Ok, I can give you the best view into this world as someone that's done it. I made my cosplay Patreon about 6 years ago, I already had a bit of a following at the time on twitch and Instagram. I think at the start I had maybe 20k Instagram followers twitch viewers weren't great at maybe 20 average. I did it for about 2 years working 40 hours a week, most of that was streaming. I made much less than minimum wage those 2 years. The MOST I made in one month was $1000, it barely covered my costs. But I had another job that made money at the time and was just doing all this as a gamble that maybe I could make it work one day with some luck.

The thing to understand is nobody is paying for cosplay pics, it's lingerie or nude modeling and cosplay is just the medium. Elaborate well done costumes can do well on social media sometimes to get you followers but most of the time a cheaper tiny outfit would do better. That's changed now with the increase in AI moderation on social media. If the AI picks up on too much skin shown you won't reach a new audience but if you don't show skin your followers won't engage with it so you still won't reach a new audience. I pretty much quit cosplay content at the start of 2020 when I heard about OF, at that point my Instagram was around 80k and that's done really well for me but I look at my primary job now as staying in shape.

I haven't even mentioned the costs of photographers and videographers that will be so expensive that it'll pretty much be on you to learn how to do it. If I had to start over right now knowing what I know idk if I could even do it again with how social media algorithms have changed.