$1.2 Million Per Day From One Website

Hello! This is Deep Pockets #16.

I have built, managed, and sold websites for the last two decades. For most of the last two decades, if you had asked me, “What’s the greatest web business of all time?” I would have had a quick answer: Craigslist.

Why?

Craigslist generated $700 million in revenue last year using a website that looks like it was designed in 1997 and then never touched again.

Craigslist employs 50 people. Let’s say those 50 people make $300,000 per year on average. That’s $15 million in annual salary costs. Double that to account for benefits. We’re at $30 million. I may be stretching here, but after adding up hosting, insurance, legal fees, rent, etc… let’s say it costs $200 million per year in total to operate Craigslist. Using that very rough estimate, we’re talking about a business that operates at a 70% margin, spitting off $500 million per year in profit.

Craigslist’s exact current ownership structure is not known, but we have a rough idea. Today, it’s generally believed that founder (and namesake) Craig Newmark owns a majority stake, perhaps as much as 60%, with longtime CEO Jim Buckmaster and several other employees owning minority stakes.

If that 60% estimate for Newmark is true, that would imply he paid himself a $300 million dividend last year.

And that’s why, for most of the last two decades, I would have told you that Craigslist is the greatest web business of all time. But notice I keep saying, “for most of the last two decades.” That’s because my answer changed recently.

Can you guess what website I now consider to be the greatest web business of all time?

DEEP DIVE: The Greatest Web Business of All Time

In 2016, a pair of brothers, Tim and Thomas Stokely, went to their father - a retired investment banker at Barclay’s in London, to pitch him an idea for a new website. Tim had spent the last few years toiling with various web projects, mostly unsuccessfully. Whenever he had an idea for a new website, his father got a call to be the angel investor.

For the last few years, up to late 2016, Tim primarily operated three websites. The first was a platform that aimed to connect tradespeople (carpenters, plumbers, electricians, etc) with local customers.

The second business was GlamGirls, a basic webcam site where people paid a monthly fee to watch attractive women perform live, softcore strip dances.

One day in 2013, Tim had a brainstorm. Instead of tuning in to watch a generic strip dance, what if guys could connect directly with a model and pay her to do a custom performance? The end result was the third website, Customs4U.

Customs4U went live at the end of 2013 and soon got a flurry of press. For example, this January 2014 CNBC article in which Tim explained:

“This allows the models to say, ‘I don’t need a studio’…. Our aim and focus was to allow girls to set up an independent profile and earn from their cellphone, or tablet or PC.”

Over the next few years, Customs4U sputtered along. He did get some of the GlamGirls to set up accounts, but the site never really took off in a meaningful way. But it did inspire Tim’s next venture.

For this next website, Tim brought his brother Thomas in as a partner. And in early 2016, the brothers pitched their father, Guy Stokely. Once again, Guy agreed to invest. But before he handed over a check for $12,500, Guy had some parting words for Tim:

“Tim. This is going to be the last one.”

The Stokley brothers’ new project had a unique innovation: They wanted to flip the webcam business model upside down.

In the previous decade, webcam models earned a tiny cut of the revenue generated from their performances. A webcam model would have been lucky to get 20% of their earnings.

The old model was a pain for the platforms as well. Perhaps because the models weren’t making very much money, they weren’t reliable. They wouldn’t show up at their assigned time. They quit after a month. Worst of all, if a model became really popular, she would inevitably start promoting her own website or a rival platform that gave a slightly better rev share.

Tim and Thomas’ new website put the power in the hands of the performers. The performers would set their own subscription fees, and the platform would only take 20%.

Under this model, the… models… would be hyper-incentivized to promote their channels, create content, build an audience, and maximize their revenue. Channels like Instagram, Reddit, and Twitter would no longer be seen as rivals that stole content; they would be promotional “front doors” for acquiring subscribers.

In November 2016, Tim and Thomas launched their website. They called it…

OnlyFans

Tim Served as CEO. Thomas was the Chief Operating Officer. Their dad was the head of finance.

OnlyFans had ten models on the day it went live.

To give some context into the value offered by OnlyFans, consider two examples. The first example is an adult star who became famous before 2016. The second example is a performer who became famous on OnlyFans.

First up, Mia Khalifa:

Mia Khalifa filmed her first adult scene in October 2014. She filmed a total of 11 scenes during this period.

By December 2014, just THREE MONTHS after her first scene went live, Mia was the #1 most popular adult star in the world. Her videos would go on to generate billions of views across dozens of adult streaming sites (and eventually earned her death threats from several Muslim countries for reasons we won’t detail here). Even a decade later, Mia is still one of the most famous and most searched adult performers in the world.

How much was Mia paid to film her 11 scenes?

$12,000

Next up, Jem Wolfie:

Jem Wolfie grew a following on Instagram by posting scantily clad photos and videos that just barely walked the line of Instagram’s policies. In December 2020, Instagram banned her account. Soooooo, Jem launched an OnlyFans.

In her first three months on OnlyFans, Jem grossed…

$2 million

That would be $1.6 million in net earnings for Ms. Wolfie after OnlyFans took a 20% cut. These numbers have actually been confirmed by Tim Stokely himself. Stokely has also confirmed that Jem Wolfie is currently the highest-paid performer on OnlyFans, averaging $1 million per month in gross revenue. That’s $12 million per year in gross revenue and $9.6 million in net earnings for Ms. Wolfie.

Guess who else joined OnlyFans in 2020?

Mia Khalifa. She has earned at least $10 million since joining.

Another famous example of a performer making insane money on OnlyFans is Danielle Bregoli, aka the “Cash me outside girl.” Danielle joined OnlyFans in April 2021, a few days after turning 18. She generated $1 million in revenue in her first six hours. According to screenshots Danielle has shared, between April 2021 and June 2024, she grossed $70 million and netted $53 million.

What about the Stokelys?

So if that’s how much the performers are making, the Stokelys must be swimming in oceans of cash today, right?

Well…

In 2018, the Stokelys sold 75% of OnlyFans. The buyer was a fellow adult internet entrepreneur named Leonid Radvinsky.

The sale price is not known, but it probably wasn’t significant, relatively speaking. The year the Stokelys sold, OnlyFans had 1 million monthly active users and generated $50-100 million in gross revenue, but it was likely not yet profitable.

In 2019, OnlyFans generated $304 million. That translated into $7 million in net profits. A really nice business! Then something funny happened.

As the world retreated into their homes in 2020, OnlyFans exploded in popularity. And the growth has not slowed down.

• In 2020, OnlyFans generated $2.2 billion in revenue and $60 million in profits.

• In 2021, OnlyFans generated $4.8 billion in revenue and $464 million in profits.

• In 2022, OnlyFans generated $5.5 billion in revenue and $533 million in profits.

• In 2023, OnlyFans generated $6.6 billion in revenue and $649 million in profits.

We know these numbers because OnlyFans is a British corporation and, therefore, is required to make an annual financial disclosure despite not being a publicly traded company. Here’s a screenshot of their P&L that was released in September 2024:

Let’s look at the numbers in the far right “2023” column. Here’s what these numbers say:

In 2023, OnlyFans users spent $6.6 billion on the platform (gross revenue). The platform earned $1.3 billion in net revenue after paying $5.3 billion to its creators. The company spent $488 million in costs (credit card processing fees, bandwidth, rent, insurance, legal, salaries, etc) and $169 million in “administrative expenses.” After all costs were paid, there was $649 million in profits.

In 2023, there were 4 million creators making content on OnlyFans and 305 million fan accounts.

$1 Billion in Dividends (so far)

Leonid Radvinsky’s 2018 purchase of OnlyFans from the Stokleys may go down in history as the greatest business acquisition of all time… even though we don’t know the price he paid. Whatever he paid, it was a pittance compared to the dividends Leonid is paying himself every year today.

• In 2021, Leonid paid himself a dividend of $284 million.

• In 2022, Leonid paid himself a dividend of $338 million.

• In 2023, Leonid paid himself a dividend of $472 million.

Total it up, and in the last three years, Leonid Radvinsky has paid himself:

$1,094,000,000

That’s a little under $1.1 billion.

As for the Stokely brothers and father, it’s presumable that they continue to own 25% of OnlyFans. I hope they do, for the sake of their sanity. If that’s the case, based on the above dividends, the two brothers and father have split around $275 million in dividends in the last few years.

Tim and Thomas continued working as CEO and COO, respectively, of OnlyFans through the end of 2021.

As for Leonid Radvinski, in addition to making nearly half a billion dollars last year, the overall value of OnlyFans has officially made him a billionaire. His net worth today is $3 billion.

Leonid keeps a very low profile online. There’s basically one photo of him on the entire web (and I couldn’t license it). He hasn’t given an interview in years. On his LinkedIn page, which makes no mention of OnlyFans, Leo describes himself as “an accomplished venture capital investor, philanthropist, and technology entrepreneur who holds a special interest in emerging social media platforms.” His sole work history on LinkedIn is President of Leo.com, which is a website for his “Florida-based boutique venture capital fund that invests in technology companies.”

In 2020, Leo and his wife paid $4 million for a 10,000-square-foot mansion in a private gated community in Boca Raton. They sold the home in October 2023 for $5.75 million. In 2022, they paid $23 million for a newly constructed 6,000-square-foot penthouse in a different part of Florida.

Leonid and his wife are both Ukrainian. They appear to have met while they were undergrads at Northwestern University. She is a doctor and serves on the board of a cancer research foundation. They have donated tens of millions of dollars to charity, notably to support cancer research and Ukraine’s war efforts.

Sell Or Earn Dividends For Decades?

Should Leonid Radvinsky sell OnlyFans or just take the dividends every year for the next few decades?

It’s possible that OnlyFans is so huge and so risky that there may not be any viable acquirers. Certainly no major mainstream public company like Apple or Netflix could even consider it. OnlyFans isn’t even allowed in the App Store. A private equity firm is probably Leonid’s best option.

But why should he sell?

He owns a business that paid him $500 million last year. Within a few years, he’ll probably be making $1 billion every year. There’s no reason that can’t happen. OnlyFans has basically no competition. The brand is totally accepted in the mainstream. And, as it turns out, paying people to get naked on the internet has proven to not be a flukey COVID fad like making sourdough or buying a Cameo.

Let’s say OnlyFans has reached every person on earth who would ever pay for an adult subscription so its growth is flat from now on. If that’s the case, wouldn’t it be fair to say that Leonid will continue to make $500 million a year…. for….decades???

If Craig Newmark can still be making $300 million a year off Craigslist, a website he founded 30 years ago and appears to have not updated since, why can’t Leonid follow the exact same path?

If Leonid makes $500 million a year for the next 30 years, that’s $15 billion.

And that’s why OnlyFans is the greatest web business of all time.

FINAL WORD

On the next edition of “Deep Pockets,” we go from the unlikely billionaire king of OnlyFans to the accidental billionaire Queen of a burger empire.

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