OnlyFans sales objections and what a "no" actually means
Blog Post Written By: Melrose Michaels
I once raised my OnlyFans subscription from $3 to $25, and the platform responded by canceling every single rebill I had. Every subscriber I had spent years building was going to have to come back and choose me again on purpose at more than 8 times the price. A lot of them did not, and I watched a number I had spent years building fall off a cliff inside about 7 days.
The money was the part I had already run the math on before I touched anything. What I had not prepared for was that none of these were strangers, because I am active in my DMs and a lot of those men had been talking to me every week for years.
Here is what that terrible week ended up handing me though. Getting told no that many times at once made it impossible to take any of it personally, and every one of those no's turned out to be information about fit rather than information about me.
In this blog post, I am going to start with what a "no" is actually telling you, then I will get into what it costs you when you flinch before anybody has objected at all.
What a no is actually telling you
A company called Gong analyzed 7,000 recorded sales meetings and found that buyers get more negative as they move closer to a sale rather than less. That was a software sales study, which is the whole point, because this is a people thing rather than an adult industry thing.
So the fan arguing with you about $30 is further along than the fan who read your message and said nothing at all. Silence is where the sale actually goes to die, and an objection is a man standing there with his hands in his pockets, which happens to be where he keeps his wallet.
The move that changed my inbox was learning to stop selling the second an objection lands. Agree with the feeling and never agree with the frame, because that's fair costs you nothing to say and takes all the fight out of the conversation. Then ask the 2 words that earn me more money than anything else I type, which are what else.
The first objection a fan gives you is usually reflex from somebody who is not ready to decide. The second thing he says is almost always the real one, and that is what you build the offer around before you sell him anything.
There are 5 categories of no and they need completely different answers. Either he does not understand what he is actually buying, or he understands it perfectly and the number does not match the value he sees. He might be waiting on payday, or stalling to avoid making the decision at all, or simply not telling you the real reason yet. I go through every one of them with the actual scripts in this week's YouTube video, including the 2 objections that look different and are secretly the same objection.
What it costs you when you flinch first
Here is the reflex underneath all of this, and I ran on it for years without naming it. You set your number lower than you wanted before anybody objected, because a smaller number feels less likely to produce a no and you are already tired of no's. That is not a strategy and calling it one does not make it one.
That same reflex shows up in 3 other ways as well. You stop opening your inbox and tell yourself you will do it tomorrow, when the honest version is that your inbox became the place where people tell you no. You read silence as rejection and build an entire story about your pricing inside of a few seconds. And you shrink the ask, so the $50 video becomes a $20 video and the custom never gets pitched at all.
That last one is the expensive one, because your income reorganizes itself around how much rejection you can tolerate instead of around what your fans would actually pay you.
The rule I would tattoo on people here is that you never lower your price on the same thing.
The second you sell the $50 video for $25, its price is $25 permanently for that fan, and you have taught him that objecting to you works. Sell a different thing instead, and make sure the cheaper thing is truly less appealing rather than a bargain version of the same experience.
That downsell is the easiest piece of this to get slightly wrong, so I wrote up the formula inside CEO Society with the script to use when you offer it.
Counting the asks instead of the closes
The reframe that changed this for me came out of watching how Alex Hormozi and Leila Hormozi teach reps, and their position that volume and consistency matter more than raw talent does.
So go and run your own numbers on this one. If it takes roughly 20 conversations for you to land a $1k custom, then each no is worth $50 of future money to you. I am very comfortable letting somebody tell me no for $50. A no is a down payment on a yes rather than the absence of one.
That is why I stopped scoring myself on sales and started scoring myself on how many asks I made. The yes was never mine to control, and if how I feel about myself rides on whether a stranger answers, I have handed him the steering wheel for my entire week.
In this week's podcast I go through the 4 things that actually help me, and every one of them changes a condition rather than trying to change a feeling. Batch the asking into one block and then get off the app entirely. Put your asks somewhere you can see them as a number, because 12 asks is a fact while 12 people did not want me is a story. Do not go selling to anybody when you are already depleted. And never let a no be the last thing you read before you close the laptop.
This is also why gifting sits where it does in my business right now. A wish list keeps asking on your behalf during the weeks you do not have it in you to ask anybody for anything, and nobody has to turn you down for it to work.
The part nobody puts in the income report
This job asks you to be generous with people who are not always generous back, over and over, every single day. That is the emotional labor nobody puts in an income report, and I wrote about this, in this week's newsletter.
If rejection is hitting you in a way that has stopped being about your business, please talk to somebody actually qualified, because I am not that person and I would never pretend otherwise.
What ties all three together
The discount you hand a fan the second he pushes back and the number you set low before anybody objected are the same move wearing different clothes. Both are you managing your own discomfort instead of managing the sale.
Knowing that a no is information about fit is the thing that lets you answer it with a question instead of a price cut, which is why the scripts and the emotional side of this are the same subject.
Do this before you close this tab
The next time a fan objects to anything, do not sell and do not discount. Say that's fair, then ask whether it is just the price or something else, and let him tell you which of the 5 you are actually dealing with.
Then pick a number of asks per day and score yourself on that instead of on closes. 10 is a perfectly good place to start, and if you got 10 no's you did your job that day even though it does not feel like it.
P.S. Pick your number, then go get your 10 no's tomorrow and count them somewhere you can see them. Then come tell us how it went inside CEO Society, where a room full of creators got told no this morning too.
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