What the platforms publish
A published rate is the one number in this subject that does not need a survey behind it.
The fee schedules, revenue shares and payout thresholds that platforms have published in their own terms — attributed and dated.
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Leading the sectionFifty-Five Per Cent, and What the Rest Covers
YouTube's published 55% revenue share for AdSense and channel memberships sounds like a fixed split. The territory between that number and a creator's bank account is more variable.
Medium read · Photo: Lukas Blazek / Pexels
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Three Tenths of a Cent Is an Average, Not a Rate
Spotify publishes a per-stream figure. The royalty pool that produces it works differently — and the 2024 monetisation threshold changed who reaches it at all.
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Apple's Commission Has One Headline Number. Everything Interesting About It Is a Footnote.
The App Store's 30 percent rate is real, published, and applies to fewer transactions than the headline suggests.
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Ten Per Cent on One Side, Eight to Twelve on the Other
Substack and Patreon publish their fee structures. What each rate covers, and how the two platforms itemise it differently.
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Listing, Transaction, Offsite — Etsy's Fee Stack in Its Own Words
Etsy publishes four distinct charges that apply to a sale. They do not always arrive as one line item.
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Twitch's Split Was Fifty-Fifty Until It Wasn't
The platform's standard revenue share for streamers has always been 50/50 — except for the partners who quietly held something better, until Twitch said they couldn't anymore.
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The Fee Schedule Amazon Publishes and the One It Changed Without Notice
Amazon Associates posts its commission rates in a public table. In April 2020, it cut most of them — with four days' warning.
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TikTok's Creator Rewards Programme, in TikTok's Own Terms
TikTok replaced its Creator Fund in 2023 with a new programme that disclosed higher per-view rates — and steeper eligibility requirements.
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Upwork Simplified Its Fee in 2023. Here Is What the Old One Was.
The platform moved from a three-tier sliding scale to a single rate — a change that cut costs for low earners and raised them for high ones.
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Programmatic's Middle — What the Ad-Tech Layer Keeps Before the Publisher Sees Anything
Published audits of the programmatic supply chain have found that less than half of advertiser spending reliably reaches the publisher. The intervening layer has a name, a structure, and a paper trail.
Long read · Photo: RDNE Stock project / Pexels