Behind OnlyFans: Filipino workers edit, sell sex content for foreign models

First of two parts

One hot summer day in 2023, Anna* was looking for an online job that could give her some extra cash to spend for her last two years of college. Just a few months later, she found herself editing one-minute porn reels and photoshopping the genitalia of female models in between classes.

It was an unexpected, but not totally unwelcome, development for her. When she was first hired as a virtual assistant, she would edit graphics, photos, and food reels — tasks that were par for the course for the PR and marketing agency she initially applied for.

“And then my boss was like, ‘I have another [job] for you, but I don’t know if it’s within your comfort [zone],” Anna narrated to Rappler.

If she took the job, her pay of around P300 to P400 per photo or video would then rise to between P500 to P3,000. The catch? Those edits would be for OnlyFans, an adults-only platform where creators post explicit videos and interact with paying subscribers.

It came as a shock to her at first. But for a college student just looking for cash, the choice was simple. 

“As long as it’s good pay, why not, right?” Anna told her boss.

Her tasks started out relatively tame. She was asked to stitch together suggestive skits mentioning different kinks and dirty jokes. She also “beautified” photos of scantily clad models by removing any unwanted hair, hyperpigmentation, or imperfections in their body dimensions.

But as months passed, her assignments became more and more lewd. Photos and videos she edited began showing her clients completely naked. Her photoshopping started to extend to their private parts, where she erased pubic hair and blemishes. The suggestive skits turned into full-on porn reels where her clients either masturbated or “went all the way” with a male co-star — or several male co-stars.

At one point, Anna was editing photos and videos for as many as nine different models. But her efforts quite literally paid off, as her monthly earnings averaged from P45,000 to P50,000 per month. According to her, all this income was tax-free, save for some transfer fees because her company was based in Europe.

Anna is only one part of a larger, surprisingly lucrative production cycle — one that uses offshore Filipino labor to create, perfect, and sell explicit content online on behalf of foreign OnlyFans models. This cycle is facilitated by a third-party OnlyFans management agency that helps creators on the platform produce content and manage their account in exchange for a cut of their earnings. 

Anna recalls her company managing about 20 models, with each one having a team of at least 18 people from different departments — scriptwriters, production, finance, and human resources — handling all the tasks needed to produce the models’ content and then selling them to paying clients.

Selling sex through impersonation

This is where Kara, a 26-year-old so-called “chatter,” comes in. Her team, usually composed of five people, serves as customer service in this operation. In her agency — which is locally based and which also manages around 20 models — one team of chatters is assigned to one model each.

What do these chatters do? They pretend to be the models through chat, making sure that their subscribers are engaged enough to keep coming back for more — or better yet, are convinced to buy their exclusive content.

Kara took the job early in 2025. Back then, she was a graduate of information technology with a full-time job as a virtual assistant, but she still needed to jump from one online side gig to another to sustain her lifestyle.

“I just needed the money,” she told Rappler.

When she found an ambiguous posting on an online job board that didn’t require prior work experience, she decided that it was worth trying out. After all, she was not in a situation to pass up on a job opportunity.

She found out that the job was to be an OnlyFans chatter only when a confirmation email was sent back to her.

The hourly rate was $2, or a little over P100, but she was told that she could get a 5% commission rate for each piece of exclusive content she successfully sold. According to her, some videos could cost as much as $750, or over P44,000, to unlock the platform’s paywall. For that amount, she could receive her 5% commission of over P2,200 per content sold. 

At first, this sounded like a good deal. But she soon realized that sexually entertaining an endless stream of strangers while posing as someone else was more demanding than she expected.

Chatting work starts by building rapport with the client. It progresses to slowly teasing with different types of content, starting from the suggestive and then building up to the more lewd — and more expensive — pieces. 

To keep the conversation flowing, Kara said that the chatters are provided with templated messages that they must follow, depending on the client’s demands. But the task still proved daunting for her.

“I’m just not used to selling sex stuff,” Kara admitted. Her teammates, also Filipinos, were making content sales that she wasn’t. After just a few weeks, the pressure made Kara decide to walk away from the job to find something with better pay and something more suitable for her.

Well-oiled machine hidden in plain sight

The agencies offering these jobs may seem highly elusive, but they’re actually common knowledge to anyone immersed in the world of OnlyFans — especially in Western countries. Reports from media outlets based there match the details Anna and Kara shared with Rappler.

A Reuters investigation examined more than 160 agencies managing some of OnlyFans’ most profitable creators. Apparently, they started popping up during the coronavirus pandemic, where lockdowns pushed lonely men into further isolation and workers into side hustles that could help them through economic strain.

Some of these agencies were said to charge a flat fee, while others took a commission of 20% to 80% of a model’s total earnings. The scheme is similar to the ones Anna and Kara described in their own agencies, as well as the agencies reported on by the New York Times and Business Insider. 

A manager for one top agency covered by Business Insider also had an experience similar to that of Anna and Kara. She applied for the job believing it was for a marketing agency but ended up taking on chatter duties in exchange for a 2% commission, although she had a higher monthly pay of more than $1,000 or almost P60,000.

But beyond insider testimonies and lawsuits, it’s difficult to get a read on how extensive this underground industry is due to a scarcity of solid, publicly available data. A quick Google search for an “OnlyFans management agency” will turn up about 40,000 hits, with only a few of them offering any reliable or objective information. Most of the hits are agencies’ websites that promise to exponentially grow models’ accounts and revenue through a team of so-called “experts.” Others are vague sponsored blog articles listing the tips, tricks, and benefits to starting and joining an OnlyFans agency.

To power this long list of services and keep the profit margins of agencies high, it makes sense to maintain an assembly line of cheap, remote workers at each and every step. This is where the Filipino workforce — no stranger to providing offshore labor for lower prices — comes in.

Enticing the Filipino worker

Anna and Kara found their jobs through onlinejobs.ph, an online job platform widely used by Filipino freelancers, even though the postings aren’t what was vaguely advertised on the website. 

According to an ongoing US lawsuit filed by clients complaining about the foolery of this industry, the Philippines is a hiring hot spot for these agencies for the “relatively well-educated, English-speaking workers.” They also cited in the complaint Filipino chatters who are paid a tiny fraction of what those skills would pay in the US.

LinkedIn data revealed that one of the defendants, Verge Agency, a talent agency located in Los Angeles, has most of its staff based in the Philippines. 

If one goes job hunting on Facebook and Reddit, these OnlyFans-related job postings are quite the hot thing — and the job descriptions are explicitly stated. Most of the posts from these social media platforms also came from Filipino accounts asking about the work, as well as those giving advice on how to succeed in it.

Judging by how many users interact with each of their job postings, these jobs are apparently in demand. One Facebook group called “OnlyFans VA’s & Chatters from Philippines” even has as many as 61,000 members. 

Some users post testimonials there, boasting about monthly salaries of P50,000 or more and narrating details that match up with what Anna and Kara told Rappler. Others sell scripts and online courses to help struggling chatters like Kara make a sale.

According to sociologist Ash Presto, who has co-written a policy paper on the state of freelancing in the country with lawyer Ross Tugade in 2023, “There’s a lot of interest from different people to work in the industry. There’s also a lot of talk about [OnlyFans gigs], and job postings are very publicly posted.”

For those who are trying to make ends meet, the discomfort with sexual content may feel like a small price to pay in exchange for a good salary and flexible working conditions. Plus, there are testimonies online where people found success in this kind of work.

“There are people who say that they actually enjoy the money; they enjoy the job, especially for women who are very open to doing sex-adjacent work. And I’ve also seen a comment on Reddit that said, ‘This person does sexting on a regular basis, so now at least she gets paid for it,’” Presto told Rappler.

IBON Foundation’s analysis in June 2025 of the labor force figures found that the country’s economy is “chronically failing” to absorb a growing workforce, leaving more Filipinos with fewer options in a “deteriorating jobs market.”

But in an industry that’s now coming out of the shadows, anything can happen. Who protects employees like Anna and Kara, when their value as workers is measured by how well their games of pretend can fool their paying audience? (To be concluded) – with reports from Princess Leah Sagaad/Rappler.com

Anna and Kara’s names have been changed at their request. Quotes have been translated to English for brevity. Conversion rate as of January 26, 2026 is $1 = P59.043.

NEXT: Part 2 | No protection: Shady OnlyFans agencies put Filipino workers at risk