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Porn Star 3.0: This X-Rated Social Media Influencer Makes Seven Figures A Year

July 20, 2024  /  Susannah Breslin

This story was written by me and originally published on Forbes.com in May 2020.

She goes by the moniker Lena the Plug. Never heard of her? Well, you’re in the minority. She has 3.5 million Instagram followers, nearly 1.6 million YouTube subscribers, and 1.1 million Twitter followers. And she’s built this empire herself.

At 29, Lena is a new kind of adult performer. Once upon a time, adult actresses signed exclusive contracts with adult production companies. Today, influencers like Lena create their own adult content and use their social media platforms to promote their content and score paying subscribers.

Lena didn’t set out to disrupt the porn business. She graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz and has a bachelor’s degree in psychology. Her family is Armenian, and she grew up in Glendale, California.

Think she’s an amateur?

She earned seven figures last year.

Susannah Breslin: You have millions of followers across your social media platforms. What do you think is your appeal?

Lena the Plug: My YouTube fan base has transformed a lot. I think my appeal at first was purely sexual on YouTube. People showed up to subscribe to my content because they wanted to see me make a sex tape when I reached a million subscribers. Mostly men were watching, but some women showed up as well to see the train wreck they thought I would be. I ended up just sharing the most real and raw, most honest parts of myself on my channel. I sort of treated my videos like they were diary entries for a while. It was an outlet for me. I cried on camera. Yes, I shared the exciting party life I was living with my boyfriend, but I also talked about my eating disorder, losing a good friend to suicide, and how I struggled with the hate that comes with sex work. I went from a 5% female demographic to a 45% female audience, which really stood out to me. I think my YouTube channel has done a lot to really flush me out as a “whole” person, if that makes sense. People see a sex worker, and to them, she is purely a sexual object. It is hard for the consumer to see past that, but when you open up and show “the good, the bad, and the ugly,” you’re humanizing yourself to an audience. They can relate to you in a way that they couldn’t have imagined before. I think that’s my appeal. Getting a person to say: “Okay, she has a totally different type of occupation than the one I do, but I can relate to her. I can see myself befriending her. We are not so different, in a way.”

Breslin: Some people might be surprised to learn that you're bringing in seven figures annually. What are your revenue sources?

Lena: I have a big YouTube and Instagram following, but 95% of my revenue stream comes from selling access to my premium Snapchat and OnlyFans subscriptions. The other 5% is a combination of YouTube revenue, Instagram and YouTube brand deals, adult tube sites, and merchandise. It’s hard to get brand deals when you do 18+ work, or earn a high amount of revenue on Youtube when you are a sex worker—videos get demonetized even if they abide by YouTube community guidelines—so I have always relied on creating and selling quality adult content. It is the bread and butter of my business. 

Breslin: Was being an entrepreneur something you planned or did you more fall into it?

Lena: I’ll be honest. I didn’t think I had an entrepreneurial bone in my body until I started doing this work. I began selling access to my premium Snapchat back in 2016 when it became very apparent that because of my high follower count on Instagram and Snapchat, I would have guaranteed financial success with it. A few different people who ran sites that girls could sell access to their Snapchat on had reached out to me to join their sites. They wanted 50% of the revenue for me showing my entire body online, while they just hosted the site that processed the credit cards. It struck a nerve with me, and I couldn’t get myself to take any of those deals. I decided to have a site built for myself, where I could keep a majority of my earnings. I’ve since moved to larger, more mainstream sites—like OnlyFans—because they offer a reasonable revenue split, but I think that experience with creating my own website is what started me out as the entrepreneur I didn’t know I could be. 

Breslin: Even though adult content is ubiquitous on the internet, there's still stigma attached to sex work. How do you navigate that?

Lena: It used to be really hard, at first. I was overwhelmed with negativity when I first gained notoriety online. I felt I had truly made a mistake in choosing this work and should have never entered this space. I wasn’t used to the repeated name-callings back then. I’ve since gotten used to it and grown thicker skin. If someone calls you a whore thousands of times, it just doesn’t hurt anymore, you know? I see the same negative comments all the time. They lose their meaning after a while. The commenters of these words don’t feel like real people anymore. I basically just block and ignore now. Internally, I acknowledge that whoever is commenting is coming from a very different world than the one I know. They haven’t been exposed to the same things that have allowed me to be open-minded about sex. I try to be forgiving about their hatred and remind myself that there was probably a time where I was more close-minded and would have probably thought poorly of sex workers too. It doesn’t make it right, but it helps me to put it into perspective and try to understand them better. 

Breslin: Years ago, adult performers had exclusive contracts with production studios. What role has the internet and social media played in your career?

Lena: Without the internet and social media, I would have no career. Without Instagram and Snapchat, I would have never known that selling adult content online was even an option. I would have no clue that you can make an entire career off of it. I only got into this business because so many of my followers kept asking me if I had “premium” content. Now I use my social media platforms as marketing tools for my business and [as a way] to meet other creators to work with. I owe everything to the internet and these platforms. 

Breslin: How has the pandemic impacted your business?

Lena: The pandemic has affected a majority of businesses in a very negative way, but my business has been growing steadily during the past couple of months, in terms of selling memberships to my OnlyFans. Also, I always worked from home, so the pandemic hasn’t changed that for me. The one difference in my business is that the type of content I create is a little different. I can’t meet with other performers to shoot content, so I mostly film solo content or shoot videos with my partner, who I’m quarantined with. I have shot a couple of Zoom orgies, which are fun, but I look forward to when I can physically work with other beautiful women in person again. 

Breslin: You announced not long ago that you're pregnant. What was the reaction like from your followers? How has being pregnant impacted work?

Lena: Yes, I am currently 17 weeks pregnant! I made my announcement on social media a few weeks ago, and as with most things, it was good and bad. I was overwhelmed with beautiful messages from many of my followers who are excited for this new chapter in my life. However, many people felt the need to vocalize their opinions about the mistake they seem to think I am making. The number one concern is that my child will be bullied because of my career choice, and that it is selfish for me to bring kids into this world. Others believe that if I’m choosing motherhood, I should leave sex work behind. It’s apparent that these people subscribe to the idea that women cannot be both maternal and sexual, they must choose one or the other. I’m ignoring everyone and continuing to do my job and live my life. I shouldn’t have to leave my career, especially while my success is constantly growing at a steady rate, just because I am having a child. I’m a business woman, just like any other business woman, and I’m in the very fortunate position where I don’t have to give anything up. So far, my pregnancy hasn’t affected my work. People still love my content, even with the extra weight. As I grow and look undeniably pregnant, I am sure I will lose some amount of subscribers who miss my smaller frame, but I will surely gain some new ones who prefer a big-bellied body. 

Breslin: Who's your role model? Kim Kardashian? Steve Jobs?

Lena: I wouldn’t really say I had any role models when I came into this business because I sort of fell into it without even realizing what was happening or how big I was getting.

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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tags / SEX, PORN, PORN STARS, JOURNALISM, NONFICTION, WOMEN, WORK, MONEY, FORBES