Equipment Barrus isn’t whispering about her paycheck, however as a substitute she’s placing it on the board like a math downside with one reply: OnlyFans is paying her greater than the tutorial world ever might. Barrus, who’s 27, a math and psychology graduate who graduated magna cum laude and ranks among the many platform’s prime creators, says her month-to-month earnings now blows previous what {many professional} mathematicians and professors take residence in a complete yr.
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Equipment Barrus Says OnlyFans Success Isn’t ‘Luck,’ However It’s ‘Predictive Modeling’
Barrus claims her arithmetic background provides her a strategic benefit within the subscription economic system, and he or she says her outcomes come from treating the platform like a enterprise, not a big gamble. “I make extra in a month than many tenured professors make in a yr,” Barrus mentioned. And he or she insists it’s not a flex, it’s numbers, including, “It’s not bragging, it’s actuality. I’ve seen the wage information. The mathematics checks out.”
“This isn’t luck,” she continued. “I deal with it like a enterprise. I have a look at churn charges, value elasticity, consumer conduct. It’s not random. It’s predictive modeling.”
In her telling, the sting isn’t simply analytics, however it’s additionally understanding folks. “And I’m good at it as a result of I perceive folks and I perceive numbers,” she mentioned.
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Barrus Says A TikTok Dare Sparked Her OnlyFans Profession

Barrus, who was raised Mormon in California, says her formative years revolved round modesty and obedience, and he or she supported herself via school whereas working full time and taking evening lessons. Then got here a pivot she says she didn’t plan.
Her entry into grownup content material, she mentioned, started as a dare from TikTok followers. “What began as a joke was my full-time job,” she mentioned.
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Equipment Barrus Says Her Month-to-month OnlyFans Pay Tops Mathematicians’ Annual Salaries

Based mostly on her personal monitoring, she ranks within the platform’s prime 0.1% of creators. And he or she claims her earnings routinely prime what many mathematicians make in a yr. In keeping with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median annual wage for mathematicians was $112,110 in 2022.
Barrus says she usually beats that in a single month. “I’ve mates getting Ph.D.’s and publishing in tutorial journals who’re struggling to pay hire,” she mentioned. “In the meantime, I’m investing six figures a yr and dealing lower than 20 hours every week.”
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Barrus Says She Lower Costs Throughout The Shutdown To Hold Subscribers Afloat

Equipment beforehand opened up about how she runs her web page like an extended recreation, not a fast money seize, and that features being attentive to what subscribers are coping with outdoors the app. As she defined, “Lots of people have been seeing their web page site visitors undergo due to the federal government shutdown. Lots of people who subscribe are blue collar staff, and when the federal government shut down, plenty of these folks aren’t getting paid. So that they’re clearly not on OnlyFans pages.”
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As a result of OnlyFans is her predominant earnings stream, Barrus mentioned she needed to pivot quick. “I made an enormous adjustment to how I run the web page. I maintain monitor of it if somebody tells me what their job is. So anybody who’s blue collar, anybody who’s working for the federal government and we find out about it… once I despatched out pay-per-view content material to them, it’s going out cheaper.”
In different phrases, she didn’t simply discover the slowdown, however she adjusted her pricing throughout the shutdown to satisfy subscribers the place they have been, betting that empathy and technique could be simply as worthwhile as any algorithm.
Equipment Barrus Says She’s Utilizing Knowledge Science To Run OnlyFans Like A Enterprise

Barrus says most of the identical instruments she discovered in math programs present up in how she manages content material and monetization. “Optimization, A/B testing, subscriber segmentation, that is all information science,” she advised The Blast. “The one distinction is my medium.”
Whereas critics could side-eye her resolution to maneuver away from the normal path, Barrus says she’s not trying again, and he or she’s not ready round for validation from establishments that weren’t going to reward her anyway. “I used to be by no means going to get a MacArthur Fellowship,” she mentioned. “However I constructed a platform that values what I convey to the desk. I don’t want tenure.”
And whereas she says she’s not shutting the door on college perpetually, it’s not the end line. “I all the time thought I’d be a professor,” she mentioned. “Now I’m the case research.”



