Don’t Wait Until You’re Screwed To Start.
People say it allllll the time, but it’s worth saying it again. What are you going to do if – or WHEN – your IG gets banned? What happens if your OnlyFans gets suspended, or ManyVids gets even more hypocritical with policies? (Yeah, I went there.)
How are you going to stay connected to the customers and fans who already know you, who support you and spend money on you?
If your answer is, “I’ll figure it out another time,” I would strongly suggest making NOW that supposed “time” and figuring it out BEFORE crisis mode hits.
Yes, I am a broken record on this, but I will die by this sword: Email marketing is a massively underused resource in the adult industry. It isn’t sexy. It isn’t trendy. Very few models brag about their newsletter strategy and even fewer actually have one. OK, that was snarky, but point made, right?)
Waxing rhapsodic aside, the point is, email fucking works. (And very few do it! Your emails have little competition in the inbox because of this.)
As every blog post about it says, email gives you a way to maintain contact with fans and clients who have already expressed interest in you without relying entirely on whether Instagram actually shows them your post, whether your account gets shadowbanned, or whether OF continues to allow sex workers.
I don’t want to frame email as nothing more than an emergency backup plan though. That’s way too simplistic and undercredits the value it actually has.
Email marketing can make you money when absolutely nothing is going wrong. It can bring people back to your website, generate bookings and subscriptions, help you launch something new, reactivate an old customer, promote availability, or simply remind someone who already likes you that you still exist.
Email is both infrastructure and an active marketing channel. And while I know we all looooove to procrastinate on this, the best time to start building it is while everything else is working just fine.
(Who remembers when OF said “no more porn” a few years ago? Everyone panicked and every damn Twitter post was about starting a newsletter until they backtracked and suddenly newsletters became less important to all those same OPs. Are you feeling like you’re being called out? Well, you are. Sorrynotsorry.)
Your Followers Aren’t Really Yours
Let’s clear up one of the phrases all the marketing armchair experts with AI written blogs love to throw around: “You own your email list.”
They aren’t wrong, but again, it’s not that simple.
You don’t OWN email as a communication channel. You are still relying on an email service provider, inbox providers like Gmail/Proton/Yahoo etc, the domain, hosting and other technical infrastructure stuff. You still have those laws and policies you gotta follow. And adult businesses – not surprisingly – have a lot of other restrictions to worry about.
The point though is that what you gain is substantially more control over the underlying audience information.
If X deletes your account tomorrow, you cannot download all 50,000 followers and upload them to IG or YT. A permission-based mailing list is different. Your subscriber data can usually be exported and migrated to another appropriate provider (assuming you collected those addresses properly and the new provider permits your business, blah blah blah.)
This is a big difference. Having 50,000 followers on your LoyalFans is completely and fundamentally different from having 5,000 people who have given you EXPLICIT permission to contact them directly. And no, direct does not mean via DM. It means OUTSIDE the insular world of that website.
This is not about achieving some mythical state of complete digital independence. That does not exist. It is about reducing the number of ways one company can completely fuck up your biz overnight.
Social Finds Them. Email Helps You Keep Them.
Email makes a lot more sense when you stop thinking about it as something independent from the rest of your marketing efforts.
Here is a very simple customer journey:
- Someone sees one of your posts on social media
- Visits your website
- Signs up for your mailing list
- Receives a welcome email, and
- A later newsletter encourages them to visit your premium site.
- Eventually, they subscribe.
- You gets da bag.
Social media did its job. It helped that customer discover you. Your website did its job (assuming you have one, which if you don’t, please read the article I did for Wet Ink Magazine: “Why Adult Creators Need Their Own Website Today.”)
The site gave them directions for how to learn more. Your mailing list did its job. It turned a single visit into an ongoing relationship. And your premium platform did its job. It gave them somewhere to spend money. ON YOU.
That is what a marketing ecosystem looks like. It’s called a funnel and you have one.
You do not need email INSTEAD of Instagram. You do not need a website INSTEAD of your premium platforms. You do not need to choose one channel and declare everything else useless.
Don’t think in binary extremes like that. What you should have are different channels doing different jobs, without making your entire livelihood dependent on any single one of them. It’s called working SMAHT.
This Isn’t Your Emergency Backup
Going back to the OF “JK!” anecdote, this platform-risk argument gets people’s attention because sex workers know exactly how unstable social media can be. (There’s a reason why AI Slop articles focus entirely on it.) But if the only reason you build an email list is so you have something to use when Instagram bans you, you are missing some profit making key points here.
There is something psychologically different about an email. Social media is obviously public. You are one account in someone’s doomscrolling feed, you are broadcasting content that everyone else can see, like, comment on, and share. An email lands in someone’s inbox.
Even when hundreds or thousands of other readers received the exact same communication, it can feel much more like one-to-one communication. I’m not saying fans are dumb, they know it’s not a personal message. (Well, actually they…nope, on second thought Carly, don’t go on record with that one. Disregard.)
ADHD tangent aside, the point is, even though they are mass notes, an email in an inbox is particularly good for a personal business to take advantage of as a marketing tool.
You can share what you have been doing, give someone advance notice about a tour or your stream schedule, tell a story about a recent shoot, send an update about your life, introduce something new, or share a link to content you want to promote.
That does not mean performing intimacy or pretending every subscriber is your ATF and sacrificing boundaries, it just means understanding that the context of the inbox is different from the context of a public feed and using that difference intentionally.
Make sense? Good. Moving on.
PLEASE Don’t Sell in Every. Damn. Email.
Email has historically produced strong returns compared with many other marketing channels.
As proof consider the numbers. Litmus’ 2025 research of nearly 500 marketing professionals found that 35% of companies reported earning between $10 and $36 for every $1 spent on email, with newsletters, promotional emails and customer engagement emails among the formats associated with the strongest returns.
Those are industry-wide figures, not a promise about what your particular list will generate, so don’t @ me if your experience is diff. What matters more is understanding how email contributes to a sale.
Marketing rarely works like this:
- SW sends email
- Customer clicks
- Customer immediately spends $500
- Therefore email made $500
Sometimes it does. Good for you if so.
However, YOU’RE not dumb, so I’ll keep it real here. More often, someone discovers you somewhere, visits your site, sees your feed again, joins your mailing list, reads a couple of emails, comes back to your website, sees another post and eventually buys something.
However many touchpoints it takes, email can be one of them. Sometimes that funnel takes YEARS. Play the long game. From first hand and hearing client experiences, I guarantee it will be worth it.
Couple examples here to prove my point. (Stories and screenshots shared by permission.)
This past January, one of my FSSW clients sent out a newsletter that opened with a personal story about a destination photoshoot where the airline lost nearly everything she needed for the shoot. The email then moved into updates about her availability, upcoming rate increase, advance booking and some teaser pics. The following week, I got this:
Another client used email to announce her upcoming website redesign and invited readers to join her exclusive “Founders Collective” and help sponsor the cost of the redesign.
The email did not aggressively push people to buy. It simply asked interested readers to reply for more information. Woke up to this report the very next morning:
Neither email was simply BUY MY SHIT. (You and I know that was the goal, but they dressed that up in pretty clothes with a savvy sales psychology bow.)
They did more than just say “give me money.” They both used their existing relationship with their audience to communicate something worth knowing. And as a result…cash app notifications.
Give Them a Reason to Let You In
People are protective of their inboxes. Give them a reason to let you into theirs.
That does not mean you need to spend three weeks developing an elaborate free download called “The Ultimate Guide to Being a Good Client or Fan or WHATEVER.” Sometimes access itself is more than enough.
Someone likes your work and wants to hear from you. They actively sign up because they are curious about your announcements, updates, notes, availability, content, or anything else you have told them to expect.
It helps to offer something as a thank you but free shit isn’t mandatory. Maybe subscribers get exclusive notice about something. Maybe they occasionally receive an offer or a coupon. Maybe a creator offers a limited trial link or unpublished selfie. A provider might offer priority notice about tours.
The specifics depend on you. The principle is Give to Get. Again, sales psychology.
Someone is giving you access to their inbox. Give them a legit reason to be glad they did.
Capture the Emails. Period.
Those of us with the decision making capabilities of a roomba always make the following completely avoidable mistake. We decide we want to “start email marketing,” which often means spending the next six months THINKING about starting email marketing cause there’s so much self-imposed pressure to get it all JUST right.
As the ADHD proverb says “It doesn’t need to be done, it just needs to be perfect.”
Stop. It doesn’t.
Capture the emails. Period.
It is better to be collecting subscribers while you figure out your newsletter than to wait until you have developed that perfect email strategy before putting up a signup form.
Your website is the obvious place to start. You can also invite people to subscribe through direct email correspondence, provided you are actually giving them the opportunity to opt in. And promote the list wherever you’re allowed to.
Mention it on X. Talk about it discreetly in an Instagram Reel without doing something that could put your account at risk. Mention it during a cam stream. Use the channels where people already encounter you to let them know there is another way to stay connected.
But there is one distinction I want to make very clear: having someone’s email address does NOT automatically mean you have permission to market to them.
Maybe you have their email because they booked with you. Maybe they contacted you. Maybe they bought something. This is not the same thing as an opt-in.
The exact legal requirements vary by jurisdiction. In the United States, for example, CAN-SPAM does not universally require advance consent before sending a commercial email, but it does impose requirements on commercial messages and gives recipients the right to opt out. GDPR compliance guidelines in Europe have different but important requirements that you should absolutely research.
To be safe and not risk getting your domain blacklisted, here’s what I recommend. Build affirmative permission into the appropriate customer touchpoints and make it clear that people are agreeing to receive marketing communication. It gives you a cleaner list of people who actually asked to hear from you, will result in more engagement and less cranky replies.
What the Hell Do I Send?
This is probably the thing I hear most often: “I don’t know what to talk about and I don’t want to bother people.”
These are such bullshit excuses.
Number 1 – There are sooooooo many options for what you can say. Email can be transactional, informative, conversational, promotional, or some combination of those things. Especially when you are starting out, I think it is less important to obsess over WHAT you are saying than to actually start saying something.
Number 2 – Your subscribers signed up. They WANT to hear from you.
What do they want to hear? Well, you can share personal updates, important news, travel or availability, a new photo set, blog post, scene, event appearances, other projects, special offerings, or hit them over the head talking about your wishlist. Not to mention, you do not have to create everything specifically for email.
Use a healthy mix. Repurpose things you are already doing when they are relevant, but give subscribers things that feel appropriate to the inbox too. In adult especially, I have found that personal updates tend to engage readers cause fans/clients think they’re special by being “in the know”. (I know, right?)
Just remember the give-to-get principle. If every single email translates to “give me money,” people ARE going to get annoyed.
Do not only appear in someone’s inbox when things are slow and/or you need something.
Your Welcome Series Can Be SO STOOPIDLY SIMPLE
The first email someone receives should confirm that subscribing was a good call on their part. Tell them who you are, or reinforce what ya do. Explain what they can expect from you and give them some idea of how frequently you plan to show up in those inboxes. Deliver whatever you promised them for subscribing (e.g. free trial), then point them somewhere useful.
That could be your Throne, your premium content, an important blog post, or another destination that makes sense for you and your business.
You SHOULD automate this. In fact, I recommend setting up an automated welcome SERIES so every new subscriber gets an intentional introduction without requiring you to manually send anything. Set up in advance, let it run.
Go against your instinct here and stick to 2-3 emails max for the series. You do not need to build some absurd 37-step automated sales funnel before you have sent your first newsletter.
Start simple. Seriously.
Consistency Beats Frequency. Every. Damn. Time.
(IMPORTANT NOTE: DO WHAT I SAY, NOT WHAT I DO! At least I’m consistent with my inconsistency? Anyways…)
“How often should I email?”
There is no magic number. I care MUCH more about consistency than frequency.
If you can realistically send a newsletter once a month, great.
If you can realistically send one quarterly, also fine.
What you don’t want is to decide to send something every week, maintain that schedule for 3 weeks, get overwhelmed, disappear for 8 months, and then suddenly reappear because you need money.
Choose a cadence you can maintain and that is realistic and manageable. Be honest with yourself. There’s no law that says you have to be doing this weekly.
Also worth mentioning that email can be batched, scheduled and again, automated. You do not have to wake up on newsletter day and frantically think of something clever to say. Plan ahead. Write several things when you have time. Schedule them. Done.
Easy does it, but do it.
Fifty Emails Are More Than Zero!
Another annoying excuse: “My list is too small.”
If you have 50 people, email 50 people. If you have 100, email 100. Do not wait for some random, arbitrary number that makes the list feel sufficiently impressive.
When you start communicating early, you are training your subs to expect your emails every few weeks, every month, every quarter, or whatever schedule you have decided. You are also training YOURSELF. You learn how to write the emails, develop this as a work habit, see what people engage with, notice what generates replies or clicks, and learn what subjects your audience actually seems interested in. (And what you can realistically talk about without overthinking it.)
By the time the list gets bigger, you are not suddenly trying to figure all of this out in front of however many people. You already have a system, you have the insights, and a data history to learn from.
There is a BIG technical benefit to establishing good sending practices early too. Major inbox providers evaluate factors such as authentication, spam complaints, sending patterns and domain reputation / your sender score when determining how mail is handled. Google explicitly recommends increasing sending volume gradually and sending at a consistent rate rather than suddenly sending a massive burst of email.
In other words, the time to establish yourself as a legitimate sender is before you urgently need to reach everybody.
Data Insights Are Key. But Don’t Obsess.
Yes, you have to pay attention to what happens. Look at the clicks, replies, your website traffic, the purchases, your bookings, sub renewals customers and any other sales.
Don’t be that person who sends a single email, gets disheartened by the results, and makes some grand decision that email marketing does not work for you. You need enough data to identify PATTERNS.
The same goes for obsessing over one metric or watching as readers open your messages in real time. I know it’s tempting, especially at the beginning, but its a surefire way to lose your mind and it doesn’t give you what you actually need to know.
A newsletter may not directly generate a purchase today and still contribute to a purchase two weeks from now. A reader might click through without buying, then see something else from you later, return, and subscribe.
That email was still part of the conversion!
Open rates are also worth treating with some caution. Even Google notes that it does not track open rates and cannot verify the accuracy of open rates reported by third parties.They can be one signal, but they should not become the singular verdict on whether an email was “successful”.
Think big picture, not tiny details. Stay out of the weeds. Your email program exists inside your entire marketing strategy. Evaluate it that way. And then go for a walk outside.
Adult Comes With Extra Fine Print (SHOCKER)
Yes, adult businesses have some additional complications. This is one area where I strongly recommend keeping things super conservative.
Keep the email itself SFW. That reduces unnecessary deliverability and provider risk, and strategically, your email does not need to BE the adult content. It can lead people to the places where that content belongs. In other words, make them pay for that shit.
You also need to choose your technology carefully. Email providers have their own acceptable-use policies, and many (ok, most all) restrict or prohibit sexually explicit content or particular categories of adult businesses. Mailchimp, for example, is notorious for banning sex workers of any niche in less than two nanoseconds.
I already know what you’re thinking and sadly, there’s no set list of “adult-friendly” email platforms that I can give you. Policies change, and what works for one kind of sex worker may not be appropriate for another.
Read the current policies yourself before committing to a provider. Do not assume a service is appropriate for your business because another sex worker mentioned it on Reddit. (i.e. the place where good advice goes to die and bad recommendations go viral.)
You also need to follow the email marketing laws that apply to your business and audience, provide the required unsubscribe mechanisms, and honor unsubscribe requests for real.
Under CAN-SPAM, for example, U.S. commercial emails must provide a clear method for opting out, and opt-out requests must be honored within 10 business days. Other jurisdictions may impose different or stricter requirements so again, do your research. (Please don’t use my contact form to ask me, I guarantee they have google where you are.)
The technical side matters too. Gmail now requires all senders to Gmail accounts to use SPF or DKIM authentication, with additional requirements for high-volume senders. You do not need to become an email infrastructure engineer to start a newsletter, but your sending domain and provider should be configured correctly. Again, Google is everywhere, use it.
My practical recommendation remains affirmative permission regardless of whether a particular jurisdiction technically permits certain unsolicited commercial messages. It is cleaner. It respects your audience. And it gives you a list composed of people who actually asked to hear from you.
Don’t Wait Until Biz Goes to Shit
If you have absolutely nothing set up right now, you do not need to turn this into a six-month project.
Start by capturing emails. Build the permission-based list now, even if you are not ready to send regularly yet. Then create an automated welcome series that tells people what to expect, delivers what you promised, and gives them somewhere useful to go next.
After that, commit to a realistic sending schedule. Monthly, quarterly, whatever you can actually manage. Then stick to it.
And do not worry about segmentation yet. You can get fancy later.
Batch your content when you can. Schedule things ahead of time. Pay attention to what works. Adjust as you accumulate enough info to make meaningful decisions.
You do not need a giant list. You just need to start.
Do not wait until Instagram bans you to realize you should have collected email addresses. Do not wait until OnlyFans suspends your account to introduce yourself to your mailing list for the first time. And do not wait until you desperately need bookings or sales to suddenly start appearing in people’s inboxes.
Build the relationship before you need something from them. Get your system set up. Practice sending. Build your list. Train your readers to expect your notes. Establish your sending history and learn what reliably reaches your audience.
Do all of that while everything is going well. So when the next shit-hits-the-fan crisis happens, and everyone else is panicking, you can close the app and go do a sound bath or something.
