Life was stable at the beginning of March for Karli Helm. She was working as a cocktail server at Beehive in the Mission and a bartender at Bloodhound in SoMa while looking forward to going on a worldwide tour as a synth player with the pop punk band, Diet Cig. Then, in the matter of just a few days, she was jobless.

The rapid spread of the coronavirus and the actions put in place to contain an outbreak postponed the band’s touring plans, which put her out thousands of dollars. Helm also lost both of her bar jobs as the Bay Area ordered only essential businesses to remain open.

Then, Helm, 26, remembered her OnlyFans account.

Started in 2016 by a London developer, OnlyFans began as a platform for celebrities and influencers to share exclusive content with their fans — for a price. So, for instance, a celebrity could share photos or offer one-on-one video conferences that only paid subscribers will have access to. In the years since, the platform has also become a home for sex workers to harvest a following and, potentially, avoid unsafe work environments. In February of this year it reported more than 20 million users, with more than 200,000 content creators.

Since the coronavirus pandemic has spread through the world, OnlyFans has become much more. As gig economy jobs like driving Uber or Lyft have mostly evaporated as a result of stay at home orders, and service industry jobs have been shuttered until the pandemic recedes, people like Helm have been using OnlyFans to supplement their income by, essentially, monetizing themselves.

OnlyFans reported 3.5 million new signups in March, with 60,000 of them new creators, according to the Daily Beast.

OnlyFans has become Helm’s only sustainable source of income. She could use the platform for her music (as she does on YouTube), or for her visual art, but offering photos and videos of herself (as she was doing on social media) was bringing in a more consistent market.

She spends up to six hours a day cultivating her OnlyFans account with a daily routine that includes 45 minutes of prep — makeup, choosing an outfit — and then a photo session of more than up to 300 photos, which she then narrows down to 10. Then there’s the time spent strategizing when — and whom — to send them to via private messages.

“I think OnlyFans has this huge appeal because it feels very authentic,” Helm said. “You follow me on Instagram, you see all the nonsexual content I post, you know my dog’s name and you know my band and now you get to see this other side of me.”

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It’s also the only thing that’s helping Helm pay her bills — she was able to comfortably make rent since starting on the platform. The money — and larger freedom — from OnlyFans is what’s sustaining Jessica Niles, 25, at an otherwise financially chaotic time, too.

Niles used to dance at Larry Flynt’s Hustlers Club, a strip club in San Francisco, but turned to online sex work after getting laid off from the club. In the wake of the Bay Area’s shelter-in-place, she was no longer able to work at what had been her side gig, a restaurant in the Castro, either.

Now, with OnlyFans, she doesn’t have to worry about forking over large percentages of her earnings to club owners, or being the only one dancing at the club when everyone called out sick, or doing anything she doesn’t want to do. It’s allowed for the wholeness of self the club atmosphere didn’t give her. And, financially, it’s been the only thing keeping her afloat.

“OnlyFans is the best way to make money, period right now, unless you have a normal 9 to 5 job that you’re working from home,” Niles said.

In the last month and a half, she’s made around $2,000 and has been able to set her hours, which are usually staggered throughout the day depending on her interactions with customers. She’s seen an influx of both customers and clients on the platform.

For some, it’s a temporary solution — something to hold them over until the world returns to normal. Juanita Burton, 36, knows she doesn’t want to stay in the OnlyFans World forever, even though, since the coronavirus outbreak, it’s been her prime income source.

Burton quit her food retail job that she’d held for 10 years more than three months ago, hoping to make a career change to work for a nonprofit. It was the wrong time to shift her career. She had been doing some online sex work to pay her bills, but made an OnlyFans account after a friend told her it was a way to earn decent money without endangering herself.

She’s seen a lot of traffic on the site — two weeks of work has allowed her to pay her rent. Most of her clients, she said, are 28-50 year old white men who work in Bay Area tech, which she said she knows because they tell her about their work.

Helm isn’t sure whether or not OnlyFans will be entirely reliable after life returns to some type of normal, if business will slow down once people go back to work and have less time on their hands, but she’s going to continue it regardless. Her OnlyFans following has accelerated too much for her not to, she said.

Niles assumes she’ll go back to her restaurant job after the quarantine is over — but she’s resolved to keep working on her OnlyFans. At a time where even the uncertain is uncertain, it’s her best — and most stable — supplement.

Annie Vainshtein is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: avainshtein@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @annievain