Payouts
How publisher payouts work — Stripe Connect, the $50 minimum, and the monthly cadence.
If you're a Studio Pro publisher selling lessons in the marketplace, your earnings come to you through Stripe Connect. Here's the full picture.
Setting up payouts
If you plan to sell lessons, finish your Connect onboarding after subscribing to Studio Pro (free lessons don't need it). We'll send you an in-app notification and an email titled _"Set up payouts to start selling"_ — both link to the onboarding flow.
You'll need to provide identifying information that Stripe requires (name, address, tax info, payout bank account). Stripe handles all of this directly; we never see your bank details.
If Stripe later disables your payouts (for example, it needs an updated document), Settings → Payouts shows an Action required notice. After 30 days with payouts disabled, your published paid listings are unlisted (free listings stay up) and you get a notification saying so. Finish the Stripe step and relist them from your publisher dashboard.
You can save and edit drafts before payouts are set up, and you can publish free listings without payouts at all: nothing is charged, so there's nothing to pay out. Publishing a paid listing is the only action that requires Connect to be active — if you choose Paid in the publish dialog without payouts enabled, it links you to Settings → Payouts to finish onboarding.
Finished in Stripe but still see "onboarding isn't complete"?
When you finish onboarding and return to Settings → Payouts, we check your latest status with Stripe automatically, so the page should flip to Payouts enabled on its own. If you started from a lesson you were publishing, that screen also has a Back to your lesson button. Stripe occasionally takes a few moments to report the change. If the page still shows the onboarding checklist, click Refresh status to sync immediately — there's no need to start onboarding over.
How your earnings are calculated
Each sale earns you your share (85% while you're on Studio Pro, or 100% as a founding creator; see If you leave Studio Pro) of what the buyer actually paid for the credits they spent on your lesson:
- Credits bought at full price (the Starter bundle, $5 for 500 credits) are worth their face value: a $10 lesson brings in $10.
- Credits from bigger bundles come with bonus credits, so each one cost the buyer less. A $10 lesson bought with Extra Large credits ($100 for 14,000) brings in $7.14. A buyer who has bought several bundles pays at the average of what their credits cost.
- Free promotional credits, like the bonus credits on an annual plan, didn't cost the buyer anything, so they add nothing to your earnings. Buyers spend these first.
- Sales tax is never part of your earnings, and it is charged on your listing price.
Your Publisher dashboard shows what each buyer paid next to what you earned, and the sale email tells you what you earned. If a sale is refunded before it is paid out, it drops out of your balance.
When payouts go out
Payouts are sent on the 5th of each month. Each sale is held for 30 days first (to absorb any disputes or refunds), and a payout includes every sale whose hold has ended. We send it as a single transfer to your Stripe account, and Stripe then deposits it to your bank on its normal schedule.
When the transfer goes out, you get an email and a notification with the amount, and the sales it covers show as paid on your Publisher dashboard. Payout emails always arrive; they aren't covered by the Marketing emails switch (see Email Preferences).
If Stripe can't accept a transfer, nothing is lost: the payout stays pending, our team is alerted, and we retry it every day until it goes through, so a hiccup on payout day usually means your money arrives a day later, not a month later. The sales it covers stay attached to it and are never paid twice.
A sale moves from _Pending_ to _Available_ when its 30-day hold ends. You can see the _Available_ vs _Pending_ split on your Publisher dashboard.
If Stripe pauses your payouts
Sometimes Stripe needs more information before it can keep paying you, like an updated ID or bank detail. When that happens, Stripe pauses payouts to your account and we email you "Stripe needs a few details" with a link to Settings › Payouts, where you can finish what Stripe is asking for.
Your earnings aren't lost. Sales keep adding to your balance, and once Stripe turns payouts back on they go out on the usual monthly schedule.
Fix it within 30 days. If payouts stay paused for 30 days, your published paid lessons are taken off sale in the marketplace. Free lessons stay published.
If you leave Studio Pro
Selling is part of Studio Pro, but your lessons don't disappear if your plan ends. If your Studio Pro plan is canceled, goes unpaid, or you switch to a lower plan, your published lessons stay for sale and buyers keep everything they bought. What changes is your share: you keep 50% of sales made while you're not on Studio Pro, instead of 85%.
- Sales you made before keep the share they were made at. Each sale records its share when it happens and it never changes.
- Subscribe to Studio Pro again and you're back to 85% for every sale after that.
- Founding creators keep 100% whatever plan they're on.
Your Publisher dashboard always shows the share your next sale would earn, and says so plainly when it's 50%.
If one of your lessons is taken down
If our team takes one of your lessons down (for example after a copyright complaint), its students stop getting it, and we hold the earnings from its sales that haven't been paid out yet. Held earnings are left out of your monthly payout while the lesson is under review, and your Publisher dashboard shows how much is on hold.
- If the takedown is lifted, the held sales go back into your balance and are paid on the usual schedule.
- If buyers are refunded, those sales are reversed and aren't paid.
- Sales that were already paid out before the takedown aren't touched.
$50 payout minimum
To avoid sending lots of tiny transfers, we wait until your Available balance is at least $50. Below that, your earnings stay in Available and carry over to the next month's payout. The threshold itself is admin-configurable — if it ever changes, we'll announce it.
Refunds and disputes
When a buyer is refunded, the corresponding sale is reversed. When a buyer disputes a purchase, our team reviews the dispute and may reverse the sale. Most refunds and disputes are resolved well within the 30-day hold, so a reversed sale simply drops out of what's included in your next payout — nothing else to do.
On the rare sale that's reversed after you've already been paid for it, nothing is deducted from your account automatically. Our team follows up with you directly to settle it.
Where to see everything
- Publisher dashboard → your current share, Pending vs Available (and anything on hold), recent sales, per-sale revenue share, and which sales have been paid out
- Settings → Payouts → your Stripe Connect onboarding status, and Refresh status if it looks out of date
- Stripe Express dashboard → bank-level details and your tax forms. Berdee pays you, so Berdee issues your 1099, through Stripe; Stripe delivers it and keeps it in this dashboard