OnlyFans is a classic two-sided marketplace with strong network effects. The more paying customers are already on the site the more attractive it is for new performers to choose OnlyFans as their platform, and the more performers there are on OnlyFans, the stronger the value proposition is for customers. That tends to give you a winner-take-all (or at least winner-take-most) market, where if you can establish a dominant market position is becomes self-reinforcing, you become very hard to displace, and can command very large profit margins. It's exactly the dynamic that has kept eBay the primary way of doing auctions online for over two decades.
When you have a market like that, it often makes sense to pursue growth as an end in itself, well past the point of profitability, because the reward for coming in first place (a durable monopoly) is way higher than a linear projection would suggest. Reid Hoffman (founder of LinkedIn) gives an especially clear explanation of this logic in Blitzscaling: https://www.blitzscaling.com/
I wonder if there's market to be gained from people who otherwise wouldn't venture near a site with such reputation who might be converted into the main model.
When you have a market like that, it often makes sense to pursue growth as an end in itself, well past the point of profitability, because the reward for coming in first place (a durable monopoly) is way higher than a linear projection would suggest. Reid Hoffman (founder of LinkedIn) gives an especially clear explanation of this logic in Blitzscaling: https://www.blitzscaling.com/