People posting content to subscription site OnlyFans raked in a whopping £3.47billion between them in 2021, the company has said. The site is popular for adult content.
Its owner, Leonid Radvinsky, was paid a total of $433million in dividends - £246m in 2021 and another £201m since November, its accounts show. The platform has around two million content creators and pandemic restrictions has seen demand for what they do boom.
OnlyFans reported pre-tax profits of $433m last year, an increase from $61m in 2020. The site has, however, been criticised for not doing enough to stop under-age people from selling explicit content.
Chief executive Amrapali Gan told the BBC: "We are empowering creators to monetise their content and have real control over it."
"We will continue to invest in the creator economy by enhancing safety, developing original OFTV [the firm's free streaming platform] content, and continuing to grow our community of creators and fans," she added.
OnlyFans was founded in 2016 and now has 220million users around the globe viewing content from two million creators. The BBC reported that it saw a 128% increase in the number of people using the platform in 2021 compared to 2020, along with a 34% rise in those posting.
Creator earnings were more than double what they were the previous year. OnlyFans takes a 20% commission on all payments made to its content creators.
Although known for its adult content, the site is also popular with musicians, fitness trainers and celebrities who want to charge for visual content. Last year the company announced that all sexually explicit content would be blocked from the platform, following pressure from banking partners.
However, the move was unpopular with users and OnlyFans reversed the policy after just a week.
