16 terms creators run into when they start earning: what agencies charge on, how paid promo is counted, and the contract words that decide who owns your account. Written plainly, with no sales pitch.
Gross is everything a fan pays; net is what reaches the creator after OnlyFans keeps its 20%.
On $6,000 of gross revenue, OnlyFans keeps $1,200 and the creator receives $4,800. This is the single most important distinction in any agency contract: a "50%" calculated on gross is really 62.5% of what the creator actually receives. Always ask which base the percentage applies to, and get the answer in writing.
A message with locked content that the fan pays to unlock, priced individually.
PPV is where most of the money is made on OnlyFans: subscriptions bring people in, PPV is what they spend on afterwards. Pricing, timing and the message that sells it matter more than the content itself, which is why chatting quality shows up directly in revenue. A well-worked account earns several times its subscription income in PPV.
The total a fan spends across the whole time he stays subscribed, not just his first month.
LTV is the number that decides whether paid traffic makes sense: if a fan costs $2 to acquire and spends $40 over four months, buying traffic is profitable. Agencies that only chase new subscribers without raising LTV are filling a leaking bucket. Retention, chat quality and content consistency are what move it.
The share of subscribers who cancel each month.
Churn is the reason accounts plateau: if 30% of fans leave every month, a third of the work goes into replacing them instead of growing. It falls when fans get real conversation and a reason to stay, and it rises when an account goes quiet or the chat feels automated.
A paid promotion where the promoter commits to bringing a specific number of new subscribers, at a price per subscriber.
Deals are usually closed in Telegram groups, measured with a tracking link and paid in instalments. The trap is measurement: free trial links can be reactivated by fans who were already subscribed, so a large share of reported "gains" are not new subscribers at all. Verify against the actual subscription date before paying.
A free swap where two creators promote each other to their own audiences.
SFS works when both accounts are a similar size and share an audience profile; if one is much bigger, it is doing charity. Nobody guarantees a result, which is the main difference from a GG. It is the cheapest form of growth and the slowest.
A single message sent to an entire fan list at once, usually to sell a PPV or promote another creator.
It is the highest-converting promo format, because it reaches people who are already paying for content. It is also the fastest way to burn a list: sent too often, or written like an advert, fans stop opening messages and the account loses its main sales channel.
A silent restriction where your posts stop being shown to others but you are never told.
Common on Reddit and Instagram for accounts that promote adult content. The symptoms are traffic dropping to zero overnight while everything looks normal from inside the account. On Reddit you can check by logging out and searching your username. Recovery is rare, so the plan is prevention plus a warmed-up backup account.
A link generated inside OnlyFans that shows how many clicks and subscriptions came from one specific source.
One link per channel (Reddit, Instagram, each promoter) is the difference between knowing what works and guessing. It is also your defence in a paid promo: the measurement is yours, not the promoter's. Free to create, in your account settings.
The work of holding the conversations with fans in the account's inbox, and selling through them.
It is the core of an OnlyFans business: the subscription is the door, the chat is the shop. Done well it means dedicated people who know the creator's persona, cover the hours her fans are awake, and sell without sounding like a script. Chatting-only services charge 20-40% of net in the industry; full management, which includes it, charges 50-70%.
An agency running everything around the account except filming the content: chatting, marketing, content strategy and protection.
The industry charges 50-70% of net for it. What separates a good deal from a bad one is not the number but what is included, whether it is calculated on net, and who owns the account and the content. MANGO charges 50% of net, always, with no minimum term.
A clause forcing the creator to stay with the agency for a fixed period, with a penalty for leaving early.
It is the clause that turns a bad decision into an expensive one. A confident agency does not need it: if the work is good, the creator stays. Read the exit terms before the percentage, because the percentage only matters if you can walk away.
Who legally holds the OnlyFans account and the content uploaded to it.
It must be the creator, always. An agency needs access to work the chat, but never ownership. If a contract lets the agency keep the account, the audience or the content when the relationship ends, that is not a management deal: it is a transfer of your business.
A two-account setup: a free page that collects fans and a paid page (or PPV) where they spend.
The free page removes the barrier to entry and lets the chat qualify who is willing to spend; the money is then made in PPV or on the VIP subscription. It is the standard structure for accounts buying traffic, because a paid page converts far fewer of the same visitors.
A link that gives free access to a paid page for a limited time.
Useful for promotions, and the source of the most common inflated numbers in paid promos: the same fan can activate different trial links more than once and be counted as new each time. If you pay per gain measured this way, expect only half to eight out of ten of them to be genuinely new.
A legal request that forces a website to remove content published without the owner's permission.
It is the standard tool against leaks: the creator (or the agency on her behalf) notifies the site or its hosting provider, which must remove the content to keep its own legal protection. It does not prevent leaks, but it makes them short-lived. Serious agencies include monitoring and takedowns in the service.
We wrote the full breakdown of what an OnlyFans agency charges and a 10-point checklist to tell if an agency is legit.
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