The Hawk Tuah girl is now selling feet pics on FanFix, and the platform is taking 20% off the top. Haliey Welch's February 25 Instagram promo teasing 'spicier' content kicked off a fresh viral cycle around the cleanest creator-economy case study of the last two years: virality, podcast deal, crypto rug pull, federal investigation, and now paid-DM monetization on a platform that rakes one out of every five dollars she earns.
⚡ Key Takeaways
- Haliey Welch is selling feet pics on FanFix, and the platform keeps 20% of every dollar she earns.
- Her FanFix tiers run $9.99, $15, and $100/month, with the top tier including one-on-one sessions.
- The pivot follows the $HAWK memecoin collapse, which hit a $490M peak and crashed 90% within hours of its December 2024 launch.
- The SEC and FBI both cleared Welch in 2025, but the brand-deal funnel never reopened.
- Paid-DM platforms have settled into a 10-20% rake: Fanfix ~20%, Fanvue 15%, Passes 10% + $0.30. Fanvault charges 8%.
- The story isn't feet pics. It's how much of a creator's last-mile revenue the platform layer captures when the brand deals dry up.
What actually happened?
Welch's FanFix runs three subscription tiers. $9.99/month gets the basic feed plus 25 messages, $15/month unlocks premium, and $100/month buys VIP with unlimited messaging and one-on-one sessions, per UNILAD Tech. On February 25, 2026, she posted an Instagram video captioned 'READY FOR ME TO RELEASE MORE FEET STUFF? Naughty mode activated!', per Total Pro Sports. That single post is what set the current news cycle off.
FanFix takes 20% of every dollar Welch earns and she keeps 80%, per Sportskeeda. The platform was founded in December 2020 by Harry Gestetner and Simon Pompan, picked up by SuperOrdinary in July 2022, and runs an explicit no-nudity policy, per Wikipedia. That's what makes feet pics, bikini content, and 'naughty mode' posts the maximum-monetization play on the site without triggering a moderation strike.
Why does this matter for creators?
The 20% rake is the story, not the feet pics. Welch's brand-deal funnel collapsed after her Solana memecoin $HAWK hit a $490M peak and crashed roughly 90% within hours of its December 4, 2024 launch, per CoinDesk. Around 96% of the supply sat in just ten insider wallets at launch, per TRM Labs, and the SEC and FBI both opened investigations. Both agencies cleared her in 2025, per The Block.
What didn't come back was the corporate money. Welch still has 1.7 million TikTok followers and over a million Instagram followers, but CPM revenue and brand sponsorships don't pay her like they used to. The brand-deal funnel closed somewhere between the investor lawsuit and the SEC's interest, per The Hollywood Reporter. The only lane left is direct-to-fan monetization on a platform that charges her one-fifth of every dollar to be there.
'What ya'll have been waiting for is finally here! I just launched my @Fanfix so I can connect with y'all 1 on 1 and to show you more of my daily crazy life!'
Haliey Welch, Instagram launch video, via Sportskeeda
Where does this go from here?
Welch's 2024-2026 arc is the canonical creator pipeline. Virality in June 2024, a Talk Tuah podcast deal under Jake Paul's Betr Media that fall, brand merch, a ceremonial Mets first pitch in August, the $HAWK rug pull in December, regulatory bruising through 2025, and finally a paid-DM platform that takes a fifth of every transaction. Each step extracted a bigger cut than the last from the same loyal audience.
Her August 2025 'comeback' announcement framed FanFix as creator-first, per Yahoo Finance. Six months later she's posting feet content to keep the lights on inside the platform's no-nudity rulebook. The branding is creator-economy. The economics are a rake.
The signal for every other 2026 creator is in the math. Paid-DM platforms have quietly settled into a 10-20% take rate: Fanfix at ~20%, Fanvue at 15%, Passes at 10% plus $0.30 per transaction. Those few percentage points compound fast when CPM income collapses, and most creators don't notice the rate until they're already locked in with their audience.
What does Fanvault think?
This is the part of the creator economy that exists to be undercut. Fanvault charges 8% and creators keep 92%, which is less than half of what FanFix is currently extracting from Welch. The reason she's feeding a fifth of her last-mile revenue to a no-nudity platform is that her structural alternatives in 2025 (Fanvue at 15%, Passes at 10% plus $0.30) still felt similar in shape: all rake, no storefront, no auctions, no conversational setup, no Telegram automation. Fanvault was built in 2025 for creators in exactly this spot, a depleted brand-deal funnel, a loyal audience, and no good place to monetize without surrendering 15-20% of every dollar.
The story isn't that the Hawk Tuah girl is selling feet pics. It's that her platform is keeping one-fifth of the money for letting her do it.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does FanFix take from Haliey Welch's earnings?
FanFix takes
What are the tiers on Welch's FanFix?
Three tiers:
Did Welch get in legal trouble over the $HAWK memecoin?
Both the SEC and FBI investigated her. Both agencies cleared her of wrongdoing in 2025 without fines or restrictions, per The Block.
A separate investor lawsuit was filed in December 2024 over the token's collapse, but Welch was not named as a defendant, per The Hollywood Reporter. Her name and likeness were used to promote the token.
Is FanFix the same thing as OnlyFans?
No. FanFix is positioned as a Gen-Z 'no-nudity' alternative to OnlyFans and runs an explicit no-explicit-content policy, per Wikipedia. That's why creators on the platform max out monetization with bikini posts, feet pics, and 'spicier' content that stays inside the rulebook.
What does this story mean for the creator economy?
Paid-DM platforms now sit in the same 10-20% take-rate range that's been the industry default since 2022. For creators whose brand-deal income has collapsed (as Welch's did after $HAWK), those percentage points compound into real money.
Fanvault's