Chloe Lopez spent her first night in Spain sleeping on a beach, with a rucksack and £100 in cash.
Five years later, the former receptionist from Hertfordshire says she has earned as much as £62,000 in a single month on OnlyFans, thanks largely to a run of viral videos involving her knickers and some very public places.
Now, at 40, she has walked away from that too.
READ MORE: I studied astrology to prove my friends were idiots – now it’s my full-time JOB
From reception desk to rough sleeping
Chloe worked reception at a commercial property firm for 15 years.
The salary was decent. She wasn’t happy, and spent most weekends drinking to dull it.
Then the pandemic took her job and her home in one go.
She packed a rucksack, took £100 and left England.
After the beach, she sofa surfed with people who helped her back on her feet.
While staying with them, she found her dream property online, available to rent for six months, and couldn’t stop looking at it.
“I looked at the photos every day and pictured myself living there,” she told Creatorzine.
“I eventually managed to find the money for the six months upfront, but after paying for it I literally had nothing left to buy food that night.
“I didn’t care because for the first time in years I knew I had a home for the next six months.”
The knicker videos that went viral in Spain
Broke again, Chloe started filming her journey and teaching herself how to grow an audience.
She began with interviews shot on her phone.
Then she filmed a sketch pretending to take her knickers off in public, and it exploded.
“It just blew up. So I was like, I’ve got something here that works,” she said.
“I just redid what had worked over and over again, and it went really viral.”
Over and over again meant beach bars. It also meant the bread tray of a Mercadona supermarket.
Locals did not see the funny side. They trolled her and urged police to take action.
A £50,000 promise on a scrap of paper
Around the same time, Chloe wrote herself a rule. No alcohol until she made £50,000 in one month.
“What I didn’t know was that it would take me nearly three years to get there,” she said.
“Why I picked £50,000 I have absolutely no idea. At the time it may as well have been £50 or £5 million because I literally had nothing.”
The plan took shape in a café, where she read about a woman earning £30,000 a month on OnlyFans and decided to try it herself. The money took its time.
“People think you just open an account and make money, but some of my first months were only a few hundred pounds,” she said.
“I realised I had to build my social media audience first and somehow get people from those platforms over to my page.”
Eventually she reached £30,000 to £32,000 a month.
Most people would call that a win. Chloe went to a big family celebration, watched everyone else drink, and stayed sober.
“I could easily have told myself I’d done well enough and had a drink, but I’d made a promise to myself. The goal was £50,000, not £30,000,” she said.
“The following month I finally hit it, making £53,000, and then £62,000 the month after.
“The parties will always be there. The nights out will always be there.
But sometimes you have to sacrifice what feels good now for what you really want later.”
She says the experience made her “a real believer in manifestation”, and convinced her that total focus, kept up long enough, could change her life.
Burnout and back to square one
The formula that paid for everything also wore her down.
Chloe says she got trapped checking views and feeling she had to keep posting.
“If you’re chasing views or feeling like you’ve got to create, you lose the passion and then it burns out,” she said.
“You’re creating out of desperation, instead of feeling inspired and wanting to motivate people.”
About a year ago she decided the content no longer fitted what she wanted, and ditched it, knowing some fans would leave with it.
“I lost everything again and ended up back at square one,” she said.
“That’s why this time the dream isn’t just about making money or proving something to myself. I want to create something that helps other people believe they can rebuild too.”
Sixteen songs from the sea
That rebuild is Capillion, a music, visuals and mindset project drawn from her experiences.
Its first release is No Risk, No Story, a 16-track debut album mixing deep house, Afro house and euphoric sounds, with every song covering a stretch of the past five years.
The idea came to her, naturally, while floating in the sea.
“I was laying in the sea one day, staring at the sun and looking for answers. Suddenly I realised, you’ve got a whole story and a whole journey to share,” she said.
“So I just started writing and I came up with 16 songs that explain my whole journey.”
Why it matters
Chloe’s story shows the trap at the centre of shock-driven content.
The format that pays fastest is the one creators find hardest to leave, and the burnout she describes, chasing views out of desperation rather than inspiration, will sound familiar to plenty of creators far from OnlyFans.
Leaving means gambling an audience that signed up for something else entirely, in her case 339,000 Instagram followers at @chloejadelopez.
Adult creators increasingly treat subscription platforms as a launchpad rather than a career, moving into music, podcasts and personal brands in search of something with a longer shelf life.
Chloe wants Capillion to grow into a community for people who feel stuck.
She still has no fixed address.
“It’s been five years, I’m still alive, I’m still living out of a suitcase, but that’s the most exciting thing,” she said.
“I think I’m restarting all over again and it feels like the beginning again five years on, but from the most exciting place ever.”
