The vast majority of inquiries to OASysTech have been “I want a site just like Onlyfans, only better”. And truthfully, this is not the slightest bit surprising. Especially with the Covid Pandemic and everyone being locked down at home, content creators have been looking for ways to monetize themselves easily. Onlyfans is the obvious answer for many of them since it offers an easy way to get going without investing a bunch of money in a website or getting qualified to accept credit cards. Sites like Onlyfans handle all of the upfront complexity and allow their content creators to get right to the business of making money. Additionally, because sites like Onlyfans draw a larger audience, opportunities for new business are always happening. Essentially, Onlyfans is the web host and web marketing all in one. It’s like having a store in a mall, where Onlyfans is the mall, you are the store, and your rent is a percentage of everything you sell. What could be easier?
This Is Not Your Typical Homespun Idea
Now that we’ve highlighted why you probably want to create your own version of Onlyfans, and before we go any further down this path, let’s be clear about a couple of things. First of all, this is not as simple as creating a pay-per-view porn site with streaming videos on-demand or even a typical adult website with videos for sale. A site of this nature is vastly more complex and has numerous (likely unseen and unanticipated) technical and financial implications behind its operation. It is well worth considering all these things before you make the commitment to build your own site.
Considerations:
Payment Processing Complications
Take for example credit card processing and funds distribution. As the site owner, you will be responsible for processing credit cards. That means the merchant account will be in your name and guaranteed with your credit. You will then be responsible for distributing funds from your credit card purchases to your content creators while accounting for your own share. Depending on the path you choose, this can be a totally automated process, done by your software, or perhaps you will choose to do it manually to save money. Either way, this is important to consider. The implications ongoing are considerable, especially if you are successful and end up having thousands of users and content creators. Refunds, chargebacks, and credit card fraud are simply more common occurrences in the adult industry. Expect these to become a part of your life and to be more complicated with this type of website.
Technically Speaking, This Is Complicated
Your technical considerations are more complicated as well. For example, consider that you will be hosting larger and larger amounts of media content all the time. The videos and images you store for your content creators will grow every time someone uploads something new. Not all of this content will sell. Much of it will just sit there costing you money ongoing. Unlike a typical porn website where you can curate your content, your users will be uploading whatever media they want to try to sell.
Legalities Are Amplified
It’s also important to keep in mind that you may be on the hook for hosting anything illegal. Your policies can protect you in court, to an extent. But you will need to consider these things in advance and have processes in place to deal with them before going ahead and putting any degree of trust in the public. The government is cracking down on illegal and exploitative web pornography. To be safe, you’ll need to be aware of laws that apply to you and to your users. We cannot overstress the importance of getting legal advice from an attorney who works in the adult industry before you move forward on a project like this. Not only because there are many legal issues you need to be aware of, but also because you need reliable advice about the various legal pages you will need to have on your site, as well as forms you will need to create. Again, this cannot be viewed as a simple website. You have potentially a world-wide audience of users and content creators. You need to protect yourself.
Damn The Torpedoes! Full Speed Ahead!
If you’re not intimidated by what you’ve read so far and you still want to proceed with creating your own version of Onlyfans, then here are the various ways you can go about doing that.
Buy An Existing Application
One way to get your Onlyfans style website up and running fast is to buy an already developed solution. This would give you something that has support and lets you avoid a great deal of the development costs associated with custom development. You should probably still anticipate having a coder to support your application, especially if you want to implement changes to the existing app.
Solutions like this are seldom perfect for everyone as is. So having the ability to adjust the functionality or add features is probably going to be important to you. The more you make your site unique, the more it will differentiate you from your competitors.
OASysTech can help you implement this solution by establishing the necessary hosting for your site, as well as getting your application installed and running. We can adjust the look and feel of your site and create your branding and logo as well. Should you decide to expand the functionality of your site, we can work with you to create your vision.
Build On A White Label Solution
Another way to build your site is to create it on a hosted solution. This approach gives you an instant working solution, ready to be branded with your logo, domain, and colors. In some cases, the provider will also include built-in merchant card processing, as well as funds distribution to your content providers. Since this is a hosted solution, you don’t need to concern yourself with providing your own web hosting or media storage. It’s all included.
Basically, you just brand your website and start marketing for users. This is a very attractive option for many people because it literally avoids all the complexities, technically and otherwise. The downside to this approach is that the cost will be a substantial percentage of the revenue your website creates. This will be small when you start of course but will grow to a significant amount if you are successful. Again, this is a great solution and may work well for you, but keep in mind that ease and availability come at a price.
OASysTech can help you create your branding and logo for a white label based website. We can also perform all the setups and configurations for you and provide ongoing consulting for the operation of your website.
Cook It All Up Yourself
Or more accurately, hire your own developers and build your own custom solution from scratch. This is the approach to take if you are interested in creating your own intellectual property and potentially reselling your website and business. This is by far the most expensive path to take because it involves more human resources in creating your solution. You don’t get the advantage of mitigating costs by the aggregated development costs of existing solutions. You bear the entire weight yourself in exchange for getting exactly what you want and something that truly is yours in every way possible.
In a custom solution, you will need to provide hosting for your website, potentially in an application environment like those provided by Microsoft and Amazon. Many high-level services are created this way, unlike most websites whose functionality is built on open solutions like PHP. This can be costly, especially as your user base scales up, but reliability, scalability and resilience is what you’re paying for here.
In addition to hosting, you will need to provide media storage, and most likely, interface via API with a funds distribution service provider. You can always build your own functionality to handle funds distribution, but it is likely to be more cost efficient to interface with an existing service provider, since it avoids dealing with the complexities of this process and lets you concentrate on your primary business concerns.
Should you choose the raw development path, we are happy to provide you with consulting services as well as application design. There are many issues to consider in custom development. OASysTech is an experienced and knowledgeable asset to have in a case like this. Especially if you’ve never done anything like this before.
A Final Point
As you can see, this kind of web project is more complex than most. We have tried to highlight the main things to consider about creating a website like Onlyfans. But even so, we have one last piece of advice before you travel down this path. Be prepared to market your website. Have your plan in place before you invest a dime in building anything.
- How and where will your users come from?
- How will you get your product in front of them?
- What is unique about you and your website that makes it more attractive to potential content creators and users than simply going with Onlyfans?
Honestly, this is where most great adult website ideas fall short. You must be prepared to execute not only a great website, but you also need to be prepared to do whatever it takes to get business.
We don’t mean to scare you off by any means. Onlyfans is a great concept and we truly believe there are many other ways of capitalizing on the concept by creating something unique and different, or as one of our customers put it, “Like Onlyfans, but better!” Reach out to us and let us know how we can help you create your vision. We are always here to help!
As always, to your success!
OASysTech
