The Question I Couldn’t Answer—So We Built It Instead: The Agency Trust Index

By Lila Monroe, Brooklyn, NY, staff writer for Only Fans Insider Magazine

There’s one question I get asked more than anything else, and it usually shows up at the exact moment a creator starts thinking beyond where they are and toward what comes next. It comes through in DMs late at night, in follow-up messages after interviews, and in conversations that start casually but quickly turn serious. The question is always the same, and it carries more weight than people realize:

“Do you know a good agency?”

For the past year, my answer has been consistent, and it hasn’t always been the one people want to hear. I’ve said “no” more times than I can count, not because I don’t care or haven’t done the research, but because I haven’t seen a reliable, consistent way to confidently point creators in one direction over another. Every time I say it, there’s a pause on the other side of the conversation. It’s not disappointment in me—it’s the realization that something this important doesn’t have a clear answer yet.

To understand why that answer has been “no,” you have to look at what’s actually happening behind the scenes in the creator economy. Over the past year working with Only Fans Insider Magazine, I’ve had the opportunity to read, edit, and sit with hundreds of creator stories. Some of those stories highlight growth, independence, and success at a level that feels almost surreal when you step back and look at it. Others reveal something more complicated—experiences that don’t always make it into the final article, but are shared in conversations before and after the story is published.

In those conversations, a pattern begins to emerge. Creators talk about agencies that promised growth but delivered confusion, agreements that sounded simple but turned out to be restrictive, and partnerships that started with strong communication but slowly faded into silence once the deal was in place. These aren’t isolated incidents, and they aren’t always dramatic. In many cases, they’re subtle enough that creators question themselves before they question the agency they’re working with.

But there’s another layer to this that doesn’t get talked about enough, and it’s something I’ve started to notice more clearly the longer I’ve been in this space. A lot of agencies are built around volume. They sell a vision of scale—multiple social media accounts, aggressive posting strategies, rapid audience growth, and the promise of “gaming the system” to generate massive revenue numbers. On paper, it sounds like acceleration. It sounds like leverage. It sounds like someone taking the weight off your shoulders.

In reality, it often shifts the weight somewhere else.

Because behind those promises are creators who are expected to keep up with an overwhelming pace. Creators who are told to produce more, post more, respond more, and stay “on” longer than is sustainable. There are sleepless nights spent trying to keep content pipelines full. There are social accounts that get shadow-banned without warning, forcing creators to start over again and again. There are endless chat conversations happening 24/7, many of which lead nowhere, but still demand time, attention, and emotional energy.

What gets lost in the conversation about scale is the human cost of maintaining it.

The industry talks about millions of dollars in revenue, but it rarely talks about the hours behind those numbers. The pressure. The repetition. The exhaustion of turning yourself into a constant stream of content while trying to maintain some version of a real life outside of it. When everything is optimized for output, personalization becomes secondary. And when personalization fades, the connection that actually drives long-term success starts to weaken.

At the same time, it’s impossible to ignore the imbalance that creators are starting to notice more clearly. You see agencies showcasing success—cars, lifestyles, a certain image of what “winning” looks like—while the creators generating that success are still navigating the grind behind the scenes. It creates a dynamic where creators can start to feel less like partners and more like part of a system designed to produce results at scale.

That doesn’t mean every agency operates this way, but it’s common enough that it shapes how creators think about these relationships. The focus on quantity over quality doesn’t just impact content—it impacts trust. It impacts sustainability. It impacts whether a creator feels like they’re building something for themselves or simply feeding into something that benefits someone else more.

At the same time, it would be inaccurate to say that all agencies fall into this pattern. I’ve also spoken with creators who have had genuinely positive experiences. They describe agencies that communicate clearly, pay on time, and actively contribute to their growth in meaningful ways. These creators don’t just feel supported—they feel like they’re part of a partnership that works. The problem is not the absence of good agencies. The problem is the absence of a reliable way to distinguish them from the rest.

Right now, creators are forced to make decisions based on fragmented information. They rely on private recommendations, conversations in small circles, or outreach from agencies that present themselves in the best possible light. There is no central place where experiences are shared in a structured, transparent way. Without that, every decision carries a level of uncertainty that can have real consequences for a creator’s time, income, and long-term growth.

Living in Brooklyn, I’ve gotten used to being surrounded by people who are building things in real time. Whether it’s a startup, a personal brand, or something that doesn’t even have a category yet, there’s a constant sense of momentum paired with uncertainty. The creator economy feels the same way, but with higher stakes. People are building businesses without traditional infrastructure, which means they’re also navigating partnerships without the kind of shared knowledge that other industries take for granted.

At Only Fans Insider Magazine, we’ve always focused on visibility as a starting point. The idea is simple: give creators a platform, let them tell their story in their own words, and allow them to own that narrative. Over time, it became clear that visibility alone doesn’t solve everything. It creates opportunity, but it doesn’t necessarily provide the context creators need to make informed decisions about how they grow and who they work with.

The more we listened, the more obvious it became that one of the biggest gaps in the industry was transparency around agencies. That gap wasn’t going to be filled by opinions or recommendations from a single source, including us. It needed something broader, something that reflected the collective experience of creators themselves.

That’s where the Agency Trust Index came from. It wasn’t built as a list of “good” or “bad” agencies, and it wasn’t designed to position us as the authority on who creators should trust. Instead, it was created as a space where creators can share their experiences in a way that is structured, consistent, and useful to others. The goal is not to replace individual judgment, but to give creators better information to make those judgments for themselves.

What makes the Agency Trust Index meaningful is the way it breaks trust into specific categories that reflect real-world experiences. Rather than asking creators for a general opinion, it focuses on areas that consistently come up in conversations: how clearly agencies communicate, how reliably they handle payments, how fair and flexible their contracts are, how effectively they support growth, how professionally they treat creators, and how closely their deliverables match what they promise at the beginning of a relationship. These are the exact points where the difference between a sustainable partnership and a draining one becomes clear.

The intention behind this structure is to move beyond vague feedback and toward something more actionable. When creators can see how an agency performs across multiple dimensions, they gain a clearer understanding of what to expect. That clarity doesn’t eliminate risk, but it reduces guesswork, which is often where the biggest problems begin.

Another important aspect of the Agency Trust Index is that it is entirely creator-driven. We are not populating it with our own opinions or curating it based on what we think should be highlighted. The value of the index comes from participation, from creators choosing to share their experiences honestly and contributing to something that benefits the broader community. This approach acknowledges a simple truth: the people who understand these relationships best are the ones who have lived through them.

There is also a larger shift that can happen when transparency becomes part of the system. When agencies know that creators have a space to share structured feedback, it changes the dynamic. It encourages better communication, clearer agreements, and a stronger alignment between what is promised and what is delivered. Over time, this kind of visibility can raise the standard across the industry, not through enforcement, but through awareness.

For me personally, this changes how I answer that original question. When someone asks, “Do you know a good agency?” I no longer feel limited to saying “no.” Instead, I can point them toward something that didn’t exist before. I can tell them to look at what other creators are sharing, to read through real experiences, and to contribute their own perspective if they have one. It shifts the answer from a single opinion to a collective resource.

The Agency Trust Index is still new, and that means it is still growing. It is not complete, and it is not meant to be. Its value will come from the creators who choose to engage with it, to share their experiences, and to help build something that future creators can rely on. That kind of participation is what turns a feature into something much more meaningful.

If you are a creator, you already understand how much effort goes into building your business. You understand the importance of making the right decisions, especially when it comes to partnerships that can shape your trajectory. Having access to better information is not a luxury—it is a necessity.

The Agency Trust Index is a step toward making that information more accessible. It is not a final answer, but it is a starting point. It is a way to move from isolated conversations to shared knowledge, and from guesswork to something grounded in real experience.

If you have worked with an agency, whether your experience was positive, negative, or somewhere in between, your perspective matters. This is a space designed for you to share it.

https://www.onlyfansinsider.com/agency-trust-index

For the first time since I started hearing that question, there is finally a better way to answer it.