LOS ANGELES—Forgive Austin Wolf if he seems a little tired. Balancing equally demanding roles as porn star and businessman can get a little stressful.
“I don’t think I have any rhyme or reason to my sleep anymore,” he laughs. “With the launch of a site—and it being successful—it just kind of throws everything off. And your mind races at night about improvements or things you have to do the next day, or things you want to do a month from now. Sometimes I get to sleep and sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I just stay up and fiddle with the computer until I want to pass out.”
That’s because in addition to being one of the most popular and recognizable Falcon Studios Group exclusives, Wolf is also the brainchild of 4my.Fans, which launched last spring.
“The fan page movement is obviously here to stay, and as grateful as I am for OnlyFans, the site wasn’t developed for what it’s being used for. This site is. Optimized to make the user experience seamless, easy and exciting, while also connecting models in a way no one thought possible. This will end up creating more and better content for all the fans.”
Which isn’t to say Wolf begrudges OnlyFans’ success. In fact, he thinks it’s a great idea and sees both sites giving models a portfolio to help grow their fanbase.
“I’m very adamant about telling my models, if they already have an OnlyFans account, to keep it. I think there are a lot of people that are very happy with that platform, and I have no interest in telling them to move. As Austin Wolf, I still have my OnlyFans platform. I still advertise my OnlyFans platform. That’s a website that’s really good to me, and I have no interest in trying to turn everyone away,” he says.
“I would just be leery of new websites that are coming out that say they’re this or say they’re that when they’re really not—and of course (models) are always in the percentage trap too, where these other websites charge a lot more money than OnlyFans and 4my.Fans. Some of these videos—and all my videos—can be seen on both of these sites, and I would say that that is probably the case for a lot of these models.”
But Wolf saw room for improvement in the experience the trendsetting platform provided both models and fans.
“It’s almost like a Tumblr, where you just have to scroll through—but these are more like full-length videos, whereas Tumblr was just like short clips. So you could watch a little bit and skip through. But with this, it was much harder to get around and function,” Wolf says. “And then of course they started having problems with their servers and things started getting slow, and complaints started coming in.”
So over a year ago, he started looking for web developers to help his own vision come to life. “I thought that the platform could be completely changed to fit what users are normally used to when they look at porn.”
And before Wolf knew it, the new site evolved into something much bigger than he ever imagined. But like any labor of love, it took nine months to find life.
“My developers ended up being amazing. It took longer than I wanted, of course—nine months is a long time to wait for something like this to come out. And then of course some competitor sites came out that were kind of slapped together; they were more like OnlyFans replacements that I just no interest in joining. You already have one site like that, I don’t want two. But I love the idea of giving all the guys another option.”
And Wolf notes how critical that is in this day and age when technology and content delivery models are advancing faster than most can keep up with. Sites like 4my.Fans and OnlyFans, he notes, have provided a newfound level of excitement all around.
“I’ve been in adult film for close to seven years now, and we’ve always been forced into the job that we have to do. If you do adult films and you work for a studio, maybe you only make a thousand dollars, or let’s say you get $2,000 on a really good day. But that only happens once a month for most of us. With the way I did things, I was an exclusive—I had a new scene officially once a month. That’s not enough money. So then you’re forced into escorting—and I don’t want to say ‘forced’ like somebody made us do this, no; I mean that it was just part of the gig. You used your popularity you got from studios, and you escorted. This kind of liberates that. It has given people real options to make real money and to possibly, you know God forbid, retire one day.”
Wolf explained to his developers exactly what he wanted: Instead of it being one overall site, the concept was a bunch of small profiles within one site.
“That’s the idea behind it. I had to get these guys to understand that these models would be creating their own websites essentially within my website, and then people would subscribe accordingly. It took a while to get that concept across, because this is all new, this whole way of thinking. It wasn’t something that they were used to doing; they’re used to doing overall sites where everybody posts videos, and then you charge a monthly subscription for the whole thing.”
The ideas grew from there.
“I wanted people to be more engaged in the videos, so whenever they clicked on one, there’s something called ‘related videos’ underneath. We’ve all experienced that sort of Pornhub black hole: You get on and you want to look at porn, and you click on one and they’re like, ‘Oh, look at those videos below!’ Then you click on one of those, and it’s, ‘Oh wait, look at those videos below!’ And you click on another,” Wolf laughs. “My website does that, and it does it per model, so it’s not for an overall website. For instance, I as Austin Wolf have nearly 1,000 videos on my page, and when you click on one of them, anything that relates to that video is listed underneath.”
Wolf also touts 4my.Fans’ tagging and search function, noting how when people go on Pornhub, Xtube or similar sites, the videos are often tagged and categorized. When models upload videos to 4my.Fans, they have that option—something he notes is vital as the site grows.
“A model who has close to 200 videos now will have 400 videos a year from now. As a user, how are you going to find what you want from your favorite model on any of these other sites? And the answer is, you can’t. This is the only website that you can. This is the only place you can come to and search and find exactly what you want for a low monthly subscription price.”
Wolf says he’s also not charging performers anything other than what basically covers the overhead.
“It’s 20 percent commission on my part, and the credit card company takes almost 15 of that, so this isn’t a huge money maker for me. This started off being built just for myself, and then evolved into helping out my peers. So what I’m hoping for the future is that people see how great it is and that they get on the bandwagon of working for themselves and not being stuck having to do something they don’t necessarily want to.”
Wolf says the performers he brought on board were quickly doing well, like Ryan Rose (who he notes never had an OnlyFans presence), Armond Rizzo, Alam Wernik, Devin Franco, Josh Moore, Brian Bonds and recent addition Boomer Banks—another big get who also never had an OnlyFans profile (and was expected to be up and running at press time). “He’s decided to jump on the bandwagon as well. The list just keeps growing. Every day I seem to add a couple of new extras here and there.”
That list also includes Diego Grant (aka Fulltimepapi), who has never done studio porn. Wolf says the performer is doing extremely well on both 4my.Fans and OnlyFans.
“I wanted to have something different for my fans as well. Austin came up with this great idea, and before joining, I analyzed it and saw the differences…and there were no bad things. The models get a big percentage, it has a faster data port, it’s organized. It has more features like OnlyFans, but it’s more personal. I think the feedback I’m getting from my fans is that they like that; it’s more fun. We can have more interactions, we can talk more with each other. OnlyFans is more about what you post, and that’s about it,” Grant says.
“We’re hoping that it’s going to be as big as OnlyFans, even more, by next year. Friends have already asked me a lot about it. When you join as a model, you want a website that will provide even more money. This one, compared to other ones that are out there, is the one that is going to give you more money…some models feel that some websites are taking their money. It’s one of the reasons why I’m doing it, because I can see my income growing faster.”
Just weeks into the launch, Wolf noted he already had 706 subscribers alone—and the site had more than 4,000 users. As of late 2018, 4my.Fans was home to 250 models and more than 3,000 uploaded videos, and had more than 22,000 members. “That was way more than I ever anticipated. I honestly have no idea where I’ll be at in a year from now. I can’t even fathom it.”
The success has not only stolen Wolf’s sleep, but also forced him to grow his skill set behind the camera. It’s a challenge he has embraced.
“I don’t have a computer coding background by any stretch of the imagination. So I think the biggest learning curve was taking to developers, and how to explain myself. You have to be very visual, keep things very simple, and also one step at a time—don’t give too much information all at once.”
It all moved slower than he was used to, but Wolf learned the importance of patience. Then again, he’s long been a student of business.
“I’ve been in sales all my life, even before this. My father is still to this day an entrepreneur and has owned anywhere up to 12 companies at once, and I learned from him as far as how to run a company, how to treat employees and even how to hire them, for that matter. So that part is like a duck to water. I was real excited about that. But as far as building something out in a computer area, this definitely took a lot of learning on my part. But I did it the right way. I didn’t slap something together fast and just throw it up on the internet. I took my time, and this ended up being the result—and I couldn’t say I’m more proud of anything I’ve ever done in my life.”
And with the popularity of the platform, it’s safe to say that he isn’t going anywhere else soon.
“I had my reservations about how things would go. Sometimes things come about in life and it’s like a struck match: You strike it and then that flame lasts for a little while, and then poof, it’s gone. I think the fan page fad is going to be around to stay for quite some time.”
In addition to his now 2,500-plus subscribers on 4my.Fans, Wolf has more than 4,000 on OnlyFans.
“People like it because, first off, it’s very affordable, and it’s also giving a look into our lives. This isn’t me in structured sex, this is me having a good time and just pressing the ‘record’ button before I do. This is something that people are really interested in; they feel like they’re almost able to be a part of it.”
Wolf notes it also removes many of the challenges that “standard” porn presents for many performers.
“Race is a really big one. I don’t have to work with all white models, you know what I mean? I’m allowed to have sex with cute little Asian guys, cute little black guys and cute little Latin guys. I don’t have to be controlled by who’s going to be my scene partner, and I think that that really throws everything for a loop because you’re showing people things they’ve never seen before.”
And that evolution in the industry is vital, Wolf says.
“Just like with anything in life, as things pass on, things evolve. And if you don’t evolve with it, you get left behind. So what I say to everyone that reads this is, don’t get left behind. Evolve with it. If you’re a studio, evolve. If you’re an agent, you need to evolve. If you’re a model, you need to evolve in one direction or another, because this is a very large part of our world now in the adult community, and it’s not going anywhere.”
It's a lesson Wolf knows all too well. He says he had plenty of doubters when he initially joined OnlyFans.
“No one knew what OnlyFans was until I started making a profile. This was something that I started—I’m kind of proud of that; I’ve never really started a trend before. When I first started OnlyFans, people laughed at me. I got made fun of on Twitter, I remember people thinking I was a little silly—until the numbers started growing and they started doing the math.”
And as 4my.Fans continues to grow—Wolf notes that new functions and changes to the site’s appearance are coming in the next few months—fans will be pleased to know that it’s pushing his retirement further and further into the future.
“I’m not stupid—I know I’m the anchor with the site. So I plan on doing videos for a while, because I want people to see how great this site is and can be. There are a lot of things that aren’t on the site that I’m still developing. I have the basic functions of it working, and if I left it just as it was, none of these other sites could adjust to it if their lives depended on it. But I’m not going to stop here. I have a lot more coming.”
