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Halifax resident Melinda Crowe spent the last few days preparing to leave OnlyFans, while hoping her loyal subscribers would follow her to a new platform.
The local creator, like many others, was shocked last week when OnlyFans announced they would be banning “sexually explicit content.”
For Crowe, who describes her content as soft pornography, this new rule would disqualify many of her videos and pictures. But Crowe was in for another surprise when, on August 25, OnlyFans backpedaled and said their previous decision was “suspended.” For Crowe, that means she can stay on her main site, and make money off it.
Crowe, however, is disappointed that OnlyFans, once again, made the announcement on social media before notifying the creators. The same thing happened last week when OnlyFans first decided to ban sexual content; word leaked to the media, leaving creators on edge for official notification.
“I guess I’m just going to ride the wave right now…but I can understand how other people may feel that (the company) could go back and change their mind,” said Crowe on the lack of trust creators now have with OnlyFans.
“Here they go announcing it on social media, and then we didn’t get the email until a few hours later, and that was the same thing as the first announcement.”
Even though Crowe is staying with Only Fans, she is still going ahead with her accounts on other platforms. Crowe says a lot of creators feel unstable with OnlyFans since they merely “suspended” the content ban, rather than cancelling it.
“Some have already sent out their links; some have said goodbye to OnlyFans,” says Crowe.
“I think a lot of creators lost trust in OnlyFans, I’ve lost trust. I feel like they don’t really back me up.”
After OnlyFans first announced they would ban sexual content by October, Crowe quickly set up a poll for her subscribers. She asked which alternative platform her fans would most likely follow her too. The number one choice, unsurprisingly, was Fansly.
OnlyFans original decision to ban pornographic content worked massively in Fansly’s favour. The site claims that, following OnlyFan’s announcement, they received 4,000 applicants per hour.
When Crowe first did an interview with Huddle last week about being an OnlyFans content creator, the article received hundreds of comments, many of them negative and judgmental towards her.
Given the chance to address the critics and online trolls, she instead wanted to speak to the many people who sent kind, supportive messages. She says the positive feedback has outweighed the negative.
“I just wanted to thank everyone for such supportive comments and such positive comments,” said Crowe.
“I know there’s been a lot of negative things and some people have set up some fake Instagram accounts (of me), they’ve actually gone that far.”
Crowe believes people have misconceptions about what it’s like to be in the sex industry. It is far from “easy money” as some commenters alluded to. Like any other business, it takes hard work to stick out from the crowd.
“They’re business owners; they think of plans, they think of creative ideas, they’re scheduling things.”
In the end, the attention has paid off for Crowe. The publicity (negative or positive) has led to 58 new paid subscribers in a span of just two days.
“They’re really interactive and they’re a really good group of people who just joined,” says Crowe.
“Negative publicity is publicity as well, and my OnlyFans has been quite busy since all of this.”
This post originally appeared on Huddle.Today, an Acadia Broadcasting content partner.
