How this Patreon and OnlyFans rival is trying to live up to its creator-first ethos

After years of attracting an online following through her intricate anime cosplay, Manny Moon was ready to start making money from her work as a full-time content creator in early 2022. That’s when she began using Fanhouse, a social platform that enables creators to provide exclusive content to their loyal fans through a paid subscription.  

Manny set up a Fanhouse account after another creator shared their positive experience with the platform. In addition to needing a reliable source of income to support herself, Manny said she was drawn by the app’s variety of features.

“There’s different ways to make different types of income through it, like promos, through subs, and it really [helps build a closeness] with my audience,” said Manny, who goes by @mannymoon on the platform, where she posts exclusive photo sets from her cosplay and updates from her daily life. In the year since joining Fanhouse, she has built an audience that enables her to make a few hundred dollars every month through the platform—enough to cover some basic needs as she builds out ways to monetize her content. 

Launched in November 2020, Fanhouse separates creators’ posts between a public fanwall and a private feed that only subscribers, who pay anywhere from $1.99 to $25, can see. The public wall functions like a teaser to show what kind of content fans get access to with a monthly subscription, from exclusive photos to special videos made by creators. 

The creator economy has only grown since the pandemic—globally, more than 50 million people consider themselves content creators. As more people look toward the internet to earn a living, platforms like Fanhouse have been thrust into an outsized role in creators’ lives as a source of income and a way to build an authentic connection with their audience.

“The platform is extremely safe and user-friendly,” said Caitlin, an ASMR content creator on Fanhouse who goes by @misscaitlin. Caitlin has been making ASMR videos for nearly a decade and posts her content on other platforms like YouTube and Patreon. 

“I was sort of expecting it to be a secondary fun little place to put my content,” Caitlin says. “But now it’s becoming almost the best place to support me monetarily.” She earns between $1,500 to $2,000 monthly through the platform, which she says is now her second-biggest source of income behind Patreon. 

Fanhouse has grown impressively since its launch nearly three years ago. In May 2021, the company announced $1.3 million in a pre-seed funding round including an investment from Mantis VC—the venture fund of EDM music duo The Chainsmokers, who joined Fanhouse as creators in April 2022. The company also raised $20 million from Andreessen Horowitz last May. 

While the interest from investors is notable, Fanhouse’s biggest draw for content creators is arguably its promise of putting content creators first. With tools that include watermarks on uploaded photos and videos, security is a selling point the company highlights on its website and with cheeky tweets. Beyond offering creators a low commission fee—Fanhouse takes 10% of creators’ earnings compared to the 20% cut by OnlyFans and the 50% cut by Twitch—the platform allows creators to access their earnings through weekly payouts, a big difference from the monthly payout schedule used by Patreon and Onlyfans. So far Fanhouse has paid its creators more than $13 million.

As it has grown, the company has also been rolling out new features, including tip goals, which encourage fans to tip by setting a community goal to unlock, and custom requests lists, which lets subscribers request made-to-order content from a menu of customizations. Fanhouse has also recently launched a “password wall” option that can be gifted as a reward to loyal fans from other platforms, as well as a feature to make sharing posts to Twitter easy, among other additions.

“I think we built a lot of Fanhouse around the first creator, which was me,” says Rosie Nguyen, Fanhouse’s cofounder and a creator on the platform. “And kind of like, my needs and trying to solve the problems and goals that I had [as a creator].” 

One of the features built into Fanhouse is its ability to be used on the go. Drakoniques, a tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG) performer who goes by the same username on Fanhouse, has tried several different platforms that creators use to monetize their content, like Patreon, Twitch, and the tipping site Ko-fi. Fanhouse’s availability as an app—and its ability to be used anywhere from a phone—was a big draw for him. 

“It feels really similar to something I can easily do like Twitter or Tumblr or Instagram,” says Drak, who uses Fanhouse to supplement his income from TTRPG work, which involves writing and producing narrative storylines for various tabletop games performed online. “I can be on the go and think ‘oh this’ll be an interesting post’ or ‘this could be an interesting picture’ and take it and post it,” he says. “It made it a lot easier to create content I thought was worth people subscribing to me for.”

 

While the platform’s app makes things easier for creators, behind-the-scenes it has caused issues. Notably, in 2021, Fanhouse had a public dispute with Apple over its 30% tax on in-app purchases, a policy that Fanhouse said would affect creators’ earnings. In order to shield creators’ earnings from that tax while still complying with Apple’s in-app purchase policy, Fanhouse ultimately implemented a coins system for transactions—encouraging users to buy coins on its website, which isn’t subject to the 30% tax, to be spent in the app (coins bought in the app are priced higher to cover Apple’s rate and ensure a 90% creator payout). Staying in the Apple store was important, Nguyen says, because having the platform as an app rather than just a website was more beneficial for creators. 

Apple isn’t the only third party whose rules Fanhouse—and its creators—are subject to. Fanhouse uses Stripe to process all payments that go through the platform which means it must abide by Stripe’s policy on graphic sexual content. Nguyen pointed to Fanhouse’s content guidelines, saying the platform is unable to support not safe for work (NSFW) content containing nudity because of Stripe’s policy. Yet users find Fanhouse’s guidelines convoluted enough that they are still confused about what is acceptable to post. Caitlin, the ASMR creator, said she never had issues with her content being taken down but has had subscribers looking for NSFW content despite Fanhouse’s no-nudity policy. The rules on what is okay to post or not are still unclear, Manny, the cosplayer, says.

“As a content creator and just as a Black woman, I love to show different parts of me, especially when cosplaying,” said Manny. “I don’t know what type of range that they do for blocking out NSFW content or nudity but I get nervous with that because I don’t want to get flagged or my stuff taken down just because I’m posting a really cute, sexy maid outfit but I’m not completely showing everything.”

Some creators on Fanhouse use it alongside OnlyFans to generate income, earning Fanhouse the moniker “PG-13 OnlyFans.” That direct competition makes it crucial for Fanhouse to deliver its promise to protect creators’ sensitive content from leaks, something that Nguyen has emphasized as its unique selling point. By the company’s own estimates, since March 2022, it has performed 112 confirmed takedowns of leaked content on third-party sites and deactivated over 302 Fanhouse accounts responsible for leaks. Nguyen noted Fanhouse routinely combs through Reddit threads and Discord groups to identify unreported leaks as well.

But not everyone is satisfied with Fanhouse’s handling of paid-for content leaks. Shaghana Doyle, a model and content creator who has used Fanhouse since late 2021, reported multiple leaks of exclusive content she says were carried out by her stalker. 

Doyle’s exclusive content was posted on three separate sites. Although Fanhouse managed to get her leaked images taken down from one of the sites and suspended the responsible account, and Doyle herself got them removed from a second site, Fanhouse was unable to have Doyle’s images taken down from the third, telling Doyle that it was unable to submit a DMCA takedown request because the offending site had no public contact info. The remaining images left Doyle fearing that more of her sensitive content could be leaked off of Fanhouse.

“It’s the fact that [resolving leaks is] something that they harp on as their number one best thing that they have. Like, okay, not really,” says Doyle, who made upwards of $2,000 per month through her Fanhouse page. While she admitted that she enjoyed a lot of Fanhouse’s features, including the easy use of its messaging feature to connect with subscribers, Doyle has since moved to using OnlyFans.

Nguyen admits the platform is unable to resolve every leak that is reported, but stands by Fanhouse’s efforts to assist its creators. “None of those [other] platforms have watermarks, none of those platforms will send out DMCA takedowns on behalf of content creators,” she says. “I was a creator on those platforms and when I had leaks it was just like . . . you deal with it on your own.”

As she looks to grow its roster of users, Nguyen says the goal remains considering their interests first.

“I do believe that offering something to creators to help them is always better than offering nothing, even if that something isn’t perfect,” she says.