Elia Hills, a 19-year-old OnlyFans model from Oklahoma who earns $100,000 (£75,000) a month, has revealed why she would never encourage another woman to join the subscription platform. Despite the life-changing income, she believes glamourising OnlyFans to young women is wrong, as joining could be the worst decision of their lives.
Why She Warns Others
Hills, who has been on OnlyFans for a year, said: 'I would never go to another woman and encourage or promote OF to them. I think it's a really hard decision that a woman has to make on her own. It could be really detrimental to her but it could also be really good.' She emphasised that each woman must decide for herself, based on whether she has a plan and is willing to stick to it. 'She is the only one who knows herself 110% and will truly know if she can make a success of it and deal with the workload, trolling and stigma. I can't know that, which is why I'd never encourage another woman to do it.'
The Hidden Challenges
Hills detailed the gruelling reality behind the earnings. She works 100-hour weeks, spending 40 hours on OnlyFans and another 20 hours creating content for other social media platforms, often alongside a full or part-time job. 'OF models have to work really long hours. They've also got to look the part, talk the part and act the part, with minimal support,' she said. 'Subscribers are creatures of habit and if you're constantly offline and unresponsive they'll go elsewhere.' She noted that sustaining such a pace is nearly impossible without burning out.
Learning technical skills quickly without help is another hurdle. Without funds to hire editors or videographers, Hills had to become a scriptwriter, director, videographer, editor, and presenter all at once. 'These take hours to go from an idea to a 10-second post and often fail to go viral,' she said. 'At the start I was so happy when a video got 1,000 views. Then you realise that if you want to make a living from it you need your videos to consistently get hundreds of thousands of views.'
Social and Personal Costs
While Hills said OnlyFans didn't ruin her relationships, she knows others who lost parents, siblings, friends, or spouses. 'Going forward, not everyone will be willing to date, marry or have children with an OF model,' she warned. For mothers, children may face bullying if images spread in their community. 'Once you've done OF there isn't any going back. Even if it's only for a really short period, the label sticks and is hard to shake.'
Online abuse is rampant. 'Once the money starts coming in, so does the attention, and not all of it is positive. People want to find out everything about you and if they can't, they'll often just make things up in horrible comments,' Hills said. She advises ignoring most trolling but reporting threats or illegal activity.
Advice for Those Considering OnlyFans
Hills entered OnlyFans to pay for college tuition. She advises potential creators to write down specific goals, calculate needed earnings, and plan how to use the money. 'It's easy to waste it or assume you'll earn the same amount for the rest of your life. That's unlikely to be true so I would look into saving as much of it as you can so it can help you realise your overall plan,' she concluded.
