Blog Post Written By: Melrose Michaels
Black Friday has arrived, but it’s still not too late to cash in on the year's busiest shopping day. In this blog, we’re going to discuss 3 unique ways you can monetize your OnlyFans and fansites on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Because some of the #CEOsquad isn’t US-based, let me quickly explain what Black Friday is, in case anyone listening doesn’t know. Black Friday & Cyber Monday are retail holidays that have grown exponentially in popularity over the years. While traditionally associated with brick-and-mortar stores offering steep discounts, it has now become a lucrative opportunity for adult content creators and influencers to boost their earnings as well. Keep reading to explore various strategies and tactics for monetizing the Black Friday and Cyber Monday holiday and turning it into a profitable season for your creator business.
Affiliate Marketing
You’re going to hear us talk about this topic a lot more in 2024 in general, as I think it’s incredibly important to build enterprise value for adult businesses. But for the sake of this blog, I will focus on how to strategically implement affiliate marketing for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Affiliate marketing is similar to when you recommend a good movie or a favorite restaurant to your friend. If your friend goes to that movie or restaurant because of your recommendation, sometimes the movie theater or restaurant gives you a small reward, like a discount on your next visit or a little bit of money.
In a similar way, in affiliate marketing, people (called affiliates) recommend products or services from companies to others. When those recommendations lead to sales, the affiliates (in this case, you, the creator) earn a small commission or reward from the company. It's a way for companies to say thank you to people who help them find new customers. Essentially, they pay you a commission on any sales you help drive to the business for the product you’re promoting.
Affiliate marketing is one of the most common and effective ways for adult creators to monetize Black Friday. Many companies and online retailers offer affiliate programs, allowing you to earn a commission for promoting their products. To make the most of Black Friday, start by identifying relevant products or brands that align with your content and audience. The clever way to do this is to become an ‘affiliate’ of products you want your fans to buy or gift directly to YOU during the holidays. Let me explain,
Because our fans love to ‘spoil’ us during the holidays, it’s really easy to tell them ‘what we want’ as gifts ahead of Christmas. A great example of this would be an expensive ‘Lovense’ remote-control toy. You can become a Lovense affiliate and get paid a commission on the toy the fan purchases FOR YOU, on top of getting the toy as a gift. It’s a strategic way you can double dip on earnings with your fans, by getting paid commissions on things you want them to buy for you specifically.
Another way you can monetize affiliate opportunities is by becoming an affiliate to your cam sites or clip stores (if they have that option). For example, if you’re a webcam performer on a cam platform like MyFreeCams and you decide to become a MyFreeCams affiliate in addition to camming, this means you will get paid a 20% commission on every dollar a new user spends on the cam platform. Meaning you’re not only earning 50% of all earnings on the site, but then an additional 20% on all new user dollars spent. Bringing your total earnings from 50% up to 70%. AND you’ll earn that 20% of every dollar new user spends on that cam site FOREVER. Even after you stop camming there, every dollar spent on the cam site as a WHOLE. Not just on you as a model.
So why is this important, and how does it relate to Black Friday? If you’re a MyFreeCams webcam performer, you can plan and promote a special Black Friday cam show using your MyFreeCams affiliate link. You’ll not only make money from your Black Friday Show, but you’ll capture all these new users due to your affiliate link. This is even more valuable for adult creators who’ve never done live cam before. Because the affiliate revenue is off new users, the sooner you become an affiliate in your webcam career, the more money you stand to make. And remember, this is money that pays you long after you stop webcamming. There are cam performers right now, entirely retired from the industry, who still make tens of thousands of dollars each month off their affiliate revenue.
Again, expect to hear more about affiliate marketing from us in 2024, but if you want to start becoming a cam site affiliate, you can do that on FansRevenue, which has tons of affiliate offers for adult creators.
Email Marketing
The second way to utilize Black Friday/Cyber Monday to your advantage is to hit up that email list you’ve been building. We’ve talked at length about the importance of building your fan email list many times across our SexWorkCEO channels. Moments like these are precisely why.
Shopping holidays like Black Friday and Cyber Monday give you the opportunity to send out an email blast about a discounted or free join offer to whatever your main platform of spicy site is. I’ll even tell you exactly how I’m doing this.
Free offers always convert better and outperform discount offers. So, I’ve created a FREE 7-day trial campaign for my OnlyFans for new and expired users. Let me explain...
Typically, I only create free trials for new users or subscribers, but in an effort to GET BACK users who used to be subscribed, I’m going to include them as well. Why am I opting for a 7-day trial instead of a 1-day or 3-day trial? Because in 7 days, I’m fairly confident I can monetize those users in the DMs via locked PPVs or tips. I only need to get a user to spend $10 in DMs to cover the cost of what a 1-month subscription on my page would be (since the first month on my page is $10). And in a 7-day time frame, I’m pretty sure I can get them to unlock or tip $10, meaning that a 7-day free trial is really a wash on whether they subscribe to me or not because those $10 in earnings from DMs is what I would’ve made if they subscribed for 30 days and canceled anyway. Essentially, this means that what appeared to the fan as a 7-day free trial would pay me like a paid 30-day subscription.
For that reason, all of my fan email list has received an email from me that reads (and feel free to steal this):
Black Friday is cumming, and you should be too! Here’s my Black Friday gift to you: a 7-day COMPLETELY FREE all-access pass to my OF! Available to you EVEN if you’ve already been on my page and expired off of it (not just for new users!) Click the button below to claim your gift.
Xo, MelRose
An added benefit of pushing this free trial to your email list is on the backend in your OnlyFans dashboard you’ll be able to see how many people ‘claimed it’ or clicked on it to come from your email list to your page. This is great data to know how strong your email list actually is. Remember, you don’t want to over-market or blast emails to your fan list. You have to use it strategically, and Black Friday or Cyber Monday is the perfect moment to do that!
DM Bundle
Finally, this brings us to my last suggestion on how to be intentional with your Black Friday/Cyber Monday efforts. And that is with a massive DM bundle that self-destructs at midnight on Black Friday (or Cyber Monday) itself. Here’s what I mean...
Take 50% of your best content (the videos you’ve gotten the best fan feedback on) and 50% of your mid-range content (this is the more niche content you have that shows a range of the types of content you offer. Think of things like one fetish video, one joi video, one collab video, one solo video, one cosplay video, etc). You’ll decide how many videos you want in the bundle, but you need it to be SO VALUABLE that it would be silly if a fan didn’t unlock it. For me, my bundle is going to include 5 GG videos and 5 range videos (one foot fetish, one joi, one breeding, one domme, and one cosplay). You do this so the new fans who’ve had little to no exposure to your content get a well-rounded idea of what you offer by unlocking the bundle, and the old or current fans get tons of value and savings by unlocking the bundle.
Set this bundle to hit DMs at 12 am Thursday night/Black Friday morning (or Sunday night/Cyber Monday morning) with this copy or caption - again, feel free to steal it and use it for yourself (just remember to edit the descriptions of the content for what you're offering)
The ULTIMATE Black Friday Bundle!!! 10 videos for $10 ($1 PER VIDEO!!!) This Black Friday bundle includes:
An outdoor pool GGGG foursome video,
A GGGG foursome video of us eating each other out one by one on a spinning table,
A GGG threesome video from a wild night in LA,
A GG outdoor shower video,
An intimate GG bedroom video with me and another redhead!
The other 5 videos in the bundle are solo content of me in a domme video, a fetish video, a JOI video, a breeding video, and a cosplay video! Over a $400 value bundle that you’re getting for $10. But only if you unlock it before 12am CST tonight - because this message self-destructs at midnight!
You can see that the value of this bundle is HUGE, so the fans who see this in their inbox are going to feel very compelled to spend that $10. I go BIG with giving out this deal because you have to remember you’re going to be competing with EVERY other model your fans also subscribe to and their Black Friday sales. So you really have to push something that seems SO GOOD your fans will feel stupid if they don’t buy it. And remember, you should also be sending this bundle to your expired fans - not only your active ones.
When you do a crazy bundle like this, you’re looking to monetize those cheap fans who will pretty much NEVER spend on your page otherwise. Also consider, this is the MAJORITY of people on your page. 80% of the pages are usually cheap fans or freeloaders, vs. the 20% that account for most of your revenue and spend all year. Those fans likely already have all this content from you and have bought it at full price. So this is when you get those low-spending fans to open their wallets for once. I have around 1700 active fans on my page right now, but I have 29,000 expired fans (that I’ve followed back over the years). So, my bundle will get sent out to over 30,000 users. If only 10% of those 30,000 users unlock my $10 bundle, that’s 3,000 unlocks. 3,000 unlocks on a $10 PPV is $30,000.
Even if only 1% of those 30,000 users unlock my bundle on the LOW end, that’s still 300 unlocks of a $10 PPV. Which is still an additional $3000 for one mass msg on Black Friday. Do you see the potential here? This is why you must make the bundle SO GOOD and VALUABLE that people simply can not resist.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are fantastic opportunities for adult content creators to monetize & maximize their businesses. By strategically incorporating affiliate marketing, email list conversions, and a strong bundle into your Black Friday/Cyber Monday marketing strategy, you can maximize your earnings and provide MASSIVE value to your audience while setting your December up with new users and subscribers who are hungry for content. Remember, there’s absolutely still time to implement ALL of these tactics. At least, if you’ve been building that email list like we keep saying you ought to be 😉. Ultimately, Brynn and I are wishing you a lucrative Black Friday/Cyber Monday and a very happy holiday this week if you celebrate. Happy monetizing, and have a successful Black Friday season #CEOsquad!
If you enjoyed this blog, you'll really love the Twitter Space we did focusing on this topic. We had a packed space and had some great input and questions at the end, so this is your sign to hit play (as if you needed one 😉).
Have a question about pricing your adult content? DM or tag @sexworkceo on Twitter and Instagram, or send us an email. We're always here to help; it's what we love to do! Want to be part of the conversation? Join us on Tuesdays at 1 p.m. CST on Twitter, where we discuss new topics weekly to help take your adult content creator business to the next level. Unable to make it live? No problem! You can listen to all our past Twitter Spaces here.