Susann Alicia has been a cosplayer nearly all her life.
Since childhood, the 26-year-old German creator has been recreating costumes of her favorite TV-show and manga characters, and attending conventions for fans of comics and video games.
When she got into university, she realized all her money was going into paying for her studies and bills, and she was lacking the financial means to DIY her costumes, she told Insider.
“Cosplay is one of the most expensive hobbies you can have if you want to do it right,” said Susann, who keeps her last name private for safety reasons. “I always wanted to do some more daring outfits and more daring pictures. I was already dressing revealingly, so I thought, why not just put it on the internet, so more people can see it and maybe they’ll support me.”
She made an Instagram page under the stage name Liensue, and opened a Patreon account. Then, when the pandemic started, she heard about OnlyFans. She decided to try it, and made over $1,000 in her first month.
Between January 2022 and September 2023, she made about $450,000 in net revenue on the platform after OnlyFans’ 20% cut.
OnlyFans is only one of the platforms where Susann earns income. She also has an e-commerce shop on Gumroad, where she sells bundles of pictures and videos. There, she’s made some $130,000. And because many of her fans are German, Susann also started accounts on different subscription platforms that are popular locally, like 4based and Best Fans. Her most lucrative of those is 4based, where she’s made $155,000. Insider verified all income information with documentation Susann provided.
On OnlyFans, her revenue comes primarily from subscriptions and private messaging. Messaging fans is a key component of Susann’s presence on the platform.
She has two accounts on the platform: one of them is free, and includes sneak peeks of her content and life. The other one is $10 for 30 days, then the price goes up to $20. On this page, there’s more content and more personal interaction with her. The paid page has about 600 fans, while the free one has over 36,000.
Why avoiding nudity works for Susann
Susann has found that there is an appetite for risqué content without the need for nudity. For her, its success comes from leaving something to the imagination.
“I love the teasing aspect of it. It’s a bit mysterious, it just leaves more to the fantasy,” she said. That doesn’t mean her content isn’t sexual at all — there is a strong erotic element to it, just not the nudity.
Susann also has a sizable following of 50,000 on Instagram, as well as over 20,000 on TikTok, which helps drive fans to her subscription-only content.
She puts a lot of time and money into her content, and she thinks of herself as an artist, more than a content creator. When she creates a new costume, she can spend over $1,000 on it. She also arranges a shoot with a professional photographer, and spends days editing the pictures herself. She posts some of them to Instagram, and keeps the most revealing ones for OnlyFans.
In the past couple of years, she’s been able to create about six DIY cosplay costumes per year, she said.
Susann also said a key aspect of her success is that she strives to be personable. On her OnlyFans, she combines her artsy content with a behind-the-scenes look at her everyday life, for fans to get to know her better. She regularly makes long-form videos that she sends to fans privately, which can cost between $50 to $200 to view, she said.
A big chunk of Susann’s time is spent chatting with fans one-on-one — she tries to do that for two to four hours a day. But even in her private conversations, she doesn’t include explicit content. She does provide a personalized experience, with roleplays of manga or video-game characters. She charges an extra fee for this type of content, but without any flat rates. Sometimes she just lets the fan tip as much as they want, she said.
Some of her fans have become everyday connections for her. One of them even built her a desk and delivered it to her personally.
“Building a personal connection I think is the most important thing,” she said. “People may like your art, but you have to get the close connection with them, so they really want to support you for the long term.”
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