OFM chatting: how fan conversations turn into revenue
By the OFM.Market team · Published · 3 min read
Short answer
Chatting means holding conversations with a creator's paying subscribers and selling pay-per-view (PPV) messages, tips and custom content. Agency guides commonly say most of a busy account's revenue comes from messages rather than subscriptions, though the figure is rarely sourced. A chatting team works in shifts, keeps notes on every fan and is judged mainly on how many of its PPV offers get unlocked.
What chatters do
A chatter holds conversations with a creator's paying subscribers, mostly in direct messages. The job is part customer care and part sales: welcoming new subscribers, keeping regular fans engaged, selling pay-per-view messages and custom content, and steering conversations toward what the creator is willing to offer.
Guides often say the bulk of a busy account's revenue comes from messages, and the figure quoted most is 75% to 85%. Nobody cites a source for it. Use it as a reason to take chatting seriously, not as a fact about your own account.
How a conversation usually runs
- Discovery: find out what the fan likes and what brought them to the page.
- Warming up: build rapport and comfort, at the pace the fan sets.
- Selling: offer something specific, usually a PPV message or custom content.
- Negotiation: handle price and hesitation without pressure.
- Retention: keep the fan coming back with follow-ups and attention.
Most guides rank fans by value and answer in that order: big spenders first, then new subscribers, then regulars. One agency suggests keeping six to fifteen conversations pinned and rotating through them every twenty to thirty minutes. That is one agency's suggestion, so tune it against your own response-time data.
Shifts and handoffs
Fans write at all hours, so agencies split the day into shifts, often three of six to eight hours, and aim for sixteen to twenty-four hours of coverage. Evening hours in the fans' time zone tend to be the busiest, so cover those first. One agency guide gives this example:
| Shift | Example hours | Length |
|---|---|---|
| Morning | 08:00 to 14:00 | 6 hours |
| Afternoon | 14:00 to 22:00 | 8 hours |
| Night | 22:00 to 04:00 | 6 hours |
- Overlap neighbouring shifts by fifteen to thirty minutes.
- The outgoing chatter leaves notes on each active conversation: the fan's interests, pending offers and personal details they shared.
- Keep the same chatters on the same creators where you can, so the creator's voice stays consistent.
Missing handoff notes is one of the most commonly listed mistakes. Fans notice when a conversation resets, and trust suffers.
Notes and tools
A shared notes system for each fan is the one tool nearly every guide insists on. Beyond that, agencies use chatting dashboards and CRMs to see sales by creator, chatter and shift, and a team messaging app for coordination.
Some vendors sell AI that handles discovery and simple follow-ups while people take over high-value fans. Those claims come from the companies selling the tools. Test any tool on one creator before you roll it out, and agree with each creator in writing whether AI may be used in their inbox.
Honesty and limits
Many agencies write in the creator's voice, and fans often believe they are speaking to the creator. This is the most contested part of the business. A press investigation quotes former staff of one agency who say they were told to mislead fans, and a lawsuit described the practice as fraud, which the agency denies. Whether writing as the creator is acceptable depends on the platform's rules, on what the creator agrees to and on consumer protection law where the fans live.
- Get the creator's written agreement on how their inbox is handled.
- Never promise meetings, relationships or anything the creator will not deliver.
- Do not invent facts about the creator's life that a fan could check and feel cheated by.
- Read each platform's current rules on third parties using an account.
- Ask a lawyer when the fans, the creator and the agency are in different countries.
How to tell it is working
The number to watch is the PPV unlock rate: the share of paid messages that fans open and pay for. Alongside it, look at revenue per chatter hour, response time and how many fans buy again. Metrics and reporting shows how to work each one out.