Hey GameWisp, How Do You Make Money?

Money and art are sort of like oil and water, sometimes. It can be really hard to talk about the two together without things becoming uncomfortable. Regardless, I’m going to do it anyway. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Most businesses need to make money to…you know…continue being a business. GameWisp is no different. So, I thought I’d take a second and explain how GameWisp makes money and why we chose to make it the way we do.

So, How Do You Make Money?

First, GameWisp makes money by taking some portion of every subscription. This is identical to how Twitch makes money off of its partnership program, how MCNs are able to operate as businesses, and how Patreon continues to be a thing. In short, when you make money, these platforms (GameWisp included) also make money.

There are a lot of philosophical and business-related reasons as to why we operate this way. But since you can’t eat philosophy for dinner, I’m not going to clutter up a blog post about money with those reasons and their justifiations. Here’s the short version:

• This approach is something with which streamers and YouTubers are already familiar and comfortable with (e.g., Twitch, YouTube, MCNs, Patreon, etc.)
• We’ve yet to see a hugely successful business that has a pricing structure focused around charging YouTubers and streamers directly (and we don’t want to do this).
• By making money when content creators make money it aligns our business goals around doing things that help content creators earn a living.

So how much money does GameWisp make off of every subscription? We chose to forego complicated percentages and the obscure mathematics that surround them and instead just take a flat rate per tier. GameWisp allows you to create six tiers and you can set your own price for each tier. We take $1 per tier plus credit card fees (unfortunately, those arcane percentages were impossible to avoid).

Here are three tiers. We take $1 for the first $2 for the second, and $3 for the third. Regardless of the price you set for them. See? Easy.

I’ll illustrate how this works with an example. You have a GameWisp Channel with three tiers, priced at $5, $10, and $15 respectively. If you gain a tier one subscriber, he/she will pay you at least $5 (your fans can pay more if they like, it doesn’t change our split at all). We will take $1 of that plus credit card fees. If you gain a tier three subscriber, he/she will pay you at least $15. We will take $3.00 plus credit card fees. The fees don’t stack, even though the level three subscriber received all the benefits of tiers one, two, and three, we only take $3.00 plus credit card fees.

That’s it. There are no tricks. No fancy sleight of hand. It’s just a flat rate: $1 per tier and the industry standard credit card fee of 2.9% + $0.30.

Edit: These splits change in your favor if you take advantage of our referral program. Check out this video to see how that works

Okay, Then How Do I Make Money?

Simple: you gain subscribers. They subscribe at a tier and receive the benefits at that tier as long as they keep subscribing. In turn, they are charged a monthly recurring rate (i.e., the price you set for the tier, or more if they decide to give more) for receiving those benefits.

We don’t pay on regular intervals. Instead, we allow you to cash out whenever you’d like as long as you have accrued more than $25.00. You can cash out on your Channel dashboard as long as you’ve provided an email address to a PayPal account (here’s how to do that).

Simple Math: When your account balance is more than $25.00 you’re free to click that big red ‘Cash Out’ button.

We only payout via PayPal at the moment. We payout using the PayPal Mass Payments API, such that the transfer fee for sending money to you is greatly reduced. We’re hoping to add more payout methods in the future, but at the moment paypal is meeting the needs of our users.

It’s really that simple. We typical pay out 1–2 days after you cash out, so there is usually only minimal delay between you cashing out and receiving your payout.

What About Chargebacks?

There’s no magic bullet that we’re aware of that can prevent the pain and misery associated with chargebacks. However, we do have a policy and it centers closely around working with the channel that was victim of the chargeback.

The first thing we do is investigate tips that may have a large potential for resulting in a chargeback (e.g., large single tips from anonymous tippers or from first time tippers with GameWisp accounts). If we see a tip that looks like it may result in a chargeback, we will reach out to the channel that received the tip and open a dialog about the tip itself. We do this to inform the channel and try to determine any context around the tip itself, the person that made it, etc.

Since the payment that will ultimately draw the chargeback comes to us, this leaves us on the hook for the chargeback. As such, when we receive a payment that we feel may result in a chargeback, we will hold onto it for some period of time. We’re not holding your subscription ransom, we’re just doing our best to ensure that the tip is legitimate before paying it out to a channel.

This approach provides the channel with some level of protection as well. Since the chargeback results on a payment made to us, we’re the ones dealing with the appropriate parties to attempt to get everything sorted out. Not you. We actively fight, and sometimes win, chargebacks for channels that use GameWisp.

When it comes to dealing with chargebacks, I’m not convinced there is any single correct answer. We feel like our approach suits us best when considering the current size and state of the company. However, we may have to change our chargeback poicy as our company grows. We will, of course, make that policy publicly available when and if it does change. We’ll also work as hard as we can to keep it as fair, open, and reasonable as possible.

What if I Want to Know More?

Talk to us! You can message us on Twitter, email us directly (help at gamewisp dot com), contact support through our website, or even talk to us on Reddit. We pride ourselves on customer service, being available wherever you need us to be, and just generally being decent human beings.

Our mission is to help YouTubers and Twitch Streamers turn their passion into a sustainable source of income so that they can keep doing what they love. We can’t help if we don’t know there’s a problem, so by all means, talk to us.

Originally published at blog.gamewisp.com on Jul 2, 2015.