Subscribe Star has been around for a couple of years now, but you’ll be forgiven if you only heard about it recently. I don’t say that to talk shit about the website; it’s just that the platform has been overshadowed by similar websites (competitors) like Patreon and OnlyFans. The big OF managed to corner the market for DIY porn subscriptions and sexy webcam starlets, marking one of the most dramatic shifts in the online porn landscape that I’ve ever seen. SubscribeStar gets a few million visitors a month, so they aren’t hurting, but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to what OnlyFans is getting and Patreon is pulling. Is that sheer dumb luck, the will of a blind insane internet, or is one digital content platform truly superior?
One thing that strikes me about SubscribeStar is that their traffic has been pretty damn consistent over the last few months. You might remember the panic OnlyFans caused back in August when they announced they’d soon be banning porn. They quickly walked that statement back, but not before losing a ton of content creators and an even more significant amount of brand loyalty. Some other content platforms saw substantial bumps in traffic, but SubscribeStar didn’t see much of a boost during that period. That tells you it isn’t quite a direct competitor to the big boys. The difference here is mainly in the type of content its smut peddlers are pushing. As a publishing platform for homebrew smut creators, perverted artists, adult game creators, and other deviates, how does it really stack up?
The OnlyFans of Hentai, XXX Art, and Porn Games
The front page of SubscribeStar Adult calls it the “Number one monetization platform for NSFW digital artists.” Maybe they’re chalking up that number-one status based on some metric I hadn’t considered, but they definitely aren’t beating OnlyFans or even Patreon in terms of sheer traffic numbers. On the other hand, if they’re judging themselves based on the quality of their tour page, well, maybe there’s something to that prime rank they’ve given themselves.
As with OnlyFans, creators set their own rates, but it looks like SubscribeStar charges less for the processing fees than OnlyFans. The current service fee is just 7%, compared to the 20% OnlyFans is scraping off the top, though it isn’t quite as low as the 3% Patreon takes. The site might not have the name power of OnlyFans, but the potential for bigger profits will be attractive for creators looking for an NSFW publishing platform. Of course, you could always pass along the savings to customers to develop your base and then jack it up when you’ve built a massive following of eager pervs with their wallets out.
Then again, maybe the rates for processing are different because the content isn’t quite the usual cosplay masturbation videos and ASMR jack-off instructions you’ll find on OnlyFans. Scrolling past the profit calculator, you find a list of some of their top creators. I don’t see a single human model wearing bunny ears, but I see an anthropomorphic mouse cartoon with enormous ears and a shapely ass. In fact, they have a wide range of non-traditional adult content.
Non-traditional can mean a lot of things, so let’s define it a little better. Instead of porno movies they shot in their bedrooms, most of the SubscribeStar.adult creators work in media like adult art, porn cartoons, perverted games, and obscene stories. There are artists creating 3D futanari porn and others doing cutesy hentai with kawaii characters doing absolutely filthy things. You’ll even find a lot of X-rated parody fan art, which some of the other premium platforms won’t touch for copyright reasons.
SubscribeStar strikes me as something like a cross between OnlyFans and Patreon. The content is a lot like the adult stuff you find on Patreon, full of hentai dickgirls, and furry sex games. The rules, however, seem to be looser, which means you’ve got content closer to the whole X-rated sexiness of OnlyFans. Nonetheless, it looks like a winning formula, at least if you’re going by sheer visitor numbers alone.
But What’s Really in the Box of Smut?
One of my perennial complaints about OnlyFans and Patreon is how difficult it is to browse either site. They pretty much expect creators to do all their promotion on other platforms like Instagram, which I think does a disservice both to the content creators and the fans. It’s leaving money on the table because perverts will definitely pay for porn. They just have to be able to find it.
In this respect, SubscribeStar Adult is a bit easier to browse than either OnlyFans or Patreon. It isn’t a fucking complicated thing, but SubscribeStar has a master list of all the creators you can flip through at your heavily erect leisure. I do wish they had an entire index of their tags to check out, but it is helpful that you can click the different tags in the video description to bounce between categories. During my visit, I jumped from their Pregnancy section to their Expansion aisle to the Adult Art area, and then into the Hentai, Beast, Farts, Giantess, Foot Fetish, and Mecha collections, in that order.
SubscribeStar’s content definitely isn’t like the stuff you’ll find on other platforms. Besides having quirky formats like hentai and porn video games, there’s also the fact that none of these media are constrained by the laws of nature or man. (I mean to a reasonable extent. This isn’t an illegal content farm.) That means you’ll find all kinds of crazy fetishes you won’t find elsewhere. You’re welcome to subscribe to some relatively vanilla blowjob comics or get freaky with aliens doing the blowing, or go down the rabbit hole with futanari getting orally fucked by the most horrific space monsters you’d never imagined.
You don’t even have to dig far to find the kinky stuff. SubscribeStar.adult knows what their users are after, and they aren’t afraid to post it right there on the front page of the joint. Within seconds of loading it up, they were directing me to a selection of featured creators with tags as enticing as Adult Games, Erotic, and Story, and ones as freaky as Impregnation and Monster Girls. This may not be the perfect place for those of you looking for homebrew ass-to-mouth scenes with crusty dildos, but it’s going to be like heaven to the weeaboos, neckbeards, porn gamers, nerdy perverts, and waifu pillow owners.
If you do fall into one of those categories or another group I failed to mention, you might be wondering how much typical subscriptions cost on SubscribeStar. As mentioned earlier, the creators set their own rates, and they’re kind of all over the place. You have to figure out that there are different operating costs for different types of media, like creating a whole video game versus drawing some pony erotica, plus the logistics of the worldwide economy. Americans almost always charge more.
That said, I like how SubscribeStar.adult creators can offer tiered memberships. That’s another one of the ways this site is more like Patreon than OnlyFans. I’ve always liked this setup because it lets the cheapskates and broke-ass fans get at least a little something to beat off to even if they can’t afford the whole shebang. So if you blew your masturbatory budget for the month, taking the waifu pillow to the dry cleaner to cleanse her of crusty stains, just roll back to a cheaper tier for a few weeks. There’s weird smut for all budgets here.
I review adult websites every day, and I can almost always find something or other to complain about. Still, SubscribeStar is actually pretty close to perfection, giving NSFW content creators a solid platform to move their video games, hentai, stories, and X-rated art. The site looks good and works well, with fair rates for both the artists and the end-user masturbators like you and me. My only complaint about the place is that they don’t currently have a browsable index of tags, which would enable fans to uncover material they’d never even dreamed about. But, I’d still say SubscribeStar.adult is one of the best adult subscription platforms of its kind. So, sign up and get selling or take a look and see if there’s anything you’d beat off to.