The money words, in plain terms
Every term the calculators and guides use, defined in two sentences or less.
✓ Free, no signup ✓ 20% platform fee included ✓ Works for Fansly too
- Platform fee
- The flat 20% OnlyFans and Fansly take from every dollar a fan spends — subscriptions, tips, PPV and customs alike. Creators keep 80%.
- Gross earnings
- Everything fans spent on your page before the platform fee. The number platforms show most prominently, and the wrong one to plan with.
- Net earnings
- Gross minus the 20% platform fee: the money that becomes yours. All calculators on this site report net alongside gross.
- PPV (pay-per-view)
- Content sent as a locked message that a fan pays to open. Typically $5-25 per unlock. The revenue stream most dependent on conversation quality.
- Unlock rate
- The share of recipients who pay to open a PPV message. Ten to thirty percent on a warm list is healthy; far below that usually means the offer arrived cold.
- Custom content
- Content made to a specific fan’s request, priced on effort and exclusivity — commonly from $25-75 upward. Priced below your premium tier it undercuts your own ladder.
- Rebill / retention
- A subscriber whose subscription auto-renews. Retention rate is the share that sticks each month; it is the input that separates an estimate from a real year.
- Churn
- Subscribers lost in a period. The quiet opposite of growth: a page adding 50 subscribers while 60 lapse is shrinking, whatever the welcome messages suggest.
- ARPPU
- Average revenue per paying user: total revenue divided by paying fans. The honest measure of whether engagement, not just headcount, is growing.
- Free page
- A $0-subscription page that monetizes through PPV and tips. Converts a much wider audience but earns nothing passively — it lives on messaging volume.
- Paid page
- A subscription-priced page. Predictable monthly floor, smaller audience, less inbox pressure than a free page.
- Subscription bundle
- Multiple months prepaid at a discount (commonly 20-30% off for 6 months). Trades margin for guaranteed retention.
- Payout
- The transfer of your cleared balance to your bank. What arrives is your 80% minus currency conversion and any incoming-transfer fee your bank charges.
- Holding period
- The window between a fan’s payment and the moment that money becomes withdrawable. It exists for chargeback protection; the exact length is shown in your creator settings.
- Chargeback
- A fan reversing a card payment after the fact. The platform claws the amount back from the creator, which is why paid balances clear on a delay.
- Geo-blocking
- Hiding your page from chosen countries or regions, commonly used to stay invisible where family or an employer might look.
- Whale
- A fan who spends far above the median — often carrying a meaningful share of the month. Recognizing and serving regulars well is most of retention.
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Frequently asked
- Where do these definitions come from?
- From the working vocabulary creators and their tools actually use, stated plainly. Where a number appears it is a typical band, not a measured statistic — the methodology page explains that policy.