On a recent afternoon, Maybel Delvalle sat in her sparsely furnished office in the province of Buenos Aires fielding questions from her clients. Most queries revolved around a single concern: “Why am I not selling on OnlyFans?”
Delvalle, 25, is a content creator on OnlyFans, the online subscription platform known for adult content. She is also a self-proclaimed “OnlyFans coach,” and runs a course which starts at about $25: It includes lessons on how to attract customers with provocative, everyday poses, and how to incorporate seductive words into chat sessions.
While Delvalle continues to produce her own images on the site, she motivates her students — mostly young women struggling to pay bills — to “develop as a person” and face the challenges of their lives. She also tells them how to withdraw money from the platform and block users from certain countries.
Enrollment in her classes has grown over the last four months, she told Rest of World.
With more than 55% of Argentina’s population living in poverty and annual inflation at over 275% as of last month, people have been looking for new sources of income. Some women have turned to OnlyFans. Coaches, who help creators on the platform monetize their content, say they’ve seen growing numbers of women join their courses.
Since President Javier Milei took office in December and ordered a number of female-centric social programs cut, “there has been greater desperation and a need to make a quick buck” amongst women, Camila Baron, an economist specializing in women’s economy, told Rest of World.
In 2020, Delvalle was spending most of her time away from her two children while running a homemade-food shop, and feeling depressed. She then discovered OnlyFans and launched her page. Delvalle now sells pictures and videos that span soft eroticism and fetish, and includes sexting and virtual girlfriend services.
Months after starting on the platform, she had earned $50,000 pesos (about $400 at the time). She says her income from the app has increased each month since. Delvalle realized she had cracked the code, and wanted to both share the knowledge with other creators and earn an additional income. She opened an office in the neighborhood she grew up in, bought pink furniture, and had pens and notebooks emblazoned with her name. Delvalle’s courses have gradually filled up: She said she receives between 50 and 60 new students per month.
OnlyFans told Rest of World that creators on its platform may choose to work with third parties, which do not “work on behalf of OnlyFans and [are] not affiliated with the company in any way.”
By June 2023, OnlyFans had over 3 million creators who were paid $10 billion, according to a press release from the company. Last month, the platform counted nearly 49 million pieces of content and added more than 61,000 new creator accounts, according to OnlyFans transparency reports.
Antonella Gularte, another OnlyFans coach in Argentina, started her business in 2022, five years after joining the platform. The single mother of three had about 200 clients last year. Gularte, who grew up in an impoverished neighborhood of Buenos Aires, now rents an office in Puerto Madero, an upscale area in the city.
When her family found out about her online work, they praised her for “exceeding all expectations,” Gularte told Rest of World.
Gularte’s courses cost $300 and include multiple sessions with a nutritionist, yoga instructor, English-language teacher, and an accountant. Her students can also chat with a psychologist, who helps them manage their anxiety and “activate wellness neurotransmitters,” she said.
Gularte attributes part of her success as a coach to the rising cost of living in Argentina. The minimum wage in the South American nation is just over $234,000 pesos ($258) per month — well below the roughly $343,000 pesos ($379) required to raise a child, on average, according to official figures. In 2022, Argentina’s Ministry of Economy registered 1.6 million single mothers in the country.
Last year, authorities accused 10 people of taking part in an alleged criminal association that lured women to a webcam studio and enrolled them in a “coaching” program during which they’d obtain personal information. Then, authorities claim, the group would exploit them. The case underscores the risks associated with the platform: In March, Reuters revealed its reporters had identified more than 140 complaints of nonconsensual sharing of sexual content on OnlyFans. Following the investigation, three lawmakers in the U.S. and two in the U.K. called for stricter safeguards against exploitation.
One of Gularte’s students, Luciana, opened her OnlyFans account after she and her partner lost their jobs in 2021. Luciana, who requested to be identified by the pseudonym she uses on OnlyFans because of the sensitive nature of her online work, has since garnered nearly 4,000 followers. She earns $2,000 US dollars from clients abroad and between $1,000 and $1,500 from local subscribers per month.
Before launching her online career, Luciana struggled to buy school supplies for her children. Now, “I don’t have to choose between eating and buying them stuff,” she told Rest of World.
Her friends and relatives don’t know about her online work. When someone asks her how she makes a living, she says she works in “trading and digital sales.”
Working on OnlyFans can be isolating, according to content creators on the platform. Luli, another of Gularte’s clients, is a single mother to a 6-year-old. The course has given her a sense of community.
“Selling content plays a lot with the emotional,” Luli, who asked to be identified by her OnlyFans name because she has kept her online work from most people around her, told Rest of World. “This course helped me a lot financially but has also pushed us to be better every day.”
Delvalle’s growing success as a coach is helping her overcome what she describes as a difficult upbringing — and the bullying she has faced as a result of her work on OnlyFans.
“I don’t give a damn about what people think, because when I was doing poorly with my children nobody came knocking at my door” to offer me help, said Delvalle. “I earn more than a congressperson now.”
