Once upon a time I was a shackled to a desk. Working primarily in customer service/support roles, I was chained to aforementioned desk my a headset with a 3 foot long cord. Giving me a very small radius in which to move. I served as a client specialist in a transfer agent for 5 years, managing financial transactions and answering a myriad of questions for 529 accounts and later mutual funds. After five years here I moved on to another company that worked directly with doctors offices and hospitals and their medical records systems. I LOVED this job; I was always helping people solve real problems they were facing. And we were allowed (at the time) to ask for respect from our clients, meaning if anyone called me “Sweetheart” I could remind them I had a name and to use it or Ma’am. But as corporate America goes, a hostile takeover of the company by some hedge fund found me looking for a way out of corporate America for good.
First there was Lovely Lana
2017 saw the birth of my alter ego Lovely Lana. It was a lame attempt to be funny with the name- Anal, Lana, Get it? Anyways, my husband and I started doing little photoshoots here and there, as a way for him to show the world what a beautiful woman he had married. We posted under hashtags like curvy and thick and the like because that’s what I was. We knew nothing about niches or audiences or any of that at the time. It really was just a fun way to practice new photography skills and show off a sexy wife.
We we’re anonymous at first, nothing above the neck was to be shown. After about 6 months of posting to instagram we started getting requests for more exclusive content and offers to pay for it. So we set up a Patreon account and started recording videos and doing the type of photosets you couldn’t do on instagram. Being anonymous for the first two years turned out to be pretty profitable for us. People were so curious about what I looked like that they signed up for our Patreon just to see if they could get a look at my face there.
Because its the way these fan platforms operate, TOS and CGs started to change. Luckily for us, around the time we started getting content removed from Patreon, we had started seeing some buzz about a new site called Onlyfans. After Patreon finally removed us all together, we made the change over to Onlyfans and our fan base not only followed, but grew.
The evolution of the Brand
About two years into creating content for Onlyfans, we made the decision to try to get our brand on instagram verified. We started working with agencies to get us paying gigs, and at their behest we slowly started rebranding. The problem with the agency is they wanted us to change our image entirely and at that point a large part of our income was from well… my image as it was. We ended up leaving this agency… and burning bridges while we were at it.. No regrets. By the time we left this agency we had already rebranded to to Sara Lyn Chacon and reached out to even more brands and platforms to work with. We managed to get more working gigs, with better pay on our own and with our image as it was without having to change everything about our brand. As freelancers we received more brand collaboration requests than we ever did working with an agency. Most of these were along the lines of “We’ll send you free product but we really dont have a marketing budget to pay you” which honesty, these were my favorite because it allowed me to vet brands and work with the ones I believed in.
How we did it
With the rebranding to Sara Lyn Chacon, Finally removing the anonymity and working with brands that I adored, I was able to quit my day job and become a self employed contractor by 2021. Here’s how we accomplished that:
Realizations
When We started this wasn’t supposed to be a money maker. We thought it would be something fun to do but we quickly realized it could be a way for us to finally break the shackles of corporate America. My husband, being an older, more distinguished gentleman, was a thousand precent done with being at someone else’s beck and call, and for myself, I honestly just hated the lack of freedom brought on by being tied to a desk for 40-60 hours a week. With that realization, we started formulating a plan for getting out of our jobs and living the life we wanted.
Short term Goals
We started with some short term goals: we needed 250 subscribers a month on Onlyfans to be able to cut our hours down to part time. To achieve this we started reducing our volunteered over time at work and started using that time to do photo and video shoots. We had been saving every little bit we could for a few months so we used the little bit we were making from our 50 subscribers on Onlyfans and our previous OT earnings and started investing in makeup, clothing and camera equipment. My husband was already a long time photographer, so we already had some basics. We would set aside time every day and every weekend to produce content, post and interact with fans across social media and fan platforms. We also promoted the hell out of everything with stories, SFS and cross postings. It took us a year to reach the goal of 250 paying subscribers.
Long term Goals
Our long term goals were to reach a steady stream of 1000 followers a month. With that we could easily afford to quit our jobs and just focus on creating content and living the kind of life we wanted. We had been talking for ages about traveling and 2020 saw us wanting to leave the country entirely. It took us another year and a half to moves from 250 to 500 subscribers. We we’re also making a steady stream of income selling panties and doing brand promotions on the side. My husband left our job to better focus on our business as it was growing faster than we could manage while also working full time.I stayed a little linger at my job to insure we had a steady paycheck in case our sudden influx of money dried up. When 2020 rolled around, we like many other content creators, started making BANK! And when it became obvious that our brand was here to stay, I too quit my day job and switched gears to full time content creator.
Maintaining the momentum
To maintain the momentum my husband and I continued to create new content on an almost daily basis. At the time, daily shoots seemed a little manic but it allowed us to stock pile content for if we were traveling or either of us got sick and couldn’t work for a few days. We always had back up plans for our backup plans. In the years we had been working on this, we had found that the content we produced while traveling did its best, so we made a point of taking trips as often as possible. The stockpile also helped for those periods of time when we were just BURNED OUT from creating content. Working multiple jobs for multiple years can, will and absolutely did cause some serious burn out for us at times. And the first few bouts of burnout caused our business to take huge hits. Its the main contributor to me staying at my corporate job for so long.
These Days…
These days my husband and I live abroad in South America, traveling to the countries surrounding us as we please. The great thing about living here is you can live like kings and queens on a basic American salary. We live even better on the money we make from our fan subscription platforms. I spend my mornings working on stuff for Unfiltrd. A startup platform I joined as a creator at its inception, and became a member of its staff not long after. I believed in what the platform was doing, saw it needed help and knew I had the experience to do so.
Some days I am helping creators figure out their social media presence and how to optimize that for them and other days I am creating my own content for my social media and Unfiltrd accounts. I still have an onlyfans but I believe more in Unfiltrd and Onlyfans is so flake with sex workers these days that I know eventually I’ll need to fully move over to Unfiltrd.
If I am not working for Unfiltrd, myself or helping other creators, I’m walking my Dachshund puppy, Bella, chilling by the pool with a book – Bourdain or other chefs, usually- or exploring this amazing country I have the opportunity to call home. All of it would be impossible if it weren’t for the hard work my husband have poured into this over the years, my amazing community of fans and friends, and the industry itself.
Wrapping up
To wrap things up there’s a few things I want to share with you that are the key factors in ur successes and failures. Let me summarize them here for you: Trail and error: There was and continues to be, a lot of trial and error in this industry. What works for you, wont necessarily work for me, and vice versa Research: Do your research. On all topics involved in this line of work. Instagram and other social media platforms are always changing the way their algorithms push content. Always be looking for that new information. It’s going to save you a lot of hassle down the road if you’re always looking for that new information instead of being blindsided by the changes. Networking: Network baby! Its going to be a big factor in your success the more people you can cross promote with, the bigger your audience can become Goals: Have some set and SERIOUS goals. If you’re working a full time job, set some goals that will allow you to securely leave the steady income behind. Success like mine took literal years. Independence from a steady paycheck did not happen overnight. Have fun with it: Seriously. Have fun with this. Yes it’s work but it can be a lot of fun. Those days when you’re feeling your best while shooting… shoot a little extra for when you need to take a break
TAKE BREAKS: For your mental health you need to take breaks from this sometimes. Stockpile content and schedule it out for when you need a break. Okay okay, at a currently count of 1803 words I should end this so as not to bore you to tears 😅 I hope you learned something from my story and seriously any questions at all, you can reach me via email or on discord. K love you, bye
Sara Lyn.
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