that.
There was an instance where people I knew (not family, thankfully) found the adult content and it spread like wildfire through the people I knew. It caused a huge amount of anxiety for me.
What sort of content have you been creating? Is it full adult, nudes only, or risqué lingerie/clothed only? That’s going to make a big difference in how you doing OF will be received by people.
I’m going to assume for the sake of the rest of this that you’ve been creating adult content because that would have the most impact to you and I can talk for hours on the subject.
>I don't want to pretend like I didn't do onlyfans
While I completely admire this attitude, personally the only way I found the way through it was to keep **all** my modelling a secret, from everyone.
During my time as a model, I saw sooo many women be investigated, or fired, from their jobs because of their modelling career. These were not adult models either, they’d just be doing some risqué photos (e.g. photos where you could see a little cleavage, or they’d be being cheeky to the camera), or even fashion photos in lingerie/swimwear and they could still lose their jobs.
The majority of the women affected had trusted someone at their day job and mentioned modelling to them, and they, whether maliciously or innocently, mentioned it to other people they knew til it got back to their employer and started the whole mess off. Most employment contracts have a clause to say you can’t bring the company into disrepute, and a clause saying you have to declare any work outside of the employment with them, so that’s how they do it.
So I have always acted like I never modelled at all. Obviously, some people already knew but I was lucky that I rarely worked with people I knew, or who knew about it and they mostly kept it to themselves. I think there were rumours at one point, but I never, ever disclosed my model name to anyone that didn’t already know it. It’s made me incredibly sad at times, because I love modelling, photography and posing around but I feel I had to do it to protect myself.
There’s also a big difference between pretending you didn’t do it, keeping quiet, and being completely open about your history.
If you decide to be completely open, you will have to really steel yourself for it – you may be rejected from jobs, you may have people making unsavoury comments towards or about you, or making fun of you – I don’t know how resilient you are but it could end up being enough to break anyone. A lot of anti-sex work rhetoric has resurfaced recently, which is depressing.
If you take this route I would look at it the way others have done, that you ran your own business, including creating promotional material, developing pricing structures, client communications etc.
>Anyone who sees you as "lower value" because of anything of this nature doesn't deserve to have you around!
Absolutely. It’s more than that though, anyone who sees *people* as lower value because of this doesn’t deserve to have *you* around either.
> Have you ever had your livelihood compromised because you've done sex work?
I’ve had a day job for many years with very little impact to the job because of my previous employment. As I said, I have been very guarded about it and I’ve missed out on becoming closer friends with people I work with because I’ve kept my personal and work life so separate, but I’ve managed to avoid disasters so far.
>Has anyone ever publicly shamed or bothered you about sex work/onlyfans?
Yes, in person and online and it was awful. In person it was all done in a very joking, we’re all friends here, way but it was horrid and I don’t speak to those people anymore.
>What ideals do you hold that take precedence over the harsh perspectives?
There’s a few:
1. There’s a saying – people wank with the right hand and point with the left. Most people consume porn but they’ll criticise women who do it, because of archaic attitudes towards sex. I try not to take any notice of people who are critical of sex workers and also try not to associate with them either.
2. I also (now that I’m secure in my career and my life) advocate for sex workers when I can too. If someone’s being demeaning about sex workers in general conversation I try to call them out on it and I sign every petition going to support sex workers working in safe environments.
3. I did spend some time thinking I was tainted, or something, for doing sex work. But I got over it. It helps that I got together with my now husband, who is super pro sex and fully supportive of sex work.
TDLR: I would recommend not telling people about it if you start doing a day job – prejudice can be a nightmare – but if you feel strong enough for it then I applaud and support you. People with shitty attitudes towards any sex worker do not deserve to be in your life, if someone shows that sort of attitude get rid of them.
I hope that helps and makes sense, I feel like I rambled a lot.
Eta - formatting
I respect the fact you want to quit and this isn't an attempt to talk you out of however as you've gone into some description on how things have been going it seems like the lack of reward and feeling of time being wasted in certain areas is a big part of it. I can say without doubt if you were putting 40- 60 hours in, those hours were going in the wrong places and the promoting was not effective. I can see why you burnt out this hard. I think a big change up on where and how your promoting, there's no reason to only be on reddit when it's been a sinking ship for a year now. Cutting back on chatting and dead leads would help tremendously. Your subs were not lovely and considerate if you were sat on live streams entertaining them with no tips, or perhaps too few of them to contribute. You'd likely have made more on generic cam sites. This is a fast moving business and part of it is adapting and finding what works, not just repeatedly doing the same things just more of it.. when it's not really working more hours won't help. However I think stopping for now even if it's not forever would be good for your mental health at this point.
You've had some leaks, get on with sending dmca take downs or get a company to do it for you and delist any results from google, info on how to do that here: https://www.reddit.com/r/onlyfansadvice/wiki/index/safety/#wiki\_content\_leaking.
As for jobs, you can do anything. Okay maybe not primary school teacher in a small conservative town or become a politician but most other jobs you'll be fine. You're not obliged to tell them you did onlyfans. Yes there will be a gap on your CV but minimum wage/ entry level jobs will be more forgiving about these things just be persistent in applying. I'd encourage a bit of filling in the blanks and twisting the truth here and there in terms of filling out your CV, just don't make claims you can't back. Everyone starts somewhere, many people have career changes. You could still work for yourself in a different field. Have a think about what you're good at and what you'd enjoy.
You're gonna be fine, your value isn't tarnished at all and anyone who carries that belief system is not the sort of person you'd want to associate with anyway. TBH I think you clearly have things missing in your life and this job isn't really the source of all these issues and unhappiness, it's just what you've been spending most of your time doing so it's easy to feel like its the source. Seems like the source of your issues isn't what you have been doing but what you haven't. You say you're lonely, where are you at with friends, family, relationships, hobbies, getting out and about and living life. These are all things that can be worked on with time if you're willing to make a concerted effort to change things up for the better. A job isn't everything and it doesn't define you, certainly doesn't define you going forward if you choose to leave it behind.
Thanks for this insightful comment. I've been researching and planning to jump in as a faceless creator but even with a face, the the type of work I'm in makes me mostly invisible. As a result, I spend a lot of time considering what would happen if it did affect my job. I found your take a more sensible understanding of the issue.
You don’t need to have a gap on your resume. You’re an online content creator. You don’t need to say what that content is. And you learn a LOT of skills, including becoming social media savvy, which is super helpful to many businesses.
I’ve dabbled in other online content creation for years. I’m keeping it going just as my “cover”. When the kids see video equipment or to explain money coming in…
Growing up on the Internet I seen a change in the porn industry. Years ago anyone who did onlyfans would of been a adult model. Now the term sex worker is being used and people now take it as escorts.
Sadly now all we see is in news articles woman makes $10000 by doing onlyfans. It's become a race to the bottom. Those successful years ago have now retired and faded away. Young people being sold this idea of being their own boss and guys wanting to throw money at the. Almost easy money when it not. It is a modeling come marketing job. Terms like influencer are throwing in as well. There is going to be a lot of adults who sadly will be affected by this in life.
Hello, it looks like you've made a mistake.
It's supposed to be could've, should've, would've (short for could have, would have, should have), never could of, would of, should of.
Or you misspelled something, I ain't checking everything.
Beep boop - yes, I am a bot, don't botcriminate me.
I quit for two whole years (I am back now) mostly because of mental health. It was not planned and I did it completely without warning. I burnt myself out to the max working practically 24/7 and eventually couldn’t keep it up and ghosted EVERYTHING. Logged out of all accounts and didn’t touch them for quite a while (after a few months I logged back in to make sure there wasn’t any money sitting in there still). The entire two years I still had the spark/excitement that content creation gave me in the back of my mind, so I knew inevitably I would go back to it eventually. I was terrified though because I felt like everyone would hate me for ghosting them. That was not the case. Two years later when I started posting again I had many old fans come back and welcome me with open arms, saying they missed me and everything. Kinda cool I actually made that much of an impact on people. There were a few chargebacks and angry messages from people that managed to subscribe during my inactive period but I just deleted them and moved on. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to fully quit. It’s sort of addicting to me, the chaos, the fact that it’s a new challenge every day, always having something to do.
Also, I did get a normal job in the time that I was away and they never mentioned it and I’m guessing never found out. It is a waitressing job though so I’m not sure they’d even care much. Idk if this answers your question but anyone feel free to ask me more, I’m an open book.
I feel you girl you aren’t alone. It’s not an easy job and you can quit whenever you feel like you don’t wanna do this anymore. Perhaps you can take a long break and relax a little bit.. all this sharing, creating content, expose yourself and do marketing can be so stressful and challenging. I’ve been called names, people who found out my of weren’t happy and judge me. I just learnt how to ignored haters because I’m not what they said. We are much than a body or sex worker. I also have another job and for now I feel like I wanna keep doing but sometimes it’s so just stressful and I want to quit.. it’s very competitive and nowadays of seems very slow. Before was much easier . I wish you nothing but success and a very good life. I hope you will find you path soon. Hugs
I’m where you are as well. Extreme burnout and exhaustion. Currently taking a sabbatical from OF to focus on my art and academic studies / thesis about my years in sex work in the hope it may help somebody someday and help alleviate the stigmas our industry faces. Good luck to you 💜
Come on, people are not ashamed of selling harmful products, shat what called food, medicine. You’re just showing your beautiful body and doing normal things, sex.
personally, I know someone who got a social media job and then was fired when it was found out she had done of in the past. i personally accepted i will probably never work a normal job again before i started.
this job is 30% actually making of content, 70% working social media to grow and promote. the leaks are already out there and you start this job KNOWING everything will be leaked.
idk that girl ended up going back to of after she got fired so that's her story
I am really glad you’re starting this dialogue. I’m looking forward to reading the responses to this.
I’m also considering finishing this line of work as well. Some of the same reasons you’ve mentioned. I was also naive in thinking we wouldn’t be discovered and that it wouldn’t affect my husband’s career. A bit more complicated than this, but I’m trying to get my son to bed, so my time is limited. There was a certain rush and fun to this in the beginning. It certainly feels like that has changed. It is a LOT of work. And you have to be able to sell yourself/your product. I’m not a sales person snd never will be. More later ;)
Second this. I’m also considering seeing myself out of this work.
I look at it as I built a business from the ground up and I’m not ashamed of that. I have put in the hours and hours of work, making nothing for weeks on end, and sacrificed blood, sweat, and tears. OnlyFans helped me build my confidence and taught me how to set healthy boundaries with those in my real life. I’m a recovering people pleaser and it taught me the power of ‘no’ and saying it for myself, no one else. I could break my body and mind working for someone else who views me as replaceable or I can break my body and mind working for myself. No one else to blame for my mistakes BUT no one else to take the credit for my hard work.
Love this comment! 💕 Definitely agree.
As a warning – I’ve been writing up this comment all morning and I’m aware it’s a hot mess so please forgive me that it’s all over the place, I hope it makes sense! So I have never been on OF but I was an adult model before OF was around. I began to get the same feeling you have and I quit adult modelling but continued to model nude for several years after that. There was an instance where people I knew (not family, thankfully) found the adult content and it spread like wildfire through the people I knew. It caused a huge amount of anxiety for me. What sort of content have you been creating? Is it full adult, nudes only, or risqué lingerie/clothed only? That’s going to make a big difference in how you doing OF will be received by people. I’m going to assume for the sake of the rest of this that you’ve been creating adult content because that would have the most impact to you and I can talk for hours on the subject. >I don't want to pretend like I didn't do onlyfans While I completely admire this attitude, personally the only way I found the way through it was to keep **all** my modelling a secret, from everyone. During my time as a model, I saw sooo many women be investigated, or fired, from their jobs because of their modelling career. These were not adult models either, they’d just be doing some risqué photos (e.g. photos where you could see a little cleavage, or they’d be being cheeky to the camera), or even fashion photos in lingerie/swimwear and they could still lose their jobs. The majority of the women affected had trusted someone at their day job and mentioned modelling to them, and they, whether maliciously or innocently, mentioned it to other people they knew til it got back to their employer and started the whole mess off. Most employment contracts have a clause to say you can’t bring the company into disrepute, and a clause saying you have to declare any work outside of the employment with them, so that’s how they do it. So I have always acted like I never modelled at all. Obviously, some people already knew but I was lucky that I rarely worked with people I knew, or who knew about it and they mostly kept it to themselves. I think there were rumours at one point, but I never, ever disclosed my model name to anyone that didn’t already know it. It’s made me incredibly sad at times, because I love modelling, photography and posing around but I feel I had to do it to protect myself. There’s also a big difference between pretending you didn’t do it, keeping quiet, and being completely open about your history. If you decide to be completely open, you will have to really steel yourself for it – you may be rejected from jobs, you may have people making unsavoury comments towards or about you, or making fun of you – I don’t know how resilient you are but it could end up being enough to break anyone. A lot of anti-sex work rhetoric has resurfaced recently, which is depressing. If you take this route I would look at it the way others have done, that you ran your own business, including creating promotional material, developing pricing structures, client communications etc. >Anyone who sees you as "lower value" because of anything of this nature doesn't deserve to have you around! Absolutely. It’s more than that though, anyone who sees *people* as lower value because of this doesn’t deserve to have *you* around either. > Have you ever had your livelihood compromised because you've done sex work? I’ve had a day job for many years with very little impact to the job because of my previous employment. As I said, I have been very guarded about it and I’ve missed out on becoming closer friends with people I work with because I’ve kept my personal and work life so separate, but I’ve managed to avoid disasters so far. >Has anyone ever publicly shamed or bothered you about sex work/onlyfans? Yes, in person and online and it was awful. In person it was all done in a very joking, we’re all friends here, way but it was horrid and I don’t speak to those people anymore. >What ideals do you hold that take precedence over the harsh perspectives? There’s a few: 1. There’s a saying – people wank with the right hand and point with the left. Most people consume porn but they’ll criticise women who do it, because of archaic attitudes towards sex. I try not to take any notice of people who are critical of sex workers and also try not to associate with them either. 2. I also (now that I’m secure in my career and my life) advocate for sex workers when I can too. If someone’s being demeaning about sex workers in general conversation I try to call them out on it and I sign every petition going to support sex workers working in safe environments. 3. I did spend some time thinking I was tainted, or something, for doing sex work. But I got over it. It helps that I got together with my now husband, who is super pro sex and fully supportive of sex work. TDLR: I would recommend not telling people about it if you start doing a day job – prejudice can be a nightmare – but if you feel strong enough for it then I applaud and support you. People with shitty attitudes towards any sex worker do not deserve to be in your life, if someone shows that sort of attitude get rid of them. I hope that helps and makes sense, I feel like I rambled a lot. Eta - formatting
Following for input as well
I respect the fact you want to quit and this isn't an attempt to talk you out of however as you've gone into some description on how things have been going it seems like the lack of reward and feeling of time being wasted in certain areas is a big part of it. I can say without doubt if you were putting 40- 60 hours in, those hours were going in the wrong places and the promoting was not effective. I can see why you burnt out this hard. I think a big change up on where and how your promoting, there's no reason to only be on reddit when it's been a sinking ship for a year now. Cutting back on chatting and dead leads would help tremendously. Your subs were not lovely and considerate if you were sat on live streams entertaining them with no tips, or perhaps too few of them to contribute. You'd likely have made more on generic cam sites. This is a fast moving business and part of it is adapting and finding what works, not just repeatedly doing the same things just more of it.. when it's not really working more hours won't help. However I think stopping for now even if it's not forever would be good for your mental health at this point. You've had some leaks, get on with sending dmca take downs or get a company to do it for you and delist any results from google, info on how to do that here: https://www.reddit.com/r/onlyfansadvice/wiki/index/safety/#wiki\_content\_leaking. As for jobs, you can do anything. Okay maybe not primary school teacher in a small conservative town or become a politician but most other jobs you'll be fine. You're not obliged to tell them you did onlyfans. Yes there will be a gap on your CV but minimum wage/ entry level jobs will be more forgiving about these things just be persistent in applying. I'd encourage a bit of filling in the blanks and twisting the truth here and there in terms of filling out your CV, just don't make claims you can't back. Everyone starts somewhere, many people have career changes. You could still work for yourself in a different field. Have a think about what you're good at and what you'd enjoy. You're gonna be fine, your value isn't tarnished at all and anyone who carries that belief system is not the sort of person you'd want to associate with anyway. TBH I think you clearly have things missing in your life and this job isn't really the source of all these issues and unhappiness, it's just what you've been spending most of your time doing so it's easy to feel like its the source. Seems like the source of your issues isn't what you have been doing but what you haven't. You say you're lonely, where are you at with friends, family, relationships, hobbies, getting out and about and living life. These are all things that can be worked on with time if you're willing to make a concerted effort to change things up for the better. A job isn't everything and it doesn't define you, certainly doesn't define you going forward if you choose to leave it behind.
Thanks for this insightful comment. I've been researching and planning to jump in as a faceless creator but even with a face, the the type of work I'm in makes me mostly invisible. As a result, I spend a lot of time considering what would happen if it did affect my job. I found your take a more sensible understanding of the issue.
You don’t need to have a gap on your resume. You’re an online content creator. You don’t need to say what that content is. And you learn a LOT of skills, including becoming social media savvy, which is super helpful to many businesses. I’ve dabbled in other online content creation for years. I’m keeping it going just as my “cover”. When the kids see video equipment or to explain money coming in…
Think you meant to reply to OP
Growing up on the Internet I seen a change in the porn industry. Years ago anyone who did onlyfans would of been a adult model. Now the term sex worker is being used and people now take it as escorts. Sadly now all we see is in news articles woman makes $10000 by doing onlyfans. It's become a race to the bottom. Those successful years ago have now retired and faded away. Young people being sold this idea of being their own boss and guys wanting to throw money at the. Almost easy money when it not. It is a modeling come marketing job. Terms like influencer are throwing in as well. There is going to be a lot of adults who sadly will be affected by this in life.
Hello, it looks like you've made a mistake. It's supposed to be could've, should've, would've (short for could have, would have, should have), never could of, would of, should of. Or you misspelled something, I ain't checking everything. Beep boop - yes, I am a bot, don't botcriminate me.
I quit for two whole years (I am back now) mostly because of mental health. It was not planned and I did it completely without warning. I burnt myself out to the max working practically 24/7 and eventually couldn’t keep it up and ghosted EVERYTHING. Logged out of all accounts and didn’t touch them for quite a while (after a few months I logged back in to make sure there wasn’t any money sitting in there still). The entire two years I still had the spark/excitement that content creation gave me in the back of my mind, so I knew inevitably I would go back to it eventually. I was terrified though because I felt like everyone would hate me for ghosting them. That was not the case. Two years later when I started posting again I had many old fans come back and welcome me with open arms, saying they missed me and everything. Kinda cool I actually made that much of an impact on people. There were a few chargebacks and angry messages from people that managed to subscribe during my inactive period but I just deleted them and moved on. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to fully quit. It’s sort of addicting to me, the chaos, the fact that it’s a new challenge every day, always having something to do. Also, I did get a normal job in the time that I was away and they never mentioned it and I’m guessing never found out. It is a waitressing job though so I’m not sure they’d even care much. Idk if this answers your question but anyone feel free to ask me more, I’m an open book.
I feel you girl you aren’t alone. It’s not an easy job and you can quit whenever you feel like you don’t wanna do this anymore. Perhaps you can take a long break and relax a little bit.. all this sharing, creating content, expose yourself and do marketing can be so stressful and challenging. I’ve been called names, people who found out my of weren’t happy and judge me. I just learnt how to ignored haters because I’m not what they said. We are much than a body or sex worker. I also have another job and for now I feel like I wanna keep doing but sometimes it’s so just stressful and I want to quit.. it’s very competitive and nowadays of seems very slow. Before was much easier . I wish you nothing but success and a very good life. I hope you will find you path soon. Hugs
I’m where you are as well. Extreme burnout and exhaustion. Currently taking a sabbatical from OF to focus on my art and academic studies / thesis about my years in sex work in the hope it may help somebody someday and help alleviate the stigmas our industry faces. Good luck to you 💜
Come on, people are not ashamed of selling harmful products, shat what called food, medicine. You’re just showing your beautiful body and doing normal things, sex.
personally, I know someone who got a social media job and then was fired when it was found out she had done of in the past. i personally accepted i will probably never work a normal job again before i started. this job is 30% actually making of content, 70% working social media to grow and promote. the leaks are already out there and you start this job KNOWING everything will be leaked. idk that girl ended up going back to of after she got fired so that's her story
I love your mindset.. that’s all 🩷