https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xg8qqq/onlyfans-cutting-creator-referral-program-bonuses-payout

From the outside, it would seem like adult modeling site OnlyFans has become a meme, a household name, and a serious source of income for droves of people overnight. As hundreds of thousands of people face unemployment during the coronavirus pandemic, the platform reported more than a 75 percent increase in new sign-ups in the last month, and told Forbes that it's gaining around 150,000 new users every 24 hours.

But as with most online platforms, adult and otherwise, the reality of OnlyFans' success has always been a result of sex workers' efforts. Up until recently, its referral program rewarded users for bringing in new creators throughout the lifetime of the referees' account. OnlyFans paid referrers a commission equal to five percent of the new creator's revenue (the five percent comes out of OnlyFans' end, meaning the commission didn't cut into the new creator's profits). It's an exponentially beneficial system for models, but especially for the platform, which takes a 20 percent cut from creators' earnings.