Stella Barey Makes More Money From OnlyFans Than A Surgeon

How a Quarantine Experiment Turned into a Full-Blown Career

I sat down in my cozy, humble Los Angeles home mentally preparing for the first interview I had ever done with an OnlyFans girl. I tried to look as professional and cool as possible, and tried to get into the best mental headspace one can before asking a complete stranger about their asshole. What is she going to think of me? How much of her TikTok persona is real? And, perhaps most pressing. . .Which one of us makes more money? Afterall, she seems to be about my age, doesn’t particularly have a massive platform on Instagram, and only started her OnlyFans career at the beginning of quarantine. How much can it really be?

I came across Stella the way she later told me most of her fans find her — TikTok. At first, I was probably annoyed at her little body and innocent face. She was beautiful beyond words, so naturally I scrolled quickly through her page, unconsciously trying hard to not be impressed. My silent war quickly ended as I laughed hysterically out loud at the five-second clips that soon became the joy to my whole day. They were riddled with hilarious stories of her ex, paying for men, OnlyFans, and well, butt sex. They instantly made me want to be her friend, no matter how little I was going to be able to relate to her. After our interview, I was no longer solely impressed by her butthole and her ability to describe it — I was overwhelmingly humbled by her brilliance, her mindset, and her business.

First off, how did you get into this? Give me the when, why and how of your OnlyFans career

“So I was doing pre-med at UCLA, a post grad program. I was right at the end of it — I had two classes left. And then COVID hit. They were really hard classes, that were just really boring. . . just the worst ones. When I started my TikTok, I was in my final organic chemistry lab, and it was all over Zoom. Lab is only fun when you get to go in and work with your hands.”

I smiled to myself warily, feeling unsure of how she had just made organic chemistry sound sexual to me, and something I suddenly wanted to participate in.

“I was getting so bored, like truly so bored. Before this, my whole life was school — constantly going to the library and class. So, I downloaded TikTok. I posted my first video and I didn’t think anyone would see it. I was just cracking myself up — and I posted something about how I lost my anal virginity in a car on a first date. And then that blew up.

I started getting a lot of followers from it, and I wasn’t even posting any other sex stuff, just random videos. And then I learned about OnlyFans through guys asking if I had one in the comments. I looked into it, and I just thought to myself. . . I should start one and just do it for a month or something, and post cute bikini pics, and get some money.”

Right as I was going to ask her,

Did you need the money — did you start it out of desperation or curiosity?

She said. . .

“And I didn’t need the money. I’ve been lucky enough that my parents have supported me through school. My mom’s a doctor, but COVID was hard on her, and I always felt bad relying on her money. So I thought, this will be great, I’ll get a little extra money this month. And that went great. I think I made like five hundred bucks when I started at the tail end of a month. And I was just posting bikini pictures. I still thought I wanted to go to med school, and then I just didn’t want to delete it every month. By the end of July, I was posting pictures of my boobs but with my nipples covered. ”

Do you feel like your OnlyFans career was built from TikTok, or do you think you would have done okay as just a ‘random’ girl starting one?

“TikTok was — and still is — the heart of how I get subscribers. It’s 100% the key. It actually scares me to think about if I didn’t have a TikTok. I would have to do so much work in order to match that level of subscribers.

It just started blowing up and I started treating it more like a business where I saw what worked, and did more of that. I started focusing most of my content on sex, then I started focusing a lot of it on anal. Luckily, I have stories for days about it because back then I was having it every day with my ex. I just started sharing my stories, and every time a video blew up [on TikTok], I’d get like a thousand more subscribers [on OnlyFans], which is a lot, so it skyrocketed really fast.”

Stella and I began to talk about the strict censorship of TikTok and Instagram, and she told me both of her accounts were deleted. Recently, she had to restart her social platforms from scratch.

“The TikTok thing has always scared me. I’ve gotten banned three times. That’s why I started to invest in Instagram ads.”

Her use of the word “invest” struck a chord in me, and before I had time to be impressed by it, she continued on with even more business terms. Suddenly, her sentences became stuffed with words like “write-offs, expenses, income, strategy, trends.” I became so rapidly taken aback by her that I felt I already knew she was making way more than me, or anyone in my life for that matter (and I have some rich ass friends). Reluctant or not, I decided I had to ask her anyway. . .

What was your financial situation before OnlyFans, and what is it now?

“Well I mean before, I didn’t necessarily need to change it. But now, I’m fully supporting myself completely from it. It boomed so fast. It really is my full-time job. ”

Within six months of starting an OnlyFans, Stella was making more than her mom — a California-based surgeon with her own practice.

“In the beginning I didn’t have any expenses, so I put it all into savings. Now, I just pay rent, and like, food, which is not that much. The max amount I’ll spend in a month is $5,000. I don’t have any work expenses. I just take selfies on my phone. All of it is just going to savings. I now have [more than] enough to cover myself for at least a year, so if my subscribers drop, I have time. The craziest part is that I don’t have that big of a following [on social media].”

How do you feel about girls on OnlyFans who only do what you were doing before — non-nudity, just raunchier modeling? Do you feel it takes away from ‘sex-workers’?

“You mean girls who just post as a side-hustle? I don’t care at all. To each their own. The content is best if you’re happy, and not doing it just because people are asking you to. Also, there’s a niche for everything — different people like different things, and that’s what OnlyFans is for. It’s just monetizing your super fans.

There’s guys saying to me like ‘hey, don’t post butt stuff,’ and then there’s guys saying ‘I only like butt stuff.” There’s guys that say ‘I hate when you post videos with other guys in them’ and then some say ‘I only like videos when you have other guys in them.’ Some people only like tasteful nudes, some even without full nudity. Those girls need to do that for the people that are looking for it. At it’s core, OnlyFans is just a subscription-based service, and I don’t think it necessarily needs to be just for sex work. And I don’t even know if I am a sex worker, I mean it’s fine if I am, but I don’t know if I qualify to speak on behalf of those who have had certain experiences. I don’t feel right saying it.”

How do you feel about celebrities like Bella Thorne making an OnlyFans?

“I never cared. She’s got her fanbase, she’s gonna do what she wants with her fanbase. It’s just a medium. I think if anything, it brings awareness to the fact that the platform exists. More men, or women, are going to be opening accounts. I saw people were mad that she did it, and taking advantage of the platform, and that it messed it up for a lot of us, like not getting the money at the same time or something. But I didn’t notice any changes they supposedly made. I don’t know if that was real or if it only happened to some people.”

How did you get so into anal?

Stella and I giggled like little girls speaking secrets of the universe. I felt that, in our Zoom-incubated-universe, we were exchanging classified information worth millions of ransom upon release of an important official. Our giggles proved the taboo-ness, but no shame was detected across the galaxy of our blue-lit screens. We pulled ourselves together, and shape-shifted back into our fraudly-professional interview.

“I lost my virginity at thirteen. I’ve always been sexually curious. I always had really good experiences with it too, I always did it with boyfriends, or people I was in love with. I was always explorative — I used toys and had gone to a few sex parties. But that was about the extent of it. . . I had never had anal.

I started volunteering at a homeless shelter while I was going to school, and I met a guy there that I just had intense chemistry with. He became my boyfriend, who’s now my ex-boyfriend, but we dated for like a year. The first night we hung out, I met him after work at like midnight. We ended up hooking up in his car and I was on my period. He just slid in me, and I was probably the horniest I’d ever been. He just slid in my butt, in the perfect position to start too, like I was laying on my stomach flat, really relaxed. That’s the famed story that got me all of my TikTok followers.

It was so amazing, and intimate, and intense, and enjoyable. I never thought it would be like that. We started dating and we had it probably almost every day.”

Did you start your OnlyFans while you were with your ex?

“Yeah. And he was totally for it. He was always kind of anarchist. He was there when I was doing so many new things, when I was changing my whole life philosophy. So supportive of me. Aaaand, the reason I have all of these anal stories is from him. He changed my brain to make me be able to do this. I knew the business aspect, always, through someone I dated before him who was a producer. . . who did so much with social media. I knew the formula, and I wanted him to use it, but he didn’t. So I used it.”

What advice would you give to someone to be more comfortable talking about their ex — either to their partner or in a public way that doesn’t harm them?

“I’ve had a few very serious relationships, and I’ve stayed friends with all of them. One of my exes, who I dated for four years, I still FaceTime with once a week. And those are just the kinds of relationships I have. I always have amicable breakups. I don’t know if I have much advice, honestly. I don’t know what I’m going to do for my next relationship, and I hope it doesn’t happen soon because I am so heartbroken from my last. I do talk about my ex a lot, because he’s still present in my life.

I’ve tried to help him so much, but I’ve realized recently I’m the only one who can tell these stories. I wish it could be him, honestly. I want to be behind the scenes. But it just works better when you have a cute face to tell them. I paid for him for a lot of stuff, but I didn’t care because he enriched my life so much. He gave me the most amazing sexual experiences — and it’s not just about good sex, it was a whole life philosophy. The amount of spontaneous things we did, or weird stuff, sex parties that we went to. . .

He was so crazy, and made the craziest decisions, but he enriched my life completely. So anything was worth it to me to keep him in my life.

I don’t necessarily think it’s great to talk about your exes always. A lot of my friends told me not to, but I noticed a lot of my content does really well when it’s talking about me with another man. And those are my best stories. A lot of girls told me to act single or to not mention men, but that turned out not to be true. I did very well when I made content with him. My fans loved him, they still do.”

In so many ways, you have let go of fear in areas where I think people have so much of. You are so free, and you’ve somehow become some sort of hero of mine. Whether it’s fear around anal, money, putting yourself out there, conversations about exes — what would you tell people who are afraid?

“I feel fear all the time. When I first started sharing, especially. I went through a period where I was like: Am I actually insane? Am I imploding my whole life!? But then I just started to realize how much we create our own reality. If it feels okay to me, and I’m not hurting other people, and I’ve spent hours assessing what is really bad about this, then I’m going to do it. Then, I attract all of these people who think like I do. And maybe they can’t share it, but want to. That’s how I got through the fear of posting all of this personal stuff.

I’ve always thought vulnerability was super important. It’s scary, but when you are, people are very attracted to you.”

Stella explained her fear of losing fans and followers, and how much appreciation she has grown for people in social media. Every day that she was earning more, the fear grew. We laughed at the silly irony of sticking a dildo up your butt on camera one minute, and then thinking to yourself the next something so arbitrary and little as: what if no one cares about me?

“When you’re doing better, you would think you would be less anxious or more happy, but it’s absolutely not true. With every higher high, comes a lower low. But you just have to keep going. I’ve really made a point to not compare myself to other people. I just take it day by day and make stuff that I think is fun, and just let the business aspect guide me. When you don’t think about all the other stuff, and you just put in the work every day, it does just continue to go up.

I’ve had multiple times where my viewership and income has peaked so high and then went really low. The first time it did that, it was terrifying. Because of school, I know that if you fail one test, you keep going. You do not cry about it. You just move to the next. That’s how I get through it. Cause either way, I’m making way more than I ever did, or need to.

And I don’t know why it’s so hard to talk about buttholes, but I figured since I can, I should be the one to talk about it, because I know a lot of people can’t.

I was raised by two really intense, type-A people. They always taught me to go in the direction of my fear. I’ve always done that. My dad used to say: ‘What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?’

That’s why I chose medicine. And I can still go to med school if I want to. If they don’t accept me for having nudes on the internet, my friend says that I should just start a social movement,” Stella said in between giggles and shrugs.

“There should be no reason I can get a 4.0 all throughout high school, college, and post-grad, have all of the things needed to be a doctor and then be turned away because I’m too open about things that are very real for people. A lot of people told me I should have waited until after med school to start an OnlyFans. There are a lot of things I should have waited to do, but I just couldn’t. There’s the aspect that I’m a flawed human, as we all are. I’m impulsive, I have a deep interest in sex, and I couldn’t resist it. And I just had to accept that about myself. And it’s made me a lot happier.”

Through the course of an hour, Stella had transformed from someone who I thought made funny anal jokes on TikTok into a successful business woman and a philosophical prophet. By the end of our call, I had learned more about internet trends, taxes, and write-offs than any finance Youtuber or guy-from-my-highschool-who-got-a-job-at-Chase-and-mansplains-how-I-should-report-my-income-from-now-on. She had taught me more about freedom, love, and vulnerability than any self-help book ever had; and more about creating your own reality/manifestation than all six times I watched The Secret.

By the end of our call, I realized that how much she made off of her butthole, no matter how much it is and continues to be, was the least impressive or important thing about her.