There's a big movement to gain a lot of followers on social media like TikTok and then redirect those followers to their $5/month OnlyFans. There are a lot of people making a living or at least significantly boosting their income from this model, and they don't have to leave the house to do it.
https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/hip-hop/9550662/b...
Making $1.4 million per month and growing, has 4 employees, outsources every chore she can, posts content on all the social media platforms, and grinds 12 hour days on Twitch. [2] Doesn't spend most of the money, is learning about and trying out investments.
Interestingly she doesn't think that this type of top-heavy earnings situation will be sustainable, that the revenue will be more evenly distributed in the future. Even so, she considers her biggest competition to not be up-and-coming people, but instead existing influencers who might bring their audience to OnlyFans.
Definitely not a common success story, but it's pretty interesting how it is possible to have insane success when applying well-reasoned growth strategies and keeping up the grind.
--
[1] https://investmenttalk.substack.com/p/confessions-of-an-only...
[2] In the linked interview she still says 8 hours for Twitch, but she has stepped it up since June.
The median viewer count is likely single digits.
Though I can say with considerable certainty that a lot of wannabe Twitch streamers think that being a streamer just means having people watch you play a game, which may be true for story-driven games that don't get a lot of viewers, since it creates a more movie-like experience, and may be true for highly-competitive games where you can watch someone make amazing plays. But for the rest, you need to have the charisma and creativity to create entertaining commentary and audience interaction.
Nobody wants to watch an average Joe play World of Warcraft.
It's super toxic for society since it's literally "winner takes all".
Skilled crafts here can generate a more money in the first 10-20 years of a career than what you make with a university degree desk job. One factor is that you can get into the labor force much earlier, don't neglect that 3-5 years head start when saving for your first house loan. After that, it depends if you're doing the extra hours, weekend and night shifts.
After that the masters degree jobs get the advantage. The craftsmen either they worked their way into a more supervising role or are not able or willing to do the lucrative labor hours.
The decline in crafts like baker or butcher is attributed to the long and weird hours, more than the pay. There are simply not enough to replace the
+ the aging work force.
Most tradespeople prefer to work on new builds, large amounts of stable work, without the hastle of renovating existing structures and all of the hidden issues that are quickly exposed once the surface has been taken away. (So... technical debt...)
As a contract IT consultant - sure, sometimes I take small "side-hustle" contracts if I am not swamped by my primary gig - but, I couldn't pay all mortgage if I was reliant on just taking small/odd jobs. Same goes for tradespeople.
This isn’t 1800. Moving back for a job is trivial when the alternative is being unemployed.
It’d be like saying you can make a million as a waiter or cook, because of a small business owner who opened a restaurant.
https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/What-Is-the-Average-HV...
Most of them still prefer to surf than work !
Then you work for someone else and probably make $80k or $90k, then you start your own business.
In terms of supply/demand Australians are extremely house proud and spend an insane amount of money on renovations, upgrades, etc, so all the trades are always slammed. Have been for 20 years.
For sure there are common skills that all electricians share regardless of country, but there are still significant differences between countries, like in the UK ring circuits are common, but are against code in the USA.
licensing process that doesn't care about relevant unlicensed experience
The problem with unlicensed experience is that it provides no assurance of knowledge of code or safe wiring practice. Like when I found that my house had several MWBC's, but on one of them, the previous owner (or someone he hired) had replaced the tied-handle breakers with untied breakers, which leads to a very unsafe situation (another common mistake with MWBC's is moving breakers around and putting the hots on the same hot leg, which can lead to an overloaded neutral). Or worse, when I mapped out my outlets and found that the owner had put a 30A breaker on the 12 gauge wire leading to the garage outlets, presumably he was tripping the code compliant 20A breaker and "solved" that with a bigger breaker.
But if a guy who is a master electrician in El Salvador can sell himself as an electrician here, then a homeowner may trust him to do major electrical work "Permits? Naa, you don't need permits for this, that'll just make it more expensive. Trust me! I'm an Electrican and I've been doing this work for 20 years back home"
Where in live in the US, the housing market is exploding. It is impossible to find these workers, licensed or not.
He also does landscaping, tree removal, fence repair, house painting, trash hauling, electrical, plumbing and general dentistry (if you ask).
The two class of jobs are so different. Scalability, physicality, career path, longevity etc all comes into picture.
The discussion has been going around in cycles for many years.
Trades are solid career choices but it's hard work and you expire at about the same rate as a software dev.
It's a similar story for other trades, machinist is $47k, welder is $44k, plumber is $56k, HVAC is $50k.
Then when we look at other technology jobs, PM, IT, etc, the story is similar to developers, high median salary with a multiple of jobs available over the trades.
I do know though that it’s pretty common for the seller to write the note financing the deal, especially when the buyer is a soon to be former employee. So financing is often within reach.
Another example is trucking. Plenty of trucking businesses were built by a lone operator rolling profits into more trucks and hiring drivers. Given the intense competition for CDL drivers today though it wouldn’t be my first pick.
The SF saleries are inflated BS because they are insanely high even compared to one of the most expensive countries in the world.
She describes it as a bimodal distribution. One (smaller) group of people with trades are willing to work anywhere whenever. They work in fly-in camps with limited work seasons and practically unlimited overtime. Since there’s nothing else to do, they log enough hours to get into double and triple time. The other (larger) group goes home after work and their overtime is limited to nonexistent. The pay is so different between the two groups that if they’re analyzed together, the statistically typical tradesperson looks nothing like the typical tradesperson.
A good plumber in my area (Seattle) is pulling in $60/hr minimum, and that is after the employers cut.
A plumber with some seniority is going to be making over 100/hr.
An experienced electrician is also well over 100/hr.
Granted if self employed they all have a higher tax burden and pay their healthcare costs, and driving between sites is a pain, but 100/hr makes up for a lot of that.
The trades people I know are booked out months. The general handyman I use is only booked out 2-3 weeks, and he comes in at an affordable $60/hr!
Next time a plumber stops by to fix your water heater, have a chat with them. Some of the ones I've talked to live in very nice custom built luxury homes that they designed themselves.
https://www.indeed.com/career/journeyman-plumber/salaries/Se...
Speaking of "250K" as a number, every single offer over 250K+ for someone with no experience, on levels.fyi, in seattle, was either for someone hired at L4 at Google or Facebook (usually this means a PhD hire), or a Facebook "rockstar" signing bonus, which I think levels.fyi mis-estimates (the "recurring" comp is lower than 250K, you get something like 120 base, 40 stock/yr, 100K signing (+ your normal annual bonus of ~15K). That's 200K/year over four years, not 250).
And last time I checked those packages had serious compensation cliffs after the first few years!
Software developer compensation is seriously bi-modal, most developers even in big cities are working at a fraction of FAANG pay, doing routine maintenance work.
Finally in seattle a top electrician makes 100/hr or ~200k/year. A top developer with similar years of experience makes $500k and never has to crawl around in your nasty attic and gets amazing healthcare and free food.
The money may be approximately comparable (outliers in both camps excepted) but all the trade people I know that have established themselves have very flexible work schedule. They have all the demand they can take so when they want to work 60 hours weeks they do. But since work is per job, when they want to work a few hours a week or take time off, that's also possible without repercussions.
Meanwhile in software land it's either great pay at 60+ hours a week, or nothing. Oh and "unlimited vacation" (aka don't dare take vacation ever).
Tradepeople also don't have standups or agile soulcrushing BS and their experience is respected.
This is just not true. There are loads of FAANG developers making well into 6 figures with 40 hour weeks.
I realize it's rather irrational but I personally don't think I could stomach the non-salaried lifestyle. A day of vacation is a day's wages lost. I'm sure it's something you learn to live with but I appreciate that the cost of taking time off is quite abstract for me.
It’s boring and you can practically feel your brain turn to slush.
Getting challenges on the job is a requirement for a good job.
First, work schedule. Keep in mind that, as another commenter pointed out, tradespeople often go through booms and busts, just like any other profession. The difference is that with tradespeople its a lot more obvious, since they still on a job for a few weeks, rather than a few years. On the boom, the tradespeople get a better deal out of it, because they get more work, whereas office workers of course only have the one job. In the busts, the office workers come out better, as the tradespeople have less work, whereas the office workers remain the same as they were in the boom.
Next, hours and vacation. I may be an outliner here, but my hours are the standard 9-5 and I get a fixed 30 days vacation a year, and flexible working (including working from home). As for unlimited vacation = no vacation, and 60+ hours is required, that seems more like a bad office culture/employer, no different than a tradesman would get a bad client. Again, its only more noticeable in office jobs because your there for a long time, whereas a bad client will only be a problem for a number of weeks (though potentially more if they hold off on paying). While we're at it, the same could be said of "their experience is respected". That's based on your employer, not your job.
Finally, standups, agile and office politics (assuming thats what you meant by BS). Its true, tradespeople don't need to suffer with that, but they do need to suffer through a hell of a lot of health and safety precautions and government red tape. Of course you can get some cowboys who don't bother with that, but that seems no different than the programming teams that don't do standups, agile or office politics (apart from the fact that one team is less likely to kill people). I would also mention the physical health issues that it can cause, but programmers get a similar thing through sitting for so long and you graciously didn't mention that.
I don't think being a tradey is a bad job, not at all. Its just not perfect, and like any job has its pros and cons. I too have fantasised about going into that line of work, but I imagine if I did, I'd end up fantasizing sitting in a comfy chair all day building software. As I said, the grass is always greener on the other side.
You should line up several interviews all in the same week and play the offers against one another. At least one should be over $150k, and possibly over $200k. That highest number then sets a floor that everyone else will need to rise to as you negotiate. Politely ignore claims that offers will explode; they won't. Add options/RSUs, and you may be shocked at the amount of compensation you can get.
You can actually do it.
The numbers aren’t inflated, they’re just not equally distributed.
Literally interviewed with a small startup (around 20 people total headcount) less than a week ago. The offer was for a base salary of $180k+grand promises of equity given out that should grow 15x and make one rich, but whatever, because equity at this point is just imaginary monopoly money worth pretty much nothing right now, so lets omit that part completely. But even with that in mind, $180k of pure cash just from base salary is more than doable. And I am not even a senior level or anything like that. Technically the company is in NYC, but the position is fully remote, which makes it even more lucrative for people who want to live in cheap COL states (no salary adjustment, which works out great for this scenario).
It’s not “fair” but it’s worth your time to look into getting into the US tech sector. Your skills have the most market value their.
Most senior salaries around here seem to be in the $95-120k range, so when I see similar numbers for "entry level" roles, it always perks me up a bit.
Not saying I disagree, but yeh, its not unique to software dev it seems
These numbers are all for remote roles for SV-based companies. You can also check salary on levels.fyi.
You won't believe it, but 300K+ for new grads (undergrads) isn't even unheard of if you look at places like Citadel & Jane Street, tho of course the hiring bar is very high at these places.
Side note - fan of your username.
Im in the late stages of my career and after owning my home for 15 years my mortgage is far less than rents in my area, my salary has gone up a ton over the years, and my house has appreciated a ton.
If you are a dev early in your career and in a big city, stick it out. Get into a big company that gives you stock options that are worth something, but a house when you can, and start working to max out your 401k. In all likelihood it will pay off in the long run. My old boss called it the “get rich slowly plan”. As a person that grew up really poor and has been in tech over 20 years, I can assure you it pays off.
Real estate is a tricky thing. I wouldn’t buy it for the sake of expecting it to go up in value. I’d buy it because you need housing.
Barring catastrophe, it will almost certainly go up if your time horizon is longer than 10 years. If you are in a big city, the populations are growing faster than new housing is being built. On top of that, there is no space to build many new single family homes so those will go up even more if you own one instead of a condo or townhouse.
I bought my first house at the peak of the last bubble. Ten years later I sold it for more than I paid for it, and those last few years my mortgage was a fair bit lower than rents for a comparable place.
Most people simply haven't wrapped their head around exponential growth. Our economy grows exponentially, and our population has historically (there are signs this might be changing). Unfortunately, I think our environment can't sustain that, but as long as it does, things will go up if your time horizon is long enough.
Edit: also, I’m not suggesting that your home value will double in 10 years. Not sure where you got that idea. My point does not assume or require doubling in 10 years.
Although you're not wrong, and crashes absolutely happen, I feel like I have been hearing that for at least 30 years now.
Just when it seems like things can't continue, the market always seems to find a way to support the higher prices.
For example: https://www.forbes.com/advisor/mortgages/what-is-the-40-year...
It's probably only a matter of time until the 40 is the new 30 year loan for everyone...
- vacations
- cars
- all online purchases
- most hobbies
- etc...
When I moved to NY, I expected that my (much higher than before) salary would barely allow me to buy a car. Instead, I ended up with the best car I had ever owned up to that point, and went on craziest vacations. I also lived in the shittiest place ever before and after.
I totally agree that the non-FAANG companies have terrible dev pay. But most of the FAANG companies have offices well beyond just SF/NYC, so the opportunities are definitely available.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_...
https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/164047/umfrag...
https://www.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/gehaelter-so-hoch-i...
Aren’t women over-represented on the supply side while men on the demand side though? I don’t think gen-z as a wholesale cohort makes sense.
Mostly artly because women work in segments that were hit harder - services and the like. And partly because childcare is more on them, mothers were even more likely to loose jobs.
Because after shit pay being the desk girl at Walmart Tire Center for 2yr you can easily convert that into a service writer job <fast forward 40yr> and then retire from your job as regional support manager for <company that makes industrial doodad>
Compare with thotting around on the internet where you can make a ton of money up front but you're basically racing the clock because your body won't be nearly as lucrative of an income at 30 and you'll be starting from square one-ish. Can you potentially take the cash and pivot into a career that will carry you to retirement? Sure, but it takes a work ethic and level of discipline that is uncommon.
It's like the female equivalent of being a marine rifleman for several enlistments. You get out at ~30 with few marketable skills, hopefully a good work ethic and a high liklihood of f-ed up knees.
Likewise, they might be cagey enough to learn the backend of their backend business, and come out of it with video editing skills and whatnot, possibly segueing into an advanced education in media.
For some professions and companies it won't matter but for others it'll matter a lot.
Because we have just started with all of this, and we also don't know the future, it's hard to 'price in' what the future cost of doing this kind of work with respect to future options.
That said, Sylvester Stallone did porn films, but that's also a specific industry, pre-internet.
-former infantryman
You've learned a variety of skills, probably had to face some challenging missions, been exposed to other cultures, learned to work within an organization, probably have highly conscientious posture.
Anyone in 10 years and never had a leadership position at all you'd have to question a bit (they should for sure be sergeant) but ideally would be prepared to be a regional manager for retail or Wallmart Center Manager. The more easy going and communicative would work in sales. Almost anything operationally oriented.
Contrast that with a sex worker who will unfortunately have a narrow set of options because a lot of companies just won't hire for that reason.
But, from the contact I’ve had with the military (been close to several people who have either enlisted or commossioned experience, did the ROTC basic camp but chose not to contract) that's not particularly likely unless you are either actively avoiding or completely unsuited for leadership.
And even then you’ll probably have some leadership experience.
> You're on roughly equal ground with someone who's been a warehouse laborer or janitor for an equivalent period of time and on lower ground than someone who at least has industry adjacent experience.
Even if you somehow manage to be in that place skill-wise (and I think, leadership skills aside, that's unlikely), you are still better off career-wise, because essentially all public and many, especially large, private employers apply systematic positive preference for veterans in hiring.
I can think of a few obvious ones just thinking about ‘military’, but wonder if there’s anything specific to being an infantryman?
You float the idea of perpetual growth in any other context, and you'd be called a fool, but apparently the economy doesn't obey the same rules of common sense.
Well, I hope you're right.
Ah, the old everything that goes up must come down strategy.
> You float the idea of perpetual growth in any other context, and you'd be called a fool
You float the idea that global information communications are going to shrink and you'd be called a fool.
But there is also a more long term trend of people having less and less sex and more and more porno consumption. But that can't go forever, at one point if all girls in the world are on sex workers then they will be much more offer than demand.
A girl on OF, to make a living, let's say 3k per month, needs to have 300 guys paying for her. But a guy is not paying for 300 girls, maybe 10 max, so the platform needs to have 30 times more guys than girls. Which is unsustainable in a world with 50% girls/50% guys.
Which is a good news imho. The day that having sex for girls is a normal thing (No this is not normal thing today). Then a lot of things will be much simpler for everyone
It also seems (from actual published data) that the distribution is super weighted towards the top performers. That being said, even an extra 1k a month is pretty sick for posting topless photos if your regular income is less than 40k or you are in school.
I only question that line because I can't even deal with the rest of your post.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/234863/estimate-lgbt-population...
That would shift the numbers a little, yeah, but not enough to account for the OP's estimate of a 30:1 male/female ratio.
Median OF revenue per creator is $180/mo for equivalent of a full time job.
https://sea.mashable.com/culture/17130/top-onlyfans-creators....
^ https://mrq.com/blog/only-fans
> https://ranking-fans.com/ - Seedlist and Fans Sorted by total fans; accounts where fans are not available have been excluded. Many accounts listed as having the most fans are free accounts used by OnlyFans models who also possess paid accounts. However, as fan numbers were only available for the free accounts, these have been disregarded for the purposes of this story. Likewise, "free" accounts where subscription is free but photos provided required payment have been disregarded. Accordingly, the only data shown is for paid accounts with high subscriber numbers. In some cases, models possessed multiple paid accounts. In these cases, only the one with the highest subscriber numbers has been tracked. Monthly earnings are based exclusively on the individual account assuming no media requires additional payment and disregarding tips and similar voluntary costs. Similarly, free trials and discounts have been excluded. Accordingly, all monthly earnings are estimates reflecting the monthly payments of subscribers over the long term.
Many factors can lead to this, but that's not surprising, the law of distributions when it comes to things like this is that there are incredible earners and then a massive drop off and long tail.
> for equivalent of a full time job.
You added this, I don't doubt that some people put in a lot more effort than the monetary amount they get back- but the inverse is also true and no source claims that "you get $180 for a full time workload", because that's impossible to measure at scale.
Men I assume given the amounts of money they’ll spend on OF and the m/f ratios on dating apps?
Gen-Z is less sexually active than previous generations. Significantly so. They've been exposed to porn at an earlier age (owing to earlier access to the internet and the ubiquity of pornography online). Porn use was already common among them. The lockdown made things worse, but the status quo was already in place.
> There's huge groups that are/were unemployed and then there's huge groups who are sexually repressed due to quarantine.
This false anthropology must die. Pornography is incredibly harmful to those that consume it. It enslaves a person to his passions. It feeds his lusts and deranges his desires. It makes him or her incapable of relating to the opposite sex in a healthy way, whether in the strictly sexual sphere or not. Lust blunts the mind and renders one incapable of thinking clearly. The consumption of pornography only feeds the sexual passions, further entrenching lust and often generating paraphilias and fetishes as the titillating novelty wears off. Emotions become disordered. Someone who has a porn habit becomes locked in him or herself. The stereotype of a lonely and smarmy 40 year old locked in his parents' basement masturbating to porn is a pithy illustration in many ways. It is the image of an emasculated, impotent wretch deranged by his vices and disorders. This has nothing to do with his lack of a sexual relationship and everything to do with how he views sexuality. He is not master of himself.
Frankly, we'd be better off permitting (regulated) prostitution. There seem to be plenty of women willing to provide these services and plenty of men who are slaves to their lusts (men tend to be more vulnerable to porn addiction and lust than women, but yes, it is true that it is not a problem exclusive to men). At least with prostitution, you're having sex with a human being instead of abusing yourself alone in your room. But ultimately, our view of sexuality must be restored to a healthy one and not the depraved one proposed by liberalism. I suspect the "asexual movement" is a subconscious reaction against the obsession with sex in our society. Excess in one direction tends to produce excess in the other. But maybe it will at least legitimize celibacy again. You don't need sex to have a happy life, contrary to the propaganda of the last few decades or so.
I will add that porn use is an industry fueled both by a corrupt society and people in power who recognize that those who are slaves to their passions (and lust is but one of them) are easy to control. Oligarchies are prone to let such vices flourish because it keeps the populace impotent and consumed with themselves instead of threatening the usurpers who have managed to gain tyrannical control. Porn appeals to prurient interest which is why it is so useful in psychological warfare (a rather stark example is the broadcasting of porn on captured Palestinian television by the Israelis; you think they were trying to liberate them?). Sexual liberation has made people easier to control. It has truncated their humanity, warped them, and turned them into sex robots.
> Sexual liberation has made people easier to control. It has truncated their humanity, warped them, and turned them into sex robots.
This is entirely based on nothing. Even worse, it ignores the much more direct and relevant innovations in the area of controlling populations - propaganda and advertising.
> a rather stark example is the broadcasting of porn on captured Palestinian television by the Israelis; you think they were trying to liberate them?
No, they were trying to shock and humiliate Muslim sensibilities, similar to stashing pork on busses. Sexuality is not some secret sauce of controlling people - there are much more direct ways of doing so, especially with the power of a state like Israel.
Or rather: Paradoxically, what's truly prudish -- and I mean this literally, "overly prudent" -- is to short-circuit your sex drive with porn, because you fear the consequences of real sex.
Lust is good. It helps you overcome social risk aversion, and bond with another person.
But that's the point: You have to have those relationships.
You'll be happiest if you have lots of sex, as part of how you form and participate in a committed relationship. And your "base" urges, far from being bad, can help drive that.
Ridiculous.
COVID hit recently graduated Gen-Z incredibly hard. There's huge groups that are/were unemployed and then there's huge groups who are sexually repressed due to quarantine. Across the whole world, too*. Many can easily make more than min wage, and in certain niches you probably don't even have to be 'conventionally beautiful' (sorry to use this term, but it's important I think) to make a living or solid portion of a living on there.
For $$ per hour worked, why would they field low wage, menial jobs with a risk of COVID?
And if you price model right, you don't need thousands of fans, just a couple really dedicated superfans/whales.
* Consider the value of dollars/euros/pounds in poorer countries!