3. ‘Customers’ not ‘Sponsors’. You are not the Product. You are the Brand.

There is a difference, and the mentality you adopt in your approach to this business may have serious knock-on effects down the track.

This is a sub-branch extended from a larger blog set I have written laying out tips and advice for Onlyfans Creators, but also independent Escorts, Performers, Sex Workers and whoever else getting started in the Adult Entertainment Industry.

This advice comes from a Content & Brand Production & Marketing perspective. This is not about doing the job itself.

The core post can be found HERE.

One thing I’d suggest for Adult Entertainment workers, but Onlyfans creators in particular, is to really define the relationship between yourself and those who you would have give you money.

Though you may often use these terms and language, your subs are not your ‘sponsors’. They are not ‘supporting you’. There is no hierarchy or dependency here.

They are a customer buying your product, just like any other business.

This mentality affects the way you think and act and approach this enterprise your undertaking.

The counter staff at a fast-food restaurant is satiating an instinctual need, but when you buy a burger, you’re not ‘sponsoring’ that guy. He is not reliant or owing you a thing. You have no ownership there. You cant tell him when to offer this service or that, and it is he who dictates the level of additional services available.

Now, that being said, faux-intimacy is what Onlyfans and direct-to-market strategies are grounded upon, so this ‘language’ of sponsorship and support is actually something to maintain on a marketing level. It comes with far more intimate connotations for your audience. The audience has an instinctual need for at least some form of companionship, and the phrase “You support me” means “You are there for me”. “We have a connection”, and this does speak psychologically to the customer, which emphasises the relationship.

But that is language.

That is a character you’re playing. The reality for you is that this is a business.

The audience has a need.

You have a product.

You match your product to that need.

You hone your marketing and place it before their eyes.

But ‘you’ are not the product.

This may not make sense, as you are the one on screen, you’re the one attracting the customer; they are buying ‘you’. You may have also heard many people outright say that phrase; ‘you are the product’ in this context. Well no. That’s actually not true.

You are the IP.

You’re the Brand.

You are STAR WARS, and the movies are the product drawn from your Brand that you market and sell to the customer. It is a subtle difference, but it influences a lot.

Under that brand, your ‘product’ can really be whatever you like, and you can define it as a thing to be replicated, adapted, put on sale, reduced in price, treated and targeted differently from this other product you have, and so on. It is not ‘you’.

‘You’ cannot be put on sale. ‘You’ cannot be packaged in as part of a bargain deal. Your ‘Supporters’ don’t have you on call. They make no demands. You don’t owe them anything. If your product is currently unavailable, then that’s it. When production is switched off, then that’s it.

They just gotta eat felafel that night instead of the burger they initially wanted.

Everything in today’s commercial world is about sex, except sex. Sex is about power.

This is emphasised all the more when it involves non-intimate relationships. When one reaches outside of their circle for sexual gratification, they are doing so to gain or likely re-gain a feeling of power. You are offering them a means for that.

“She is giving me her time and attention, and I can direct her this way or that to my satiation.”

This is a powerful circumstance, but it’s important to keep in mind that it’s not inherently a ‘bad’ one. These might actually be good well-meaning people who genuinely wish the best for you. They may also be legitimate bad actors who look at you and hope to use you with litteralspite. Regardless of either, you are still, in that moment, offering a material means towards gaining a sense of power and value for themselves. You offer 'the service' of a temporary means to a temporary gratification. That is all.

Even in submissive roleplay, you’re still gaining the dominant’s full attention. This is power. This is a superficial means they can buy from you, the Dominatrix, to gain for themselves a temporary acknowledgment of value. Value is ‘existence’, it is power. It’s weird when put that way, I know, but it makes sense. They pay you to 'act' like you're ignoring them, not to actually ignore them. They can get ignored in real life just fine for free.

To consistently consider yourself as ‘the product’, you risk in time starting to resent these interactions and removals of your own power on a subconscious level. This is something that may play very heavily on your confidence and your abilities to maintain perspective, and to develop and grow in turn.

But as a Brand, you can even play the act of giving away your power to them. A Brand can offer a product that makes the customer feel powerful by allowing them to take power from the product. But that product is not the Brand. There's a nuance to this.

As ‘the Brand’, you can have that one-off product of a video or an interaction play that source of satiation just fine, because it’s not connected to you. You’re a chef who has created this meal which they can buy. That’s it. No one else makes this meal like you can. They come to you specifically because they prefer how you make it. Sometimes you offer special deluxe meals that take extra effort but sell for extra price. Sometimes they even pay more for particular extras or alterations that make it more personal for them, sometimes you offer discounts or meal deals… but all of those are products, and none of them are ‘you’.

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