Does OnlyFans have a negative impact on the cannabis job market?

The labor shortage has recently been a problem for industries across the board. The battle for good employees has been so tough that even recreational cannabis pharmacies have trouble finding employees. And who wouldn’t want to legally sell weed to make a living !?

While working in the cannabis industry brings its own culture that is hard to find in a traditional career path, it is always difficult to work for yourself.

Today, the path to entrepreneurship has been more accessible for people who prioritize the freedom to control their own time and work over the structure a traditional 9-to-5 job can provide. Influencers and content creators of all kinds have all helped redefine a rewarding career in 2021. What this means for industries that rely on traditional labor remains to be seen. While the recreational cannabis industry is still in its infancy, it is already suffering from a labor crisis that seems to have no end in sight.

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While the labor crisis doesn’t seem to be showing any signs of slowing, a Northwest cannabis retailer recently expressed hope it would, and for good reason. The Pacific Northwest-based cannabis retailer said that 10-20% of its employees had pages on the popular subscription-based website OnlyFans among its employees. While OnlyFans sees itself as a platform for creators of all kinds, the site has built a reputation for its high concentration of adult content creators. The site’s popularity was only fueled by the pandemic and helped it pile up over 130 million users and 2 million creators.

In August, the website decided to ban adult content in hopes of improving scalability. That decision led the cannabis retailer to believe that the decision could entice some of its employees leaving the store to return to work in exchange for OnlyFans subscribers. And he is by no means the only entrepreneur suffering from a tight labor market. A current report announced that there were more than 10 million job vacancies nationwide in August, the highest number ever. In addition, there are over a million more vacancies than unemployed people.

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These job numbers mean business owners like our cannabis friend spend months looking for open positions. The cost of hiring workers has also increased for 40% of entrepreneurs. Given these factors, it’s easy to assume that the retailer was more than relieved when they got wind of OnlyFans’ decision to move away from explicit content because they needed really good employees.

For certain employees, the prospect of sufficient income to support a carefree lifestyle with all the benefits – like vacations, outdoor adventures, and nights on the town they can handle in exchange for some naughty pictures and videos – is too good to pass up. When the cannabis retailer learned of OnlyFans’ decision to reverse its plans to ban adult content, it knew it had no chance of getting its old employees back.

Photo by Timothy Dykes via Unsplash

For example, we spoke to an OnlyFans creator who started creating content for her subscribers about five to six months before the pandemic started. We call her Sasha for privacy reasons. She says she started creating content on OnlyFans because she wanted a slightly more luxurious lifestyle than she was used to and wasn’t paying what she wanted in her current job.

The fact that she can maintain her lifestyle in one of the most prominent areas of Seattle – one of the most expensive metros in the country – lets us assume that she was able to secure the desired additional income. It is even easier for her that she has the full support of her family.

“The people in my life come from the entertainment industry and are into sex work themselves, so I am not being questioned negatively,” she says. In fact, she told us that her mom bought her a ring light to help her film, which helped cut her startup costs. Sasha says opening an OnlyFans account can be a timely and costly endeavor.

“[OnlyFans creators] Have to work 10 to 20 hours. There’s a lot to talk to people, ”she explained. Apart from a ring light, another part of her start-up costs were cloakroom updates in order to fulfill niche requests such as “bake cakes in a cute little outfit” or to pose in a WonderWoman outfit. As someone with experience in male-dominated industries, she has no problem gaining a foothold and showing her subscribers her limits.

“I don’t do anything with others, I only own myself, I mostly smoke topless in my bedroom,” she says. “I don’t offer XXX and I like to tell people that.”

Photo by Oleg Elkov / Getty Images

One of the reasons she gets these requests and quickly stops them, in her opinion, is because of the wide and increasingly growing availability of porn. In fact, that’s one of the reasons she says she is “in the process” of turning away from OnlyFans.

“OnlyFans is so oversaturated that the prices on their subscriptions are so low that people can buy what they want much cheaper than I offer,” she says. Regardless of how oversaturated it is, she still manages to make $ 500 to $ 800 a month to meet the niche content needs of her subscribers.

RELATED: Weed, booze, sex, and other consumer trends are set to continue in 2021

As for the Onlyfans decision to ban adult content, she had a reaction: She saw it coming. “From a business point of view, it makes a lot of sense,” she says. “If you want to make money [by] As a platform grows, they have to eliminate explicit content if they want an app. The move to the web platform could affect the addition of further users. ”

Although she clearly understood the business ramifications behind the decision to ban adult content, she says the decision was still heartbreaking as a sex worker – as well as the decision to receive 20% of the income of sex workers who depend on these funds for survival.

OnlyFans’ decision to lift adult content bans still won’t stop Sasha’s plans for what she describes as “slowly fizzling out” from the platform. At the moment, she says that she only posts the link to her OnlyFans profile on social media platforms during the “Late Nights” in her Instagram story.

While she enjoys limiting her OnlyFans content to a group of loyal subscribers who are eagerly waiting for her to do topless bong rips every month, she says she might consider using another platform called Patreon which is a hit with adult content creators.

The reality is that with sites like Patreon, Fansly, and JustForFans, there are several options for people willing to make a living showing off to strangers. With that in mind, it wouldn’t be surprising if retailers like our friend in the cannabis industry continue to struggle with staffing shortages for the foreseeable future. The question is, how many others will leave and join the traditional workforce?