I scroll my social feeds on a lazy Saturday afternoon and stumble across a video of a Chicano mailman (his words, not mine) walking through a neighborhood in the scorching summer sun. His dcolletage, framed by the baby blue USPS button-up, glistens with sweat. Its hot. So I tap on his profile, which leads me to a link in bio, which leads me to well, you know. In less than a minute, Ive leapt from the innocence of blue-collar TikTok to the OnlyFans home page of an honest mailman trying to support his wife and two kids, where hell show me the package Ive really been waiting for if I cough up $14 and subscribe.Between 25 percent and 40 percent of Americans (and over half of millennials and Gen Z) have a side hustle, depending on which surveys you reference. And for some, that extra income comes from turning a camera on and taking clothes off. Adult creatorship is certainly one of the riskier side hustle options; diamonds are forever, and so is the internet, so the decision to dip into adult content creation feels like a point of no return, with very real professional implications. Theres also that part where, in an effort to monetize our interests, we sometimes end up ruining them instead.With so much of gay digital culture adjacent to sex, its hard to navigate queer life without encountering references to platforms like JustFor.Fans, OnlyFans, and cam sites. One cant help but wonder: Whats it like for people who do this? Did the wave already crest during pandemic-era quarantines, or can someone start today and still make a viable income? And should they?Curious, I asked several current and past adult content creators what its like. Thomas Long chose to leave the field of medicine for a career in adult entertainment.Alex BlytheFROM PHYSICIAN IN TRAINING TO PORN STARIn 2020, Thomas Long (@thomaslongxxl) was finishing up medical school. And yes, I can confirm (through, uh, online research) that the schlong is indeed long. But doing clinicals in 2020 understandably sucked, Long says no one [in hospitals] wanted to work with students at the time and the arrival of COVID-19 opened his eyes to how his chosen career path could lead to a life of long hours and internal bureaucracy.I made the decision when I finished school that I wasnt going to practice medicine, he says. When a friend suggested he look into OnlyFans, Long notes that the financial timing was a big factor. Payments on his student loan debt were paused, a suspension that lasted nearly three and a half years, and he had savings from previous work, so he didnt have to make a full-time income right away. He says he had enough runway to give it a try.It was difficult. I didnt really know what I was doing, says Long.The inexperience didnt matter because quarantines limited our in-person activities, which led many of us to be chronically online, the perfect petri dish for rapid online audience growth. Long says he only made a couple of hundred dollars in his first few months, but his subscriptions steadily grew, and eventually he saw potential to go full-time. Collabs helped; one video he did with a top studio creator led to 900 new subscriptions, the equivalent of several thousand dollars a month in additional income. However, he also says online fame can take an emotional toll.Being so vulnerable and open on the internet, I 100 percent feel like some of my life isnt my life anymore, he told me. OnlyFans has definitely given me more confidence in some aspects, but its also changed my internal dialogue. I grew up in the humble Midwest; Im trying to guard myself and prevent any of this from changing who I am at the core.Long says hell milk his platforms and content for as long as he can, but subscriptions arent what they used to be since the November election, and hes planning his soft exit. He also says the online landscape is much tougher now.The Twitter takeover and changing of the algorithm messed things up, he says. A friend of mine in real estate asked me about OnlyFans the other day. He said he wanted to start one. I thought to myself, You shouldnt. Guy Ruben's OnlyFans foot fetish account serves as a second source of income.Courtesy DJGuyRubenMAN IN FINANCE (WITH A SIDE OF FOOT FETISH)For Guy Ruben (@djguyruben), OnlyFans is squarely a secondary source of income. Hed been making foot fetish videos with hookups for his private enjoyment for years, but never shared anything publicly, instead using his social media handles to promote DJ gigs. Then COVID-19 rolled in.When the pandemic happened, I was like, Well, the worlds gonna end. Why not just put my videos on OnlyFans and see if anybody is interested? he says. As he posted sneak peeks of his foot fetish content on Twitter, his following picked up rapidly. He says he had about 2,000 followers at the time, compared to just over 54,000 followers today, but agreed its harder now to get preview posts seen. Rather than lead with subscriptions, he keeps his OnlyFans account free, then sells individual videos in a pay-per-video format.Ruben notes that hes had a full-time corporate job in finance this whole time, and that although some months have been good, hes never made more money in a month doing OnlyFans than he has at his day job. He also monitors his online presence regularly. If you Google my real name, none of this comes up, he says. I check it all the time. I even checked it the other day. I thought about the fear of being discovered, how it lingers in the background, and how that feeling might be anxious in some moments and thrilling in others. If it were to ever come up [at work], I dont know how I would navigate it, he says. I guess theyd just fire me, and Id have to figure it out. Overall, though, his experience seemed positive. I genuinely love it, he says. Dylan CotterCourtesy Dylan CotterAN ONLINE VANISHING ACTDylan Cotter says the way he arrived in the adult business directly reflects his lived experience as a gay trans man. After transitioning in 2016, he says his network changed dramatically, and it became harder to find work as a marketing consultant, a challenge that compounded during the pandemic.I lost a lot of people in my life. It was very disappointing, he says. When the pandemic hit, I thought to myself, Wow, how am I ever going to survive this? Cotter says he signed up for OnlyFans, JustFor.Fans, and others to do solo content creator work. He declined to share numbers but says what he was making on platforms was enough to cover his living expenses and that he could do so without having scene partners.Fem performers gave me a lot of great advice about boundaries and just standing firm on what you believe and to not feel bad about them, he says. A lot of the time, people just think of you as a sex object that exists on their phone. After a few years, he exited the industry and used his reputation management skills to remove videos and cover his digital tracks. He now focuses his energy on non-adult work and trans activism, including writing a memoir that came out this year. Dylan CotterCourtesy Dylan CotterSOMETHING IM NOT READY FOROthers who like to show off their sexiness on platforms like Instagram and X have no interest in taking the adult content monetization route. HornHulk, a Seattle-based arts professional and adjunct professor, explains that part of his job involves mentoring young adults, and that even if he were to create something paywalled that wasnt overtly sexual, the stigma of having an account on an adult platform would do more harm than good.I dont want that to be findable to my students, he says. Doing full-on porn for other people to watch is something Im not ready for yet and maybe wont ever be.At the time of this writing, OnlyFans is up for sale, with a price tag of up to $8 billion. And while technocracy is a mood right now, one could argue adult creator platforms have enabled a higher degree of safety and control for those who choose to pursue this line of work. The nuance comes in the creators motivation: Some arrive through curiosity, whereas for others it can feel like an act of survival.Thats kind of the vibe our entire economy is giving these days. Wealth gaps are widening, billionaires are vacuuming up all the profits, and it sometimes feels like our bodies and minds are the only assets we get to own anymore (although the right to bodily autonomy is being questioned now too).Ill never knock someone down for hustling up a few bucks as long as theyre not causing harm to others. And we should continue to be critical and educate ourselves on how capitalism has led us to this landscape. In the meantime, if someone wants to monetize their body or mind to improve their financial situation, who are we to judge?This article is part of Out's Sept-Oct issue, which hits newsstands August 26. Support queer media and subscribe or download the issue through Apple News, Zinio, Nook, or PressReader starting August 14.