The False Promises of Passive Income Doing Sex Work

I originally meant to write this blog post first, but this Twitter thread was the result of me wanting to rant.

During my time as an online sex worker (since 2012?) and especially within the past few years, I see articles and social media posts touting the benefits of creating and maintaining passive income, specifically within the adult industry. Some of these are from people who genuinely want the best for their fellow sex workers, and others are from companies...who I hope want the best for their creators.

I'm glad that more and more people are starting to become aware of building passive income, but there are a few big problems I've noticed with trying to make a reality of living off of what you earn passively.

Before I go into that, let me explain passive income for anyone who don't know what it entails: it essentially means that automation and/or outsourcing provide the bulk of the labor, allowing the creator to only put in a minimum amount of active work into creating a long-term source of income. That means, if done successfully, that a person can go weeks or even months without working. For example, a camgirl spends an entire month creating clips and other content, then schedules everything to post on the clip site for the next eleven months.

I love this idea, but through my own experience and looking at how the platforms are built, this isn't as easily achieved as many probably think.

In the same way there is the "get rich quick" sort of mindset, there is also the "I will build long-term passive income by devoting three months to creating content" mindset. Sure, if you make even a few sales after those three months, it's technically passive income, but when people talk about passive income, it is insinuated that you make enough to live off of it.

Making a living as an online sex worker isn't necessarily an easy thing to do, and making a living earned from passive income is even harder. Either way, you have to work hard to build a following (that pays) to ensure longevity.

One of the bigger problems, I think, is that many of the platforms that allow us to sell content aren't good at directing site visitors to clips and profiles, or barely (or outright don't) function as a marketplace, meaning that creators have to direct their own traffic to the virtual storefront in order to make sales. I've found that even sites that do at least a decent job with directing traffic to creators are dependent on new videos being uploaded - so either the creator has to regularly manually publish the videos, or the platform has to have a (good) scheduler option. Personally, I think how the platforms function are a huge obstacle for sex workers to be able to achieve the dream of making sizable passive income.

Excluding ScatShop, I'm currently using nine sites to sell clips. Only two of them - ManyVids and Clips4Sale - have resulted in what I would call a reasonable amount of sales. (My sales on Modelhub haven't been anything to brag about, but I make a decent amount through Viewshare Video earnings, which is what they call what I make from Pornhub Premium.) As a result of dismal sales, I'm not as proactive with uploading clips to the other sites.

Alongside naive mindsets and lackluster platform performances, the third problem I find with achieving passive income is that people throw that word around, not really understanding its meaning. For example, unless you have someone else uploading for you or you have found a way to schedule, having a premium Snapchat isn't earning you passive income, even if you use subscription sites like FanCentro to automatically collect the proper amount from subscribers. If you don't open up Snapchat for two months, nothing is being sent to your subscribers, and while FanCentro may charge them, you'll have some very pissed off (and reasonably so) customers.

If someone says that maintaining a premium Snapchat, being a phone sex operator, public or private cam model, or magazine model are forms of passive income, then they don't know what passive income truly is, unless they suggest a very specific business plan, like outsourcing. Yes, all of these forms of work can help build passive revenue streams, but they're not in themselves a form of it.

Some tips:

• Take advantage of automation, but take note of its limits. A site may say that it's gonna automatically share new uploads and video sales to Twitter, but with what I've experienced, it doesn't always happen. (While not passive income, I recently became aware of models using bots on Twitter to automatically post on tweets that mention interest in buying videos. Unfortunately, these bots will also post on tweets of people who are under 18.)

• As a sex worker, you should be aware by now that a hefty portion of your income will go towards taxes. Keep this in mind while determining whether the income you are truly making a livable amount from your passive income or not.

• Even if you don't care about making a living just on passive income or know you want to actively work for a long time, it's still a good idea to have at least a small passive income stream, which can help you during unexpected or expected slow months (like during the holidays) or if you need to take a break from actively working.