How to sell feet pics: what you'll actually earn

The closest figure to a beginner

Researchers interviewed 22 people who had newly started on OnlyFans and had never done sex work before. The middle one had earned $1,238 in total after a median of 15.5 months on the site. That works out at about $80 a month, and it is the honest answer to “what if I start now and stick with it”.

Hamilton, Soneji, McDonald, Redmiles, CHI '23 — 22 new creators, US, people with prior sex-work experience deliberately excluded. The researchers recruited actively, which makes this sample more optimistic rather than less. Two out of three sellers on the camming census never earned enough to be paid out at all. Checked

Why it is not a production problem

FeetFinder gets about 800,000 visits a month, and that is the whole market you are selling into

The biggest site for photos of feet gets roughly 800,000 visits a month. The camming site in the study above gets 175 times more. So the thing standing between you and a sale is not how many photos you can take. It is that almost nobody is walking past your shop.

Traffic measurement, not a company claim. Taking more photos does not fix a visitor problem. Checked

What the law says about earnings claims

Misleading earnings promises break US law — but no regulator has acted against a feet-pic site

In 2021 the US consumer regulator sent formal notice to more than 1,100 companies that false or misleading claims about profits break the FTC Act, including presenting unusual earnings as if they were typical. The maximum penalty was $46,517 per violation.

We looked for enforcement against a feet-pic platform and found none. No case, no settlement, no penalty. The rule exists. It has not been used here. Anyone who tells you these sites are “under investigation” is making that up.

FTC Notice of Penalty Offenses Concerning Money-Making Opportunities, October 2021. The absence of a case is our own search result, not a statement by the regulator. Could not check

What the videos say

FeetFinder has 8 million verified users

What is actually true

About 800,000 visits a month, measured

The site's own claim cannot be squared with its measured traffic. Eight million users visiting a site 800,000 times a month would mean almost none of them ever opens it. One of the two numbers is wrong, and it is not the traffic measurement. Checked

What the Salon writer found out

Buyers want a person, not a photo — and showing your face earns more

“the boundary between body and product gets blurry”

Ilana Amselem, Salon, 13.08.2025

She found that buyers were not really paying for a picture of a foot. They wanted an emotional connection, and showing her face increased what she could earn. That is the trap in this business. The thing that makes the money is the thing that removes your anonymity — and you cannot take it back afterwards.

Salon, first-person account, 13.08.2025. One person's experience, and it matches what the interview studies report. Not proven

What the Vice writer found out

One buyer went from “shoe company” to £6,000 for sex acts on camera

Elizabeth McCafferty documented constant pressure to go further than she had agreed to. One contact opened by presenting himself as a shoe company and ended by offering £6,000 for sex acts in front of a camera. She also fielded several “sugar daddy” approaches, which are an advance-fee scam: they promise you money and then need a payment from you first.

She earned £0 over those six months. The pressure arrived anyway. You do not have to be earning for the requests to start.

Vice, first-person account, 18.07.2023. Not proven

The cost of a quiet quarter

Three months on the dearer FeetFinder plan, plus three months on SofiaGray, with no sales at all, costs you $54.97 before you have earned a penny. Set that against the Salon writer, who paid her subscription and earned $0.

Our own maths from the fees above. Line three removes $30 because SofiaGray takes no cut of sales, so a quarter there costs $40 rather than $40 plus commission — we are comparing the fixed cost only. The messaging charge is on top. Our maths

Where the account risk actually sits

Instagram and TikTok can delete your main account over the link in your bio

The selling site is rarely what shuts you down. The account you advertise from is. Instagram's rules ban even naming a username that leads to adult material, not just linking to it. TikTok treats a link as “trade” and reads your bio to work out what you meant.

In one documented case a creator was removed although she was never nude and never mentioned sexual acts. The reason was the link. Most of those affected did not even link directly — they linked to a Linktree, and the middle step did not protect them.

Meta sexual solicitation standard, last changed 14.05.2025; TikTok community guidelines; TikTok removals reported by Rolling Stone and Gizmodo, 17.12.2020. Reddit and Linktree draw their line at in-person services, so selling photos is not covered there. Checked

At a 40 % commission

Sell for $75 at 40 % commission and you keep $18.25

Just under a quarter of the price reaches you. The $16.93 is what the item and the postage cost you: $10 for the goods and $6.93 to post it.

Our own maths. Commission and postage are documented; the $10 for goods and the 35 % tax are assumptions taken from Vice's published breakdown. Tax depends on where you live and what else you earn, so treat that line as a placeholder for your own rate. Our maths

At a 15 % commission

The same $75 sale at 15 % commission leaves you $30.43

Same price, same goods, same postage. The commission alone moves what you keep from 24.3 % to 40.6 % — that is $12.18 a sale, decided before you photograph anything.

Our own maths, same method and same assumptions as the panel beside it. This is the single largest lever on this page, and it is a choice of site rather than anything you do. Our maths

Hidden data in the file

You can strip the hidden data out of a photo; you cannot strip out a birthmark

Every photo your phone takes carries hidden information — the time, the camera settings, sometimes the exact place. That part is removable, and there are free tools that do it.

What is in the picture survives all of it. A distinctive tattoo, a scar or a birthmark on your foot identifies you as reliably as a face does, and no cleaning tool touches it. 46 % of sex workers surveyed already choose their photos around exactly this.

USENIX Security 2021, survey of sex workers — 46 % curate photos because of tattoos and birthmarks. One warning about the tools: if a cleaner shows nothing, that does not prove the file is clean. There is no reliable way to detect every kind of hidden data. Checked

Where the money lands

PayPal can hold your money for 180 days, and that is a floor rather than a deadline

There is no rule at PayPal that names worn underwear or feet pics. The danger is not a ban. It is that they can freeze what you are owed for 180 days — about half a year — and their own terms describe that as a minimum, not a limit.

Decide this before your first sale, not after. Getting paid is where sellers lose money most often, and once your balance is frozen you are arguing about money you have already earned and already spent postage on.

PayPal acceptable use policy and terms 10.2.2, read in full. Before selling you will also hand over ID and a tax form, so your legal identity is on record with the site whatever name you trade under. Checked

The questions people ask

What would change our answer

Nobody has ever counted a population of feet-pic sellers

This is the weakest point of everything above, and we would rather say it than hide it. There is no study of what feet-pic sellers earn. Not a small one, not an old one. The measured figures on this page come from camming and from OnlyFans, and we have told you each time which is which.

That gap is not us failing to look. It is a hole in the research. Until somebody fills it, the strongest evidence anyone has is three journalists who wrote down what happened to them — and every site quoting bigger numbers at you has less evidence than that, not more.

Absence of research, stated as such. If a population study of this niche appears, this page changes. Could not check