She made $14 million on OnlyFans. Now Nala Ray is one of its Loudest Critics

Money doesn't solve all of your problems in life. This is a lesson Nana Ray learned the hard way.

In her early twenties, Nala Ray was living the fantasy lifestyle that social media sells but rarely delivers.

She drove Ferraris, Bentleys, and Lamborghinis. She lived in a $4.3 million home in California. Her closet was filled with Givenchy, Dior, and Prada. Her favorite item was a red lambskin Chanel bag with gold chains. Even her dogs, she recalls, wore Louis Vuitton collars.

Photo Credit: Instagram @fitness_nala

All of it, she says now, was paid for by explicit content she produced on OnlyFans.

Over five years on the platform, Ray estimates she earned around 14 million dollars, averaging about 300,000 dollars a month at her peak. She says she was among the early adopters who helped define what OnlyFans would become. In its early days, the subscription site could have evolved into a home for cooking classes or fitness tutorials. Instead, it became synonymous with adult content.

“Because of early adopters like me, it became a de facto porn site,” she says.

Today, Nala Ray wants that same platform destroyed.

After what she describes as a spiritual awakening and a turn toward evangelical Christianity, the former top creator has reinvented herself as an outspoken critic of pornography and OnlyFans in particular, her goal, she says, is not new regulation or platform reform, but a future in which no one uses it at all.

“I was so deep in the industry,” Ray says. “I was bold enough to take so many crazy, radical steps into it. And now I am just on the opposite spectrum. It is crazy. That shows God’s glory.”

Nala Ray’s path to OnlyFans began long before the site existed.

She grew up in a small town in Missouri. When she was 8, a tornado destroyed her family's home. Her parents divorced after her father had an affair, then remarried two years later. Her father then became a minister, and the family bounced between Baptist churches amid what she describes as frequent infighting and rejection.

“You get to see a dark side of religion,” she says. “People will kick you out of their church, and that is so hard to see from people that you kind of fell in love with.”

Nala Ray also says she was sexually abused at 13 by a 16-year-old boy her father allowed to live with the family. The abuse, she says, continued for months until he ran away. She says they never heard from him again.

After that, Ray says she began sneaking out to meet boys and counting down the days until she could leave home. By around 20, she was in Florida, working for an orthopedics company and unsure of her next step.

Then she received a direct message on Instagram.

“A random guy on Instagram - he was verified - he reached out,” she recalls. “And he was like, ‘Hey, you would be so good at OnlyFans.’”

She created an account in February 2020, just as the COVID-19 pandemic began to push millions of people indoors and online. In her first month, she says she made 87,000 dollars.

OnlyFans quickly became her full-time job. She hired a manager, studied men’s psychology, tracked porn trends, and tailored her content accordingly. She appeared on podcasts, made provocative statements about sex, and leaned into viral moments to drive traffic. At her peak, she says she had about 270,000 subscribers.

“I Had To Drink Myself Into Oblivion”

With the money came pressure to go further.

Nala Ray says she relied heavily on marijuana and alcohol to get through what she calls “major scenes.”

“Honestly, I could not feel much at all. I could feel angry, but I did not cry for years,” she says. “Any time I would have to do major scenes, I would have to drink myself into oblivion to just do it.”

She describes that period as emotionally numb. “It felt like I did not feel sorry for anybody,” she says.

Financially, the picture was also more complicated than the topline earnings suggest. OnlyFans took 20 percent of her income. Her manager, she says, received 45 percent. California state taxes took another slice. “The OnlyFans money dried up fast,” she says.

In 2023, Nala Ray met Christian influencer Jordan Giordano on TikTok. He did not recognize her from her work. They began talking, and she says his willingness to treat her as a person rather than a sex object shifted something internally.

“It was terrifying to cross over into this very unknown world,” she says. “I thought so many times, ‘I cannot do this. It is too scary for me.’”

She started reading the Bible and praying regularly. Giordano’s mother, she says, pushed her to make a clear choice.

“She was like, ‘You are on the right path, but you still have this door of darkness open, which is OnlyFans. You cannot have both.’”

In January 2024, Ray closed her OnlyFans account. She married Giordano that March.

Since then, she has become a fixture in Christian and conservative media, telling her story as a warning about the spiritual and emotional costs she believes are tied to pornography and online sex work.

In June 2025, she appeared on “The Charlie Kirk Show” in an episode titled “The Transformation of Nala Ray,” recorded at the Young Women’s Leadership Summit. The interview covered content houses, the online sex industry, and the criticism she now faces from some conservatives who accuse her of seeking attention.

She has also discussed her conversion on Christian podcasts, describing God as a father figure who filled a void left by her own complicated family history.

“God has taken on every role in my life, basically, other than my husband,” she said in one interview, listing father, brother, teacher, and mentor.

Nala Ray now spends part of her time talking privately with current OnlyFans creators who reach out to her.

She says many share backgrounds marked by abuse, abandonment, or family conflict.

“So many girls were like, ‘Oh, my dad abused me.’ ‘My stepdad tried to do things with me.’ ‘I do not have a dad,’” she recalls. “Behavior is a symptom of what is really going on underneath.”

In some cases, she says, those conversations end with women deciding to leave the platform. She describes one creator who flew to Tennessee to meet her, talked for hours about her life, and then deleted her account.

“The biggest thing I realized is someone just wants someone else to listen to them,” Ray says. “I did not pass one word of judgment.”

Nala Ray says she receives heavy criticism from multiple directions. Some Christians call her a grifter and question the sincerity of her faith. Others insist she will eventually return to OnlyFans. Online abuse has taken a toll, she says, especially on her husband.

“It got to my husband. I felt utterly alone some days, just being like, ‘Wow, the whole world hates me.’”

Still, she says she does not regret leaving.

Nala Ray frames her new public role in explicitly religious terms, but says she is committed to being honest about ongoing struggles. She describes herself as far from a polished ideal.

“The kind of Christian I want to portray is like, yeah, life freaking sucks,” she says. “I mess up. I am not always modest. I still cuss sometimes. Yes, I want a joint sometimes. That is the Christian walk.”

She is now planning a podcast to expand on her story and her views on faith, sexuality, and the online creator economy. Her stated goal is to reach both Christians and people still working in adult content.

Her critics see inconsistency, a rebrand built on the notoriety she gained from the very content she now condemns. Her supporters see a high-profile example of what they consider repentance and transformation.

Nala Ray sees herself as proof that wealth and online fame do not resolve deeper pain.

“Nothing is filling this void I feel,” she remembers telling God in prayer. “Everything I am trying is failing, it is all slipping through my fingers like sand.”

Whether she ultimately changes minds about OnlyFans or pornography remains to be seen. For now, she is using the same tools that once made her rich and famous to argue that the life she lived at the top of the platform was not worth the price she paid to get there.

OnlyFans or sex work in general is not bad. But it's also not the right path for everyone. If you have to get drunk or high to do your job, then you shouldn't be doing that job. Nala Ray proves that theory.

Validation from strangers or the money that comes with it won't bring you joy.

She had a history of childhood abuse and trauma, and instead of dealing with those issues, she let those demons get the best of her. I truly hope that Nala Ray eventually finds the happiness she so desperately seeks.

But what we should take from her story is not that being on OnlyFans is bad ... just that it isn't right for everyone.