For over five years, she’d been publishing spectacle-driven challenge videos aimed at kids. But in March last year, she took a leap of faith and did a full 180 on her content.
“I had somewhat of a plan, but I didn’t really consider how risky and how much of a hit my channel would take,” Capri told Business Insider. Despite the challenges she’s faced, she said she’s found motivation to create again.
Starting in 2017, Capri became known online as “Lizzy Sharer” (she became “Lizzy Capri” in 2019). Videos like “Last to Leave the Hot Tub Wins $10,000” and “Underwater Date with my Crush” were gaining tens of millions of views, her channel amassed 7 million subscribers, and her life revolved around her challenge content.
“If you saw my house, everything’s pink, and everything’s colorful and everything’s crazy looking,” Capri said.
In the world of influencers, having a “niche” — specific content geared toward a specific audience — is often praised as an asset. Having a niche can make it easier for a creator to promote themselves to brands, and it creates consistency with audiences, who will know what to expect from an influencer.
But to Capri, the niche started feeling like a constraint. She had lost the motivation to create.
“I woke up one day and I was like, ‘I’m not living really for me. I don’t know why I’m doing this anymore,'” she said. “I felt just like a shell.”
She decided to abruptly pivot her content toward lifestyle videos for a more mature audience. In March 2023, she published a video titled “Goodbye to the old Lizzy…” to announce her content would change. She also started an OnlyFans account.
The decision to join OnlyFans instead of another subscription platform was deliberate. While she doesn’t publish nudity on her profile, Capri describes her content there as “intimate” and “PG-13.”
“I want to embrace my body and my sexuality, and really just be me,” she said. “It felt more ethical to post on OnlyFans. At least there’s that barrier to entry. You actually have to put in your ID and a credit card to join. It weeds out any audience that is too young.”
The hard pivot was tough financially
When she pivoted, Capri did it more for herself than for the business.
“A lot of people told me to do more of a gradual shift over time,” she said. “I was like, ‘That makes sense strategically, but I can’t. I’d rather take this risk and learn from it and live through it.'”
The views on her videos decreased more than tenfold — most of them were previously hitting a minimum of one million views, while now they rarely surpass 100,000 views.
A stark decrease in views on videos translates into a decrease in revenue from the advertisem*nts that appear on them. At the peak of its viewership, Capri’s channel would make up to six figures a month just from ads, she said.
The change in content also affected her partnerships with brands, which were mostly geared toward children, like Mattel or Lego.
“Brands want predictability. They want to know that you’re a creator and a brand that they can trust,” Capri said. “I’ve definitely lost every brand deal that I’ve done.”
To support herself and her team of eight financially during the shift, she relied on some of the money she had received from a content-licensing deal she’d previously struck with creator company Spotter. The company had paid her a lump sum upfront to purchase the rights to some of her past YouTube videos.
“I actually didn’t know I was going to pivot when I took the deal,” Capri said. She originally had planned to use the money to build a production set to film her videos. “I actually ended up using a lot of that capital for the build-out, and then in the middle of that, I was like, ‘Wait, this is what I want to do.'”
Throughout 2023, Capri focused on rebuilding an audience that would align with her goals. On her existing 7-million-subscriber channel, she published a series of videos called “50 Dates in 50 States,” documenting a road trip across the country where she also went on blind first dates. Going forward, she plans to target the content on this channel to 13-18 audiences.
But she also started experimenting more with content for adult audiences. She made a new YouTube channel and a related podcast, “Chicks in the Sticks.”
“I want this channel to be ‘Jackass,’ but girl version. We do rowdy stuff, but it’s all girls instead because I’ve never seen that,” she said.
The OnlyFans is key in this strategy, and it’s been a significant revenue driver — in 11 months, it made close to $100,000. (Insider verified this information with documentation her team provided.)
She entrusted the management and promotion of her OnlyFans account to an external team — the one behind multimillionaire creator Bryce Adams. Adams’ team runs the account in exchange for 15% of Capri’s net earnings.
Capri said in 2024 she wants to focus on growing her new audience with intention. Her plan is to look for new brand partners, expand the podcast, and start her own company — a cannabis brand.
“Last year was more like, ‘Let’s try this out and see what happens.’ This year, I have more of a solidified strategy and plan,” she said.
