The Goddess of Online Findom Breaking Her Pay Pigs' Banks

Mistress Marley quit her 9-5 job in New York to start findomming full time for a six-figure salary. Annalou spoke to her about the nonstop hustle of online findom – where she drains powerful men's wallets as reparations for the black community – and why male 'finsubs' relinquish their cash in the ultimate power exchange under capitalism. 

Disclaimer: While we acknowledge financial domination as a legitimate part of BDSM, for legal reasons, Fetish.com does not allow financial domination services or financial submission to be advertised anywhere on our website or app.

Online findom is thriving in the digital age. Throw in a global pandemic where everyone's lives have moved online and the demand for virtual domination means big business. Type #findomme into the Twitter search bar, and you'll find thousands of (mostly female) financial dominants looking for 'pay pigs', or 'fin subs'. An often controversial kink within BDSM, findomming shares many attributes of the traditional Dom/sub dynamic – such as power exchange, humiliation, and degradation – but differs in one key aspect: sessions happen almost exclusively in the digital realm.

It can be hard to wrap your head around the concept. What motivates a person to give their hard-earned cash to a woman who humiliates them online? Mistress Marley, dubbed the Beyoncé of BDSM, is here to demystify online findom – and she might encourage you to quit your day job, too. 
 

Online findom: From 9-5 rat race to six-figure salary 

"Financial domination is the art of controlling someone's wallet and their finances," Mistress Marley explains, "and it's the financial aspect that differentiates it from other D/s dynamics. They're not paying me to whip them or tie them up… they're literally just paying me to exist." Payments come in the form of tributes – both online and cash – and can be used to finance anything from a quick lunch to extravagant designer bags and 5-star holidays. In return, her finsubs 'like to be called losers, to be called worthless… they like to be told that their money is all [her] money. It gets them off.' Now, Mistress Marley is raking in a whopping six-figure salary findomming on the internet. 

It all started with money, as it so often does in New York. Mistress Marley was struggling paycheck to paycheck, asking her parents to wire money for groceries and rent. Although she went through six years of fashion school, earning a master’s degree in fashion marketing in 2018, Mistress Marley was looking to make more money, quick. She found the lucrative world of online findom on Twitter and the rest, as they say, is history. 

Her first tribute was a 'reimbursement' (common in the findom kink sphere) after she posted a receipt of her lunch on Twitter, asking her followers to reimburse her. "My cash app pinged and a notification for a $25 reimbursement appeared. And I thought: 'Holy s**t, this is real.'"
 

Mistress Marley ditched fashion to pursue findomming full time.

Power, pay pigs and draining sessions

The draw of findomming is clear for Mistress Marley, but what's in it for the pay pigs? She estimates that 99% of her clients are white men working high-powered jobs. The titillation of the findom kink comes from a lack of self-control – embarrassment even – and the shame of relinquishing cash to a woman they've never met. The 'powerful' wanting to feel powerless. "It's like, 'oh, for once I feel lower than what I am – I'm used to being on top all day,'" Mistress Marley adds. In sum, the money becomes the proverbial chains that subjugate the pay pig. 

It is not a one-way street either. Asked whether she gets a kick out of online findom too, Mistress Marley says: "I really love the degrading side of findomming. It's consensual, so we're both getting something from it. [Pay pigs] are being humiliated and degraded, and they're loving it. And I get to degrade and humiliate them, and I love it." Contracts are drawn up for payment plans, with limits placed on those subs who can't spend over a certain amount. "You never take more money when a sub says 'stop' That's when you get into dangerous territory." 

There are a number of ways to engage in the findom kink, but draining sessions prove the most lucrative and time-effective. 'Drains' can last anywhere from five minutes to 20 minutes, and in rare cases up to an hour. The aim is to drain the pay pig's wallet as a disciplinary action. "It's a large amount of money in a small amount of time," Mistress Marley explains, "Every time the sub does something wrong, or isn't worshiping me in the right way, I demand they send me $50 (or whatever the amount) and they'll just send and send and send." The sub is ashamed for sending such large sums of money in a matter of minutes; Mistress Marley walks away with more cash in the bank. 
 

Black domination vs. racial fetishization

Mistress Marley shot to fame in 2019 after a video of her walking a middle-aged white man on a leash went viral on Twitter. The video was recorded during her homecoming at North Carolina Central University, a historically black college in the American South. Dressed in a leather corset and latex pants, she paraded the man – whom she met online – across the campus like a dog in front of her old alumni. Someone in the crowd shared a video on Twitter with the caption: “She brought her sugar daddy to homecoming.” Mistress Marley retweeted it with a correction: “That’s not my sugar daddy, it’s my sub LOL. He pays for me to control him.” Overnight, the video racked up over three million views, and her followers shot up from 400 to 13,000. 

That’s not my sugar daddy, it’s my sub lol he pays for me to control him 😇 https://t.co/g5DutQUmG9

— Mistress Marley 💅🏾 FINANCIAL DOMINATRIX (@eyesxonfire) November 10, 2019

Why did the video attract such a monumental reaction? "You see a young black woman walking an older white man on a leash at an all-black school. That, in itself, had people thinking: I've never seen that before," Mistress Marley posits. Kink is really taking off in black spaces, and she views findomming with almost exclusively white men as 'reparations for the black community'. "We're always saying: 'reparations are due.' I'm getting money from my clients as my form of reparations because the money they're sending me is not only going to me, but to people within my community." 

There's a fine line between acknowledging and appreciating blackness, and racial fetishization. Mistress Marley experiences both on a daily basis. Some subs approach her with ''black women are so powerful, and I just want to serve you," and others "black women are angry, so I want you to serve you… a nasty stereotype". The latter group is blocked – immediately. 

It's undeniable that race plays a role in her appeal as an online findomme, which she accepts. "Pay pigs are looking at it like: not only am I giving my money away to a woman I will never meet, but it's also a black woman." Admittedly racially fetishized by some, if not all to a degree, it does pay the bills. A catch-22 experienced by many sex workers of color. "Online findom is like everything on the internet: you get the bad stuff with the good. Only the strong will survive." 

Annalou is the community manager for Fetish.com, a journalist by trade writing about sex & culture, and host and producer of Spank U, Next: A Fetish & BDSM Podcast. 


 

What do you think about online findom? How can you spot the genuine, authentic dominants from the scammers? Have your say in the Fetish forum!
 

All images copyright of Mistress Marley, taken from her Twitter page.