6. Mahhketeng Yo Sekth Werrk

Everyone’s gonna tell you their Top 10 tips for success in Marketing your Onlyfans or Escort or Sex Work business. They’re doing that though in order to market their own business to you. You’re their target for clicks. Now those tips aren’t wrong, and that’s why everyone uses them and drowns themselves within the flood of everyone else. But marketing is actually more about finding what ‘else’ can be done.

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.

So, you’ve got this fantastic look, idea, your delivery’s on point and the channel’s all set up. Now how do you promote?

Yeah no one knows.

I mean everyone actually does know, but that’s also the main problem. Everyone is doing basically the same thing, following those same ‘Top Ten Tips’ and using those same funnels, so in turn making those tactics and the ultimate strategy redundant.

Developing a marketing strategy for your Onlyfans or Adult Industry work is going to be entirely respective to your individual channel and all the nuances that come with it. You’ll need to get down and give some thought towards this question:

“How do I put my business in front of the eyes of my target audience?”

That’s pretty much the goal, where you need to start, and ultimately where you end.

Any dedicated marketer could give you some generic suggestions. You could probably ChatGPT it to be honest. But because the business is focused around you and your capabilities, the plan does ultimately need to come from you. Otherwise you’ll just wind up doing what everyone else does, which will only serve to place you in with everyone else. I will say it does help to have someone to throw back and forth with who might catch little loose threads you may not be considering. So maybe talk about it with a friend or others dealing with marketing themselves, even from other industries, and gain a few second opinions.

Some things you could focus upon to at least get that momentum going:

Learn to Tag, and the Fundamentals of SEO.

Before you can promote, you need to find out what you have to promote. ‘Category’ and ‘niche’ are critical. If you can break down what you’re offering into key tags and phrases, that’s a very good place to start. I would suggest doing it on a couple levels of fidelity as well; primary keys, secondary keys etc. All platforms utilise tags or categories to some extent. Upon analysing your business this way, you now have a toolkit you can start using to found your strategy.

Find out Where your Audience Resides.

Time to start playing the hunter and seek out upon which prairie your cash cows roam. Think like them, and use their search terms, where are they going, track their migration paths and feeding grounds, be aware of other hunters, what tools and tactics they use, and think about those hooks you might develop to intercept the cows on route.

If you can draw them out and isolate, even better. Upon finding the main flows, see if you can position yourself upon the wings of that; something just that slightly different, but still able to reach in and engage the main currents when you wish.

Think about passive draws and active draws. What things do you have just sitting there waiting to attract passers-by, and what do you have actively reaching out to grab them? It’s not about ‘promoting on Reddit’ or ‘posting on X or Pornhub’. It’s about ‘how’ you do those things in a targeted way to weave through the rest.

So that’s baiting, but what about retaining? What are you thinking in order to keep your audience coming back? Yes you may very well have all a’that irrefutable ‘IT’, but so do others. So how can you be defined?

Analytics.

How are you able to study your effect on target?

How are you going to know whether this latest initiative is delivering for you?

Look into the platforms you’re using and the analytics tools they offer. Create a central data repository for yourself, like a spreadsheet or whatever you find works for you, and compile this info on a regular basis. Giving it a few months, you’ll start to see trends, currents, upticks and downs relative to certain actions, and start to gain a feel for things.

I wont suggest specific tools or things to look for, as I think when you’re starting out with this kind of thing, your own curiosity tends to lead you through. So just start basic and learn all you can about the tools your platform offers, and you might start just asking certain questions that will lead you to your next step. Your business will not be like others, so you want to focus on what works for you.

Collaborations.

When I say ‘collaborations’ I don’t necessarily mean doing a GonG with another creator. I mean work out methods of cross-promotion.

You can trade shout-outs, pick a video for another creator to package with one of their own and one of theirs with yours. A Pay-Per-View video you sell may also come packaged with another creator’s sample vid. Things like that.

Perhaps you start a collective, pool funds, and share a website? That way you’re offering the audience a one-stop hub for them to gain more, and for you to capture a market.

You need to be on pretty good terms with the other creators if doing this though. I’ve heard of a few not working out. Make sure to maintain your own thing and not just let another drive how you do you. Also don’t do that to them, as they may wind up resenting that.

An approach could be to find someone similar, but notably different. So perhaps your niches are aligned but you’re not in direct competition. If you do share a niche, perhaps collaborate with someone who looks and acts very differently to you. That way you’re not stealing audience from each other; it’s more just a reshuffle of more finely attuned preference.

I’m just saying that this shit can get catty, I’ve seen it happen, so it’s good to put some barriers in place from the start.

Remain open, adaptable and able to pivot.

Marketing is an ongoing ever fluctuating pursuit, which rewards the ability to see the change and jump when needed. Once you’ve worked out a comfortable basic strategy for yourself, keep your eyes and ears open, ever tracking the new trends and opportunities. The more you try out new little things, the more comfortable you’ll become with it overall, and the more capable for such adaptation in turn.

SEO

I’ll say this straight up. Adult industry creators suck with SEO.

Maybe you individually are great with SEO. Good. In that case, stop reading here.

But NONE of my Onlyfans clients, NOT ONE of them, has ever taken my suggestions for SEO and Google ranking on board. My clients from other industries do it. Small businesses do it. Indie authors and Artists do it. Onlyfans creators… nup. They don’t even want to hear about it, and I just don’t get it. Especially when it comes to the successful creators pulling in four to five-figure months. They easily have the means to cover the very small overhead it would take to straight up stick a marketing supercharger on their ass, yet they just don’t, and I don’t get it.

Dude… ‘seriously’… there is a reason why Marketers make six figure incomes. There is a reason every successful company focuses on Marketing and Google ranking. Why do you think that is?

Just because you have a captured market enclosed within these individual platforms that you post to, does not mean that’s the only place your audience can be found. But by limiting yourself solely to these platforms, you are giving those platforms full control over your business. They get to choose your audience for you, who your fans are, what you’re able to provide them etc, and you actively cut off everything else.

Your true fans are there for ‘you’, and will find and follow you wherever you are. Yes Onlyfans, or Fansly, Fanvue, whatever, with their securities and financial management might be where you prefer to funnel your audience to monetise your products, but you do not want your audience only being able to access you there.

Picture this:

Sammy the Friendly but Broke Whale doesn’t use Onlyfans. He doesn’t like it, doesn’t get into the sexual saturation of culture and avoids having explicit visuals and connotations in his peripherals 24/7. He also doesn’t have that much money to throw around at the moment with this shit economy.

But Sammy gets that need like everyone else. He also has a ‘type’. And on that one particular night when out with friends, he met or bore witness to someone who was exactly his type. That confirmation of ‘that being a thing’ had him walking home feeling pretty lonely and depressed that night, and when he got back, he googled his type… and he found it.

That example of his type showed up as an unnamed image. Sammy does a reverse image search and harvests ‘your’ name. He Googles that name, and yeah your Onlyfans comes up, but Sammy doesn’t use Onlyfans. He doesn’t want to subscribe to that. That’s not him. Below that hit however is your personal site, and Sammy will go to that just fine.

There Sammy can find everything you have; your YouTube channel, your subreddit, your gallery and he can sub to your mailing list. There is a members-only space with exclusive content, but again, money’s a thing for him right now. There though he can also get all your socials. He wont follow them, because he doesn’t use this platform or that, or he uses his own feeds for other purposes. But he’ll return to your site because it’s all there, and he can click through get a regular sip of ‘his type’.

^^That is not an uncommon scenario^^

And I know the mentality of a lot of creators;

“If this guy ain’t paying, screw him. He is not a whale. A whale pays!”

That mentality is the same as I would say the majority of businesses across all industries have, and I think it’s very narrow-minded. Money is not the only return to be gained here. Sammy is a whale for ‘clicks’. That dude is coming back again and again, and he is clicking on your content again and again. Each of these clicks is sending him out to other high-traffic sites and returning, and associating your name with that. He is spending time on your site; he is scrolling; he is engaging, engaging, engaging and each little action is yet another little spike to your algorithm.

Google loves that shit. And because of Sammy the Friendly Broke Whale’s activity, Jammy the Rich-Ass Bit of a Dickwad Whale, who also shares that ‘type’, does a google search some night and comes across you first. He subs to you on OF, just like he subs to three others, but your catching his attention right now. He pays for a bunch, gets a few customs, loses interest in a week or two and leaves… but he was there because of the amount of clicks Sammy made.

And… one day Sammy will find himself with a bit of extra cash, and decides to spend a bit of it on some content his favourite creator sells directly from their site. Maybe he might even sub.

You need to focus on the Sammy’s as much as the Jammy’s. I would actually say more, but I get it.

The ideal scenario is NOT for an untapped audience to go to Onlyfans style platforms and find you amongst the myriad of other creators, where you then need to constantly compete for their attention. You want them going to YOUR platform first, and then you refer them to your monetisation funnel, and give them no reason to then shop around.

On ‘your’ platform you’re in control, and can show and promote as much or as little as you like. On ‘your’ platform there is no competition. That is your hub where you link out all of your channels and initiatives. Again; even if all of your products funnel through Onlyfans, you want the audience going to ‘your’ platform first. SEO is the key to that, and the best SEO source will be a personal site.

No, Linktree ain’t gonna cut it. Yes I know it’s free, and it’s simple and this successful creator here uses it and whatever, but Linktree actively hinders more than it helps. There are search engines and social channels that actively down-rate Linktree. It also offers no analytics or perspective that are worth a damn. You cannot make direct sales from it, you cannot express ‘you’ with it, you cannot do anything with it. It sucks.

It also looks crap, and makes you look cheap and unprofessional, more like a scammer. Quit it with the goddamn Linktree already, and get yourself a site.

‘Some’ escorts do this well, but most seem to get taken for a ride and are way overcharged for underwhelming returns because they simply don’t know any better. Onlyfans creators straight up don’t do it at all, and that’s just astounding to me considering they’re entire existence is online.

A dedicated website does everything a Linktree does, times about a gagillion, and continued running only costs a couple hundred yearly. Not thousands; hundreds. That’s it. You can afford to invest hundreds in your business, and it’s so much more fun and effective, and offers so much more pride than a goddamn Linktree. Quit it with the goddamn Linktree.

You feel good when you have your own website. You feel legit. You feel professional, like you’re moving. You have full control over every word and phrase and term that goes onto your site, and every word serves in your favour on the ranking. Yes you can can blot things out, but it’s never a loss like Linktree is. It’s just simply ‘less effective’, and the blot can still be partitioned and managed.

Possibilities of a website:

You can have ‘About Me’ videos, Showreels, Galleries and Blogs.
You can display all your social feeds, not just link to them.
You can clearly outline your niche, rates, services, values and so on without the customer requiring a subscription to this platform or that.
Customers to this platform can gain direct visual reaffirmation of you and what you offer.
Customers know this is authentically you, and all the channels listed here are you.
You can have video banners for all your links, adding to the experience of ‘you’.
Your Onlyfans section can have your latest trailer.
Your YouTube Try-On Haul channel section can have the latest video right there, hosted on your site.
Your latest collab with another creator gets previewed in its own section, and that creator’s own channels and media are linked right there, because it’s all clicks, it’s all activity, it’s all little spikes of interactivity that Google tosses a shot of algorithm towards, thus raising your Brand.
You can set up a mailing list and newsletter. This newsletter can give them a little regular reminder you’re still there, hitting right at that moment, and offering a special link to exclusive content ahead of time.
You can sell merch… and don’t sleep on merch. People are tactile creatures and enjoy tangible things. You just might need to be a bit more creative about it than a t-shirt with your face on it.
You can have a contact form where customers can ask your thoughts or opinions or replies to something. This reply can then be a blog post that can either be written or host a video, or YouTube video. This brings direct audience interaction, legitimate connection with the audience. True authenticity.
You can have a feedback/suggestion form with means for customers to suggest future products or upcoming opportunities.
You can have a ‘work with me’ contact form, where creators, producers, interviewers, advertisers or sponsors can contact you with opportunities.
And all of the above emphasises your SEO, and jumps you up the google ranks.

… Is it starting to click yet?

Your Linktree sure ain’t clicking a damn thing. Get a website, get onto SEO and get yourself some true momentum.

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