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

Fuck You, Pay Me #13: How to Be a Consultant

July 19, 2024  /  Susannah Breslin

This is part 13 of “Fuck You, Pay Me,” an ongoing series of posts on writing, editing, and publishing.

Far and away the best money I make is in consulting. That said, when people ask me what I do as a consultant, it’s hard to say. I’ve described it as I do strategic communications and I tell CEOs and founders what to do and I’m a corporate dominatrix. In any case, I’ve certainly learned a lot as a consultant, so in this post I’ll be sharing a bit about what I do and what I’ve discovered as a professional consigliere.

My background If you look at my personal history, I’m not someone who should be good at advising heads of business on what do. My parents were English professors, and they had little interest in and a general disdain for anything corporate. For them, money was a source of anxiety, and there was never enough of it. A fair amount of their psychic energies was spent figuring out how not to work or get in a position where they didn’t have to work: obtain a grant that gave them an excuse to not have to teach, go on sabbatical, make it to the summer months when school was out. Maybe because my parents were so anxious about money, I started working at a young age. My first business was a pet-sitting business. To drum up clients, I made signs and put them around the neighborhood. I took care of dogs and cats and parakeets. I think I was 11. After that, I did babysitting. When I was thirteen, I worked at a flower stand. My first real job was at Baskin-Robbins. As I got older, I was an au pair, and I did various retail jobs (making sandwiches, selling pasta, working in a cake shop). Basically, I saw money as something that you earned but was elusive.

My education First I got a B.A. in English from the University of California, Berkeley. Then I got an M.A. from the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois Chicago. I don’t have any recollection of learning anything about business during these years. As part of my graduate program, I taught English to UIC freshman. After I got my degree, I moved back to the Bay Area, where I taught English at community colleges. I taught because it was what my parents had done. Then my father died. I stopped teaching. It was right around this time that the Internet started really ramping up (it was the mid-Nineties). I got a job as a publicist for a book imprint; after a while, I started wondering why I was promoting other people’s work when I could be promoting my own. A couple girlfriends and I created an online magazine. I started writing freelance articles for local weeklies. Then I wrote for national glossy magazines. I was making money from writing. Eventually, I did TV, too. My first TV appearance was on “Politically Incorrect.” I moved to Los Angeles. I carved out a pretty good living freelance writing. I got a gig on Playboy TV.

My internet In 2002, I launched The Reverse Cowgirl. I believe it was the second sex-related blog to ever exist. People really liked it. I liked that it was hosted on Salon’s website, and their back end allowed me to see my blog’s traffic. I got hooked on the numbers. I combined my writing skills with my PR savvy and got very good at driving traffic. It was like the internet was a ball of energy, and people were the thing that you could move through the space. Within a few years, I had gotten so good that big media companies were hiring me to help them increase traffic to their platforms. I kept writing, of course. But my work got a little more commercial, and I started learning how the sausage gets made in corporate America. I wrote for Forbes.com. I became an editor for a media company. I did creative projects on the side. The internet was where I really thrived. I launched various projects that got media attention. Things were flowing.

My faux-MBA Eventually, I got married. Later, after I got divorced, I would refer to my marriage as “my Harvard MBA.” (To be clear, I do not have an MBA from Harvard or any other institution. My use of that terminology is a metaphor. If you think I have an MBA or went to Harvard, you are wrong.) The person to whom I was married worked in the corporate space. I learned about how companies work, how they think, what CEOs want, how strategy works, and what the difference is between companies and executives that thrive and companies and executives that fail. As it turned out, I had an uncanny knack for predicting how things would move strategically in the corporate realm. It seemed odd that I was good at this, since I had been raised by intellectuals and had no business education. Yet, there it was. It was like waking up one day and discovering that you are very good at chess, even though you had never played chess. One thing I liked about the corporate world was that it was easier to quantify success than in the writing world. The corporate world was all about profit margins and revenues and market shares. Writing is all about chasing good writing and subjective interpretations and creative expression.

My consultancy When I got divorced, I took my consulting savvy with me. Almost immediately, I started doing consulting work. I only work with a retainer, because that’s the best way to form a relationship with a client. Years ago a former boss of mine compared me to a Swiss Army Knife, which was a way of saying I did a lot of things. This is true for consulting. I advise on branding, communications, social media, PR, marketing, and strategy. Oftentimes, my role is prophylactic. That is, I am advising the client to not do something that wouldn’t be to their advantage. At other times, I help them shape their image. Most of my clients come through word of mouth. I have a reputation for being good at crisis communications. I like the proximity to power, to big-number deals, to real movers and shakers. I have learned how general counsels think; what makes millionaires, multi-millionaires, and billionaires tick; that if you get exposed to enough high-level operators you will find yourself referring to companies with $3 billion-dollar valuations as “small.” My clients are almost exclusively men. As a consultant, I am an invisible member of the big boy’s club.

Today, consulting is some of the most interesting work I do. I like helping people, working closely with my clients, and shaping something into something better than it was before. The kind of work I do isn’t easy, and it requires both strategic and intuitive talents, but the payoff is, well, pretty remarkable.

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tags / FUCK YOU PAY ME, WORK, MONEY, MEN, WRITING, CONSULTING, THE FIXER

Bad Behavior

July 14, 2024  /  Susannah Breslin

If you’re looking for something compelling and quirky to watch, I recommend “Bad Behavior.” It stars Jennifer Connelly, Ben Whishaw, and Alice Englert, who is the writer / director and Jane Campion’s daughter. The story concerns itself with a conflicted mother, her equally conflicted daughter, and what happens when you lose it at a semi-silent retreat. Connelly’s performance is a marvel. If you like stupid, you won’t like this movie.

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tags / MOVIES, VIDEOS, REVIEWS, RECOMMENDATIONS, WEIRD, FUNNY, ACTORS, MOTHERS, DAUGHTERS

An Excerpt from Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment

July 13, 2024  /  Susannah Breslin

This is an excerpt from my memoir, Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment. You can order a copy here.

Image via Wikipedia

I thought it would be interesting to write about the strip clubs in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco. I was curious about these enigmatic clubs on Broadway that I had seen but into which I had never entered. As a kid in the back seat of my parents’ Dart, I had been driven through San Francisco and spotted The Condor (which, in 1964, had become the country’s first fully topless nightclub). Out front, a towering sign featured a supersized blonde, impossibly busty. Her name, I would find out later, was Carol Doda. She wore a black bikini with blinking red lights for nipples.

Doda was the opposite of my mother and her friends—they were feminists who viewed makeup, heavily styled hair, and revealing clothes as tools the patriarchy used to subjugate and objectify women. But Doda wasn’t anyone’s tool; she was a legend. A San Francisco Art Institute dropout, she had become America’s first topless dancer of note, her surgically enhanced breasts billed as “the new Twin Peaks of San Francisco.” When I was in graduate school, I had seen an episode of HBO’s “Real Sex” about strippers, and I had been struck by the revelation that strip clubs were places where intimacy was for sale. Sure, it was transient, transactional, and most often conducted between a guy with a handful of dollar bills and a dancer in a G-string and not much else who twirled seductively around a pole on a stage, but there was something real about it, I sensed. Or was there? I wanted to find out. The strip club dancers reminded me of the girls I had hung out with in high school, whom everyone else had deemed slutty. These women were powerful, too, in control, the love object I aspired to be, or seemed like it. Intimacy, that for which I had craved as a little girl, was their hustle.

“Oh, my god, Susannah, make up your mind!” Anne laughed as we stood at the corner on a Saturday night. Broadway was teeming with drunk guys, sailors on leave, and couples on the prowl for something more interesting than what they had already. I scanned the glowing signs. Roaring 20’s. Big Al’s. The Hungry I.

“This one!”

We ducked inside.

As we moved down the black hallway toward a red velvet curtain, I worried what someone else in the club might think. I, a woman, was in a strip club. As I pulled back the curtain, it dawned on me that wasn’t going to be an issue. There was one thing to which the men scattered at the small dimly lit tables around the room were paying attention, and it wasn’t me. It was the half-naked girl on the stage.

Nonchalantly, we took a seat at a table near the back. We ordered a couple of overpriced drinks. I took a sip: it was straight orange juice. The cocktails were alcohol-free, thanks to a California law that prohibited the sale of alcohol in fully nude strip clubs. It didn’t matter, my head was buzzing from the drinks we’d had at the bar around the corner that we’d been to earlier.  

In the song that was blasting, Trent Reznor was expressing a desire to violate someone. The statuesque brunette teetering on the highest heels I had ever seen peeled off her dental-floss thin neon green thong. She tossed her thong to one side, grabbed the pole, climbed up it. High above the crowd, she wrapped her thighs around the pole and bent over backwards, throwing her arms open like an inverted angel. 

In that moment, everything that had happened seemed far away. The intellectual, cloistered, academic world in which I had grown up was right across the Bay, but it may as well have been a million miles from here. I looked at a solitary businessman sitting at the next table. His tie was untied. His jacket was slung across the back of his chair. His eyes were glassy. He had been hypnotized. In this alternative universe, women had all the power, and men were at their mercy. I didn’t want to be a stripper; I was too shy, too insecure, too inhibited to take off my clothes in front of strangers. But I wanted what she had: the stage, the men in awe, the audience worshipping her as a superhuman goddess. As a kid, I was starved for attention. This was an orgy of attention. As a pre-pubescent girl, I felt embarrassed by my own burgeoning sexuality, left to figure it out for myself because my mother was too depressed. Here, sex was on parade, for sale, everywhere I looked. In the Block Project, I was the object, the one on view, the child studied by researchers from across tables in Tolman Hall’s austere experiment rooms. Now I was the voyeur, the looker, the scopophiliac. It was intoxicating.

As we sped back to the East Bay in the early morning hours, I watched the city get smaller and smaller in the side view mirror. My father was dead, that was an incontrovertible fact, but for a few hours tonight I had forgotten all about that. I could write about this. I could become a gonzo journalist, like one of my favorite writers, Hunter S. Thompson, and immerse myself in it. Sex would be my beat.

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tags / BOOKS, NONFICTION, JOURNALISM, INVESTIGATIONS, MEMOIRS, SEX, WORK, MONEY, MEN, RESEARCH, DATA BABY