- Hayley Rowson started an
OnlyFans this year and is using her earnings to make her dream a reality. - She recently bought a double-decker
bus and is refurbishing it to live in. - Rowson told Insider she much prefers the idea to having a mortgage on a house.
Hayley Rowson started posting on OnlyFans in January and hasn't looked back. Now, with the money she's made, she's fulfilling a long-standing dream to refurbish a double-decker bus into a home on wheels.
"There's not a lot of double-decker conversions out there," Rowson told Insider, adding she wasn't sure where to start with ripping out the interior. "There's a lot of school buses. So I'm sort of winging it really."
In the past five months, Rowson, who is 27 and lives in Abergele, Wales, has made over $16,000 on OnlyFans - a subscription service that allows creators to charge for exclusive content, which can be sexually explicit. She is spending her earnings on her new dwelling - the bus itself cost £3,250 ($4,560) and she's thinking of spending $10,000 overall to do it up.
She said she first saw the idea on Pinterest, then followed an Instagram account called @doubledeckerhome, which is owned by a family who converted their own bus into a huge campervan. Rowson said she loved their
"I'm getting solar panels put on it next week, so it'll all be completely off grid electric-wise," she said.
The bus will be home to Rowson and her pets - a dog and three cats. She said her dog was recently diagnosed with prostate cancer, but he's comfortable and happy and will love living on the road.
"He loves going anywhere," she said.
She said that when she first told her dad about her housing plans, he hated the idea and thought it was "daft," but has since come round.
She much prefers her new project to the idea of getting a mortgage. Rowson bought a house in the past, she said, while in an unhappy relationship, and ended up losing a lot of money.
"It just put me off the idea now," she said. "You don't want to have to go through all that again. And then, in a few years' time, I might have saved enough to just buy a house outright."
If her latest earnings are anything to go by, Rowson is on track. She said she's earning far more now on OnlyFans than she has in any other job.
"I've probably made about a $1,000 just for the last two days," she said. OnlyFans is often associated with adult content, but she said many of her followers just enjoy a conversation. "It isn't as seedy as people think. They have a look at me and chat with me - that's what a lot of people are there for."
Being on OnlyFans has also boosted her confidence, especially as her partner is supportive and helps her with the business side of things.
"I love the fact that I can be so body confident, and everyone else will look at it and think, you know what, I'm not the most skinniest person in the world, I can do that too," she said, adding that she's had a lot of messages from women asking for advice on how to start posting on there too.
"I think a lot differently to other people," she said. "I just don't see the point of worrying about what other people think. It doesn't get you anywhere. You don't benefit anything from wondering what Diane down the road is saying about you."
Rowson said her parents were initially worried when they heard about her career change, but they are fully supportive now once she explained that she was safe and in full control.
"Everyone loves how confident I am and everyone is really proud of me," she said. But it took some time to build that conviction. She said she initially started her OnlyFans during the first lockdown in March 2020, but "freaked out" and deleted it when people in her hometown found it.
"Then I met my partner and he was like, 'Just do it. What have you got to lose?' And I was like, 'I don't know really,'" she said.
Rowson mostly has positive interactions with her OnlyFans followers, but occasionally there will be someone who contacts her with a negative and judgmental message. She said she's learned she just has to shoot them down.
"They're like, 'Oh you're so cheap,'" she said. "And I'm like, 'Actually no, it's $12.50.'"