Are we working, but not there?

Against the backdrop of the Pornhub hacking story, the news about OnlyFans looks particularly striking and even somewhat ironic. While some platforms face data breaches, reputational risks, and security issues, others are quietly breaking records in business efficiency.

According to research by the marketing company Barchart, OnlyFans ranked first in the world for revenue per employee. This figure reached an impressive $37.6 million per person. To understand the scale of the gap: NVIDIA has revenue per employee of about $3.6 million, Apple — $2.4 million, Meta — $2.2 million, and Google — roughly $1.9 million. In this way, OnlyFans surpasses technology giants more than tenfold, while remaining relatively small in terms of staff.

This result is explained by an extremely simple and simultaneously ruthlessly effective business model. OnlyFans earns on content created by its users, bearing almost no production costs. The platform acts as an intermediary, providing infrastructure, payments, and audience access, taking 20% of the creators’ revenue. No expensive content factories, complex supply chains, or large R&D departments. The content is created by people themselves, and the company simply counts the percentages carefully.

OnlyFans’ popularity surged during the COVID-19 pandemic, when millions of people worldwide sought new ways to earn online. Closed borders, lockdowns, and the growth of digital services played into the platform’s favor. What began as a niche subscription content service quickly turned into one of the most profitable businesses in the digital economy. The main share of popularity was driven by intimate and adult content, for which users are willing to pay directly, without ads or intermediaries.

OnlyFans was founded in 2016 by Briton Tim Stokely and became a financial phenomenon within a few years. A minimal staff, high margins, and stable demand made the platform practically a perfect example of how the user content economy works. Experts note that it is precisely the combination of high monetization and low operating costs that allowed the company to achieve such extreme efficiency metrics.

Adult content platforms have long ceased to be a marginal segment of the internet. This is a big business with billion-dollar turnovers, where issues of data security, user trust, and infrastructure stability become critically important. OnlyFans has so far managed to maintain a balance between growth, control, and profitability, making it an especially attractive case for analysis.

The conclusion is obvious. While some corporations build complex ecosystems, spend billions on development, and argue about the future of AI, others simply give people a tool to earn money and take their share. And yes, in such moments, one inevitably thinks: oh, we’re all working, but not there.