By the time Sabien DeMonia took to the stage at the XBIZ Honors this past January to accept the crown as the inaugural Creator Ambassador of the Year, she had, as they say, come a long way.
Before cementing herself as an international creator, Kink.com director and multi-brand promoter extraordinaire, DeMonia grew up in a little village in Poland that she describes as having “a name so complicated for English speakers, that they can’t even pronounce it.” She studied art in high school, practiced theater throughout her youth and then, like many of her friends, moved to the U.K. as soon as she finished her education.
It’s almost impossible to confuse my work with anyone else’s since my personal style is so unique, and I built my brand around it.
“I spent some time in London building my very first connections in the fetish world as a model,” she recalls. “I spent all my 20s building a career first as a fetish model, then as a tattooed model walking catwalks all over Europe for the biggest latex designers and shooting for magazine covers worldwide.”
She also appeared on talk shows, performed in mainstream music videos and was profiled in "The Sun" and a Channel 5 documentary series, all the while amassing a sizable social media following.
Yet Sabien DeMonia is still just getting started. With bigger-than-ever ambitions, an appetite for dominance and a full slate of adult industry projects alongside her co-producer/co-creator husband, our Creator of the Month outlines her journey thus far and her aspirations for the coming months.
XBIZ: What inspired you to join this industry?
DEMONIA: Not what, but who. My husband. He shared with me a story about the time he was in preschool, and the teacher asked him what he’d like to become when he grew up, and his answer was “a porn star.” When we got together, I’d already been modeling full-time and had a career in the fetish industry, so I didn’t mind him filming some of our private fun in bed. When he told me that story, I decided it was time to monetize that content and make his wish come true. Three months later, we both attended our very first industry event, XBIZ Berlin in 2019, where I was nominated for my first industry award as a clip artist. And that convinced me it was one of my best life decisions.
XBIZ: How do you get the most out of the time and energy you pump into various revenue streams?
DEMONIA: With a little bit of experience and a couple of very useful tricks like filming and shooting BTS, having an extra camera on set for bonus content and utilizing every single piece of content in different forms to use it as much as possible, I definitely save time and energy. Although, I have to admit, shooting scenes for Kink is possibly the most time-consuming, since it’s not only a whole day of shooting and another of editing, but it also requires scouting for the right talent, costumes and location, writing scripts, titles, SEO, description and tags. And all that for technically one piece of content, when we are just two people behind the entire production.
XBIZ: Talk about your production and performance style. What makes your content uniquely “you”?
DEMONIA: I’m pretty much known for being very unapologetic in everything I do. It’s almost impossible to confuse my work with anyone else’s since my personal style is so unique, and I built my brand around it. I think I’m a bit of a wild card when it comes to making porn since I started my career the opposite way of most creators. Not only was I a big fan of vintage porn before I decided to do it, but I already had an established name and following and understanding of a fetish niche before I got into it. Add it to my art and theater background, and you have a very different approach than you’re used to in porn.
XBIZ: Describe your social media strategy for engaging fans and promoting brands.
DEMONIA: My social media is very authentic and organically grown, so they’re always 100% Sabien DeMonia-approved whenever I promote brands! I keep it very natural and informative, but also light and funny. Instead of only posting about nominations, awards and new releases, I also like to share a glimpse of my personal life, travels, food and even fun memes I find on the internet. My fans are more like a big group of friends, so I talk with them about my new music discoveries and travel adventures. I don’t like to oversexualize it, since the size of my boobs already puts me at high risk of being removed from most of them. My TikToks are pure comedy, sarcasm and silly trends. Only Twitter works for me more like an actual business advertisement platform, but I still keep it clean from unnecessary drama, gossip or anything that could affect my look as a one-person brand.
XBIZ: How do you approach work-life balance, especially when you have a partner who is also a collaborator?
DEMONIA: It’s the biggest challenge I faced while rapidly growing my career, especially last year. It was the most fulfilling year career-wise and the most challenging for my personal life. I did have a very painful reminder that I can’t take my personal life for granted, and my work is worth nothing if I can’t share and enjoy my success with anyone. Since then, I’ve made pretty drastic changes in my approach and set much healthier boundaries between work and private life.
For the last couple of months, my husband and I grew as partners, and a lot of it was thanks to tremendous help from therapists working with Pineapple Support, who guided us in a better understanding of each other. I was always a big mental health advocate, promoting the need to have mental support available for sex workers and also as an ambassador for Pineapple, so I’m glad to be offered help myself as therapy brings balance and a clear view of the bigger picture that we lost a little due to the high speed of work life.
XBIZ: Discuss your directing work for Kink. What projects excite you? What’s next?
DEMONIA: Being hired as an exclusive female European director was a hell of a task. I had full creative power over the entire production, but it gave me very big shoes to fill. I have to admit, it was rather a huge task but with a lot of research, personal experience in fetish lifestyle and customer feedback, I got better with each subsequent scene. I’m super proud that my very first two scenes got nominated at the last XBIZ Europa Awards, and the last scene I decided to direct with some of my very favorite new European talents became featured as a Kink Originals scene. I worked hard all year to elevate the quality of the content and storytelling in my scenes.
XBIZ: Talk about your efforts to educate and empower other performers.
DEMONIA: I’m big on community and building it from the inside. I was fortunate to meet many people who guided me and helped me grow very quickly. I believe in fair energy exchange, so I wanted to be as giving to new and fresh talent entering the adult business space. There is only one thing better than one talent in any niche: two talents working together with each other. I never saw other people as competition but as valuable opportunities to exchange experiences and hopefully build collaborations.
I hate gatekeeping; for me, it’s a sign of a lack of self-esteem, and there’s nothing more destructive for talent. I never saw our industry as much different than any other creative field. We all know there’s no better entertainment in music, movies or other social media than successful collaborations between our favorite artists. That’s why I have been doing many panels virtually and in person for various events. I’ve also been contributing to forums; lately, I even became one of the moderators on a brand-new creator forum on XBIZ.net.
XBIZ: What was it like winning XBIZ Creator Brand Ambassador of the Year at the XBIZ Honors?
DEMONIA: Honestly, it was a very fulfilling achievement in my life, even though I wasn’t expecting to win at all. The list of nominees was extremely impressive, and even being nominated next to many prominent creators like Siri Dahl or Dante Colle felt already like a winning situation. I think my chaotic acceptance speech would have been much better if I’d really thought I would win. I forgot to mention that it’s not just a huge win for me but also for us as a collective of creators. To be included and named next to the biggest business names in our industry, we all, as nominees, proved that we are valuable assets for every brand we work with and that, regardless of our fan presence, we can all be businesses, too.
XBIZ: How do you juggle ambassador duties for several companies?
DEMONIA: It’s not an easy task. Most importantly, I was fortunate enough to find companies that complement each other and are a perfect fit for my brand, while I’m an ideal representation for them with my style of content and fan base. Since they all operate in different categories of our industry, there’s absolutely no conflict of interest but rather a bigger spectrum of monetization.
I’m the absolute queen of hardcore fetish content, which works exceptionally well when working for Kink. But sometimes even they can’t monetize some of the juiciest pieces of content. But then came along Hotline, that’s crypto-based, so it gives me complete freedom when it comes to extreme content. And Pineapple Support provides full mental health, which is very important, especially in the BDSM world. Also, BranditScan helps me take down all my stolen Kink content. All those brands represent everything necessary for me to create and monetize my content.
XBIZ: Discuss your biggest goals for the rest of 2023.
DEMONIA: The list is long. I’m currently working on my website with Stunner Media, which will be a massive project I hope to launch before summer. I also put a lot of work into growing my Adult Time channel, and hopefully this year I can film my first feature movie. Finally, I have some other secret projects under construction that I can’t talk about yet, but hopefully not for much longer.
