The path from reality TV to influencer stardom is well-worn – but some former contestants are pivoting to lucrative careers in the sex industry
At the turn of the millennium, when 11 people first entered the Big Brother house, they did it – if you can believe – for fun. Well, fun and a shot at the £70,000 prize fund. Whether they had much fun is up for debate (looking at you, Nasty Nick), but they certainly didn’t plan beyond the 64 days they might be in there. In this early 2000s wild west, what happened in your post-reality TV life was at the behest of the ruthless tabloids and prying paps.
20 years on, and while contestants still have no sway when it comes to the public’s stinging verdict, most of them are, at least, going in with a post-show business plan: potential agents and social media managers lined up, dream sponsorship deals on their vision boards, and future reality TV appearances plotted out. But in the last few years, another more autonomous, and potentially more lucrative, post-reality TV career has emerged: OnlyFans. No longer just a bonafide way of carving out a career in the media industry, for some, reality shows have become a path into the sex industry, too.
This reality TV to OnlyFans pipeline isn’t particularly unexpected; the format and sex have been inextricably intertwined from the start, whether through (sometimes controversial) sex on screen, reality stars appearing nude in the tabloids, or, you know, the literal premise of the shows. It also tracks with OnlyFans’ unprecedented boom, which saw the platform grow from having 100,000 users in 2017 to a hefty 187.9 million in 2021, most of whom are there for sexually explicit content. There’s a chance to make really big bucks, too, with the top 300 creators boasting an eye-watering annual income of over £790,000 each – though the average takeaway is a more modest £140 per month. This profitable partnership isn’t lost to bosses, either, as evidenced by the forthcoming OnlyFans reality TV show.
For now, this transference is relatively small, and tends to enlist alumni from the same few shows – specifically, the ones that require you to be conventionally hot to get on in the first place. For example, there’s no one from The Traitors on OnlyFans (yet), but there are a bunch of Love Island, Married at First Sight, Real Housewives, and Too Hot to Handle stars. TOWIE’s Lauren Goodger and Love Island’s Megan Barton-Hanson are two of the most successful reality stars on the platform, each earning between £700,000 and £1 million per month.
So, what’s behind the reality TV to OnlyFans pipeline? Is joining OnlyFans the new coveted PrettyLittleThing collab? Or is this more of a last resort for those whose social media careers don’t take off as planned? Above all, amid the destabilising whirlwind of life after reality TV, how are producers going to support contestants as they enter an immensely stigmatised industry?
“When people do a reality show, there’s an expectation that there’s a career waiting for them at the end of it,” says Charlotte Armitage, a psychologist who works in the film and TV industry. “But the reality is that it doesn’t always work out like that.” Although duty of care experts typically advise participants to stay in their jobs, many, unsurprisingly, don’t listen – and so, if social media work doesn’t come in as they’d hoped, they can be left without any kind of income at all. It’s in these instances, says Armitage, that “OnlyFans can seem like easier money than going back to the job they were in before” – and, for those with a public profile, it often can be.
This is essentially what happened to Katie Salmon, who appeared on season two of Love Island in 2016. Although she was only in the villa for 11 days, Salmon made a splash during her brief stint, becoming part of the show’s first ever same-sex couple and ultimately finishing in fourth place. “I felt immense pressure when we finished,” she tells Dazed. “And I felt like a bit of a failure because everyone was getting jobs and interviews instantly, while I felt forgotten about.”
Although Salmon says she was recognised almost everywhere she went, when it came to work, hardly anything was coming in. So, after two years of living at home with her parents while scraping by as a full-time Instagram influencer, Salmon decided to take a gamble and join OnlyFans so she could, as she puts it, “have a better life”. Besides, as a former glamour model, this pivot didn’t feel like a particularly “big deal”. Soon enough, Salmon had become one of the platform’s highest earning reality stars, taking home a six-figure salary every month.
Things aren’t always different for those who do heed psychologists’ advice and return to their jobs post-reality TV. Mishel Karen, a contestant on season seven of Married At First Sight Australia in 2020, joined OnlyFans less than a year after the show aired. “Afterwards, it’s difficult to be taken seriously again in your profession, or even as a person,” the former police recruitment trainer tells Dazed. “I thought my work was going to get rid of me, so I felt I had to prepare to have some extra income.”
For Karen, then, OnlyFans was a financial cushion, of sorts – and one that paid off when she was eventually fired from her job (for unrelated reasons) two years after launching the account. “As a single mum, I always struggled paycheck to paycheck,” she continues. “[But with OnlyFans] I had money, and I could do what I wanted without financial concerns. I’d never been in that position before and it felt empowering. Each month became a competition with myself to make more than I did the month before.”
“A lot of people, like me, aren’t in the right frame of mind when joining these platforms. You’re chasing something because you don’t want to go back to a normal job. You don’t want to be seen as a failure” – Katie Salmon
But success in a stigmatised industry can sadly come with sacrifices. Both Salmon and Karen initially vowed they’d only do bikini or lingerie work, but, as OnlyFans grew, so did the competition, and their content had to get more explicit to maintain their top earnings. And, as non-celeb sex workers know all too well, making porn comes with a whole new set of challenges, from social media censorship and financial discrimination to online abuse and potential strain in IRL relationships. What’s more, unlike most OnlyFans creators, who tend to use pseudonyms to protect their identities, reality TV stars are doing all of this under their own names – anonymity isn’t a luxury you can afford when your success depends on your fame.
Salmon, who deactivated her OnlyFans last year after having her first child, says she didn’t take all of this into full consideration before embarking on a career in the sex industry. “A lot of people, like me, aren’t in the right frame of mind when joining these platforms,” she explains. “You’re chasing something because you don’t want to go back to a normal job. You don’t want to be seen as a failure. But you don’t necessarily consider the consequences of putting this content online.” For Salmon, one of these consequences was losing other work. “A lot of companies and agencies that I was working with didn’t want to work with me [after I joined OnlyFans],” she says. “And I found it really hard to get back on TV.”
Ironically – given OnlyFans is becoming an increasingly popular avenue for reality TV stars – Armitage says joining the platform can actually be a barrier to future TV appearances. “If you have an OnlyFans page, you may not be allowed to move forward in the recruitment process for certain TV shows,” she explains. This is what happened to Barton-Hanson, who revealed last year that Love Island producers made her deactivate her OnlyFans account before she was able to appear on the show in 2018, and that, since reactivating it, she’s lost “countless jobs”. (Although Love Island All Stars contestant Hannah Elizabeth was allowed to keep her X-rated account while in the villa last month.)
As well as not necessarily considering the stigma of being a famous OnlyFans creator, reality stars who pivot to the platform might be doing so because of the widespread misconception that it’s an easy way to make money. In reality, being an adult content creator takes a lot of work, and most people don’t see huge, if any, success. “People think we take some naked pictures and videos, post them, and then watch the money roll in,” says Rae Richmond, a top OnlyFans creator. “OnlyFans in particular is way more involved than that because there’s no search function on the platform, and so traffic comes solely from marketing and self-promotion. There’s other considerations, too, like creator safety, content protection from piracy, and social media growth. You have to have incredibly thick skin. People often have extremely strong negative reactions to adult creators.”
There’s also the thorny question of the impact pre-established celebrity creators could have on regular OnlyFans stars, as exemplified by the 2020 Bella Thorne controversy, which saw OnlyFans implement new restrictions that harmed other creators’ earnings. This doesn't particularly worry Richmond, though. “There will always be people dying to see an A- to D-list celebrity naked and/or having sex,” she says. “I say, more power to them. Strike while the iron of their popularity is hot. Keeping themselves in the public eye beyond their show’s run and taking advantage of the opportunity on OnlyFans and other similar platforms is a smart business decision.”
Nonetheless, there are already so many things to consider when entering the sex industry, but to do so amid the chaos of becoming an overnight reality star can be immensely destabilising. Yet it’s increasingly popular. So what are producers and TV psychologists going to do about this trend? Should it be specifically addressed in aftercare measures?
“At the moment, I’d say there isn’t a specific approach,” reveals Armitage. “The aftercare is all about how the individual readjusts to life outside of the production, and how they cope with anything that has arisen as a result of it. So that isn’t always as easy to separate out.” Armitage explains that contestants on longer shows like Love Island or Married At First Sight should be offered up to 14 months of psychological aftercare, and that support for OnlyFans creators is “part and parcel of the social media side of things”. Though, she adds, those entering the sex industry from reality TV should be made aware of the “impact that it could have on their career”. “It can be the right place for them if it’s what they want to be doing, but if they’re doing it to make a quick buck, we’d advise them to speak to their agent about whether it’s really the right move for them or not.”
None of this is to say that the reality TV to OnlyFans pipeline is bad – in fact, many reality star creators enjoy huge success both on the platform and beyond, thanks in no small part to the autonomy and flexibility offered by adult content creation. But it’s important to know that being a sex worker is no easy feat, especially as a fledgling celebrity who can’t necessarily rely on the show that made you famous to offer support in its aftermath. “Just know that it affects every part of your life and relationships,” advises Karen. “You’re not going to be a sex worker under an alias – you’ll be a sex worker on a world wide social media stage.”