How TikTok Blew Up Comedian Matt Rife’s Career

Matthew Rife, American comedian and actor, best known for his self-produced comedy special Only Fans.

Transcript

00:00 So for OnlyFans, I was basically at a point where I had this hour-long material,

00:05 this great hour-long show I've been touring with for like a year and a half.

00:08 I was so sick of doing the jokes and I was like,

00:11 "Okay, I don't have the money to shoot a special.

00:12 Nobody wants to give me a special on any platform."

00:15 So I was like, "How can I raise the money?"

00:16 So I was like, "Let's just try a GoFundMe, like a fundraiser."

00:21 And I was hopeful for like, you know, if I can get $10,000 to $12,000,

00:26 which obviously allowed us to just shoot at a higher quality.

00:29 So that one was like entirely crowdfunded.

00:32 I think I spent like maybe $2,000 or $3,000 out of pocket for that,

00:36 just for like overhead stuff.

00:37 And then this one, I had a production company reach out and were like,

00:43 "Hey, we would love to, you know, kind of expense everything for you on this."

00:47 And then they kind of went back on their word.

00:50 They were like, "We just want to be credited as executive producers."

00:53 I was like, "That's all you want in return for a budget?"

00:55 And they're like, "Yeah, that's all."

00:57 And then my career kind of exploded right before we shot the special.

01:00 And they were like, "Yeah, we'd actually like to get that money back."

01:02 So essentially, I still did kind of fucking pay for it a little bit.

01:08 I would say OnlyFans gave me more of a prominent like stand-up audience.

01:13 Because before, I mean, a lot of my audience would be younger women

01:17 or like wild and out fans and stuff like that.

01:20 But when OnlyFans came out, it gave me like actual comedy fans,

01:24 like real comedy fans found my special like randomly on YouTube

01:28 via the algorithm they work with.

01:30 So I would say like, I want to say last summer,

01:34 when the special had been out for like six months,

01:37 people were coming out to shows, like ticket sales were doing like really well.

01:40 We weren't really selling stuff out yet.

01:41 But it was like, I was having good comedy audiences at my show.

01:45 I'm still a couple hundred people.

01:47 So I was, at that point in my career, just very excited to have that.

01:50 And then once TikTok blew up, everything kind of changed.

01:55 Now I'm back to having a predominantly young female audience.

01:59 But like, they're so passionate.

02:02 And they love to share everything.

02:04 I don't have to do any advertising.

02:05 They promote everything I do for me.

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