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Jan 2018

Just making an observation. Compare it to an employer taking 25% of their wait staff's tips. Seems pretty sleazy if you ask me. What are you guys opinions on the matter?

Wonder if a petition to get it lowered would work.

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    Jan '18
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    Jan '18
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Yeeah. The fee + Tapas' share taking around 30-45% from each tip seems kind of much.

is it? i was looking at mine, that came to about 25% but i guess i wasn't accounting for transfer fees.

Yeah, 30% of app-purchased coins go to the app store. Unfortunately that's not going to get lower, unless Apple or Google decides to lower it. The rest is split between Tapas and the receiving creators, with the Tapas cut being much smaller (as expected).

Coins earned by watching ads don't have that 30% cut, so the fee is going to vary depending on how much of the tip came from app purchases, web purchases or ad watching.

Well, here's the thing. Tapas only takes 15% of tips as a transaction fee in its terms of service which I think is a rather reasonable amount.
As mentioned, however, ad coins are free and are simply split 15-85 but bought coins are split 15-30 (for Google/Apple as mentioned)- 55 and the dollar value of a coin changes based on whether it's an ad coin, desktop coin, or mobile coin.

Another thing though, what numbers are you using?
The estimated fees aren't exactly the most accurate of numbers, they're just estimations after all, the most accurate numbers are the ones you see before you transfer money because Tapas calculates all the fees at once because the creator gets more money that way.

Last time I checked, if you have enough money, clicking the request transfer button will bring up a little window that shows all your fees and such.
Using those numbers, you will find Tapas takes almost exactly 15% of the tips because of rounding and depending of who tipped you, it will say Apple/Google takes anywhere from 0-30% of your tips.

What you're seeing is the result of several levels of fees.

If people are tipping you with mobile app purchased coins, Apple/Google takes 30% right off the top. So that turns $100 into $70. Tapas also receives 15% so you're now at $55.

The reason for the 30% by Apple/Google is their prepaid gifts cards are routinely discounted. We picked up a stack of $50s for $42 from Costco during Black Friday. Costco gives executive members 2% back and if you pay for them using a Visa rewards card you can earn even more. We got 2x Marriotts points at the time which works out to around 1.6% to 2% depending on how you redeem the rewards. It all worked out to about 20% off. Apple/Google doesn't want to lose money on the churn, which is why they charge apps 30% for their service.

If you are tipped with earned coins (ads, special offers, etc.) then it's just 15% to Tapas. So if someone earned 120,000 coins watching ads ($100) and gave them all to you, you would walk away with $85.

You can also purchase coins through the web interface via credit card. We haven't received an official staff response on the fee schedule but because they use a different transaction process, it's going to be much lower, likely in line with typical merchant transaction providers. The typical can vary somewhat, between 3% to 7%. Convenience processors like Square charges 2.75% + $.15/transaction for example. You can also pay with PayPal which charges 2.9% + $.30/transaction to the merchant.

On the web interface $29.99 in coins purchased works out to $29.00 of coins. It's unknown whether the $1 covers the transaction fees or if it is a convenience fee and there's another 5% taken as a web fee to cover the transaction cost. After that Tapas would take their usual 15%.

15% may sound high. It's not. Amazon charges e-book sales 30% plus $0.15/MB download fee.

In the print world Tapas is essentially a distributor much like Baker and Taylor or Ingram. They routinely take 70% of your cover price and resell to physical stores for 55-60%, keeping 10-15%. When Barnes and Noble sells your book at 50% off, they're still making a thin profit.

All in all it's fair pricing when you know all the back end stuff.

That may be true for a book store, but there's no physical copy of a book being sold. It's not like they have to produce, move, and handle products. And moving money from one account to another doesn't cost that much for a digital transaction on their end. It's high because they, may it be tapas or google/apple, are dipping their fingers in. That doesn't seem fair to either the person giving the tip, and intending it to go to the author, or the person getting tipped.

Yeah they have no cost, aside from huge server fees, a team of staff members, constant updates to a site that provides free services, never mind setting up and building the tipping feature in the first place... So no. No cost whatsoever, we are definitely being screwed over.

I'm being a bit difficult here, because reading through this thread gives me the same feeling I get when I receive comments on my comic on how it should be free to read.

No, it shouldn't be free. I'm on this site and I'm receiving a service. I don't have to build a website, the interface works fine, people can pay me and I don't have to deal with transaction fees myself. It's handled by someone else.
And I'm not forced to take the money. If I don't want Tapas to receive a share, I don't have to have tipping enabled and instead ask supporters to go to my patreon or other means. Never mind that they also have high fees over there.

Yeah, you're so right. I have no idea how smackjeeves and webtoons even exist without taking all their comic artists' tips... oh wait. But those sites have ads right? Tapas doesn't even have those. That must be why.

You mean the ad revenue that we receive 50% of? (Edit: I'm told it's 70% that creators get to keep)

Also, webtoons and tapas don't exist because of the money they are making on ads. They survive because of investors or their parent company. (I don't know enough about smackjeeves to talk about them). Webtoons has a huge company backing them, Tapas is much smaller in comparison. There are differences in how much they can afford and how much of a risk they can take.

Business talk can be very interesting, and very complicated. I would love to look into the basic ins and outs of a bunch of companies, but I don't think they would like it if I had that information. ; D

Things never are as easy as they seem. Or as cheap.

Frankly Webtoons should not exist. It is a financial loser. No income (ads are coming at some point) and tens of thousands being paid out to creators each month, not to mention the fixed costs of servers and staff.

Webtoons is completely dependent upon Naver Corporation to stay alive. Naver is the Korean equivalent of Google. They financially support Webtoons because it promotes their platform. It's like selling white bread at a loss to get customers into your store ("loss leader pricing"). However Naver could shut down Webtoons at any point in time and from a CFO's position it makes complete sense.

So yeah, as great as Webtoons is, it is a house of cards propped up by Naver. There's a chance Naver may never pull the plug, but if it does, it will all disappear overnight (e.g. Inkblazers) since there is no way it can stand alone on it's own. Naver has already taken one step that shows a slow withdrawal of support, they spun-off Webtoons into its own corporation last year.

By no means does this mean Webtoons is on fire and today is the end of the world for them. Creators however just need to keep their eyes wide open and prepare for all possible outcomes. What we eventually may see is Webtoons transition into a subscription model because ads alone won't be able to support it if Naver decides to step back.

Ad revenue is experiencing a death spiral. Recently Anime News Network has resorted to asking for donations like Wikipedia.

"Advertising is no longer enough to support Anime News Network entirely. While some of our advertisers have remained very loyal to us, others have their own challenges and have no choice but to cut their budgets. This, combined with ad-blocking and dropping CPM rates means that, while it costs more than ever to operate Anime News Network, it's now harder than ever for us to finance our operations."
https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/subscription

Readers aren't clicking ads and are even blocking them outright, resulting in producers of content struggling to stay afloat. Whatever income Webtoons is expecting from ads won't likely be long lived.

Ad blocking is growing by 30% year over year. According to an IAB report, 26% of all desktop users and 15% of all mobile consumers use blockers to remove ads from publishers' websites. Those numbers are only going to continue to grow.

Free readers will eventually kill the goose that laid the golden egg.

Smackjeeves is run off ads, so eventually it too will go the way of the dodo.

This is why Tapas is working hard at trying to build a sustainable platform for both creators and readers. They offer voluntary ads for readers to watch and creators get 85% of that when tipped. It's fair. They need that 15% in order to keep the company not only online but improving. As pointed out earlier, Amazon is taking 30% on eBook sales. In light of that, Tapas' fee schedule is reasonable.

If you are buying coins from Apple/Google then you have to take into account that Apple/Google has their own cut. So you have two parties involved in the transaction, not one. This is why you're seeing up to a 45% transaction loss. The way to reduce those fees would be to tell readers to use web tipping, buy discounted Apple/Google gift cards, or save up and make massive tips during Tapas' next Tipping Event.

Yes, during the tipping events, Tapas loses money. They've paid out 20% back twice and could pay up to 30% if the top tier is ever reached. This is a 5% to 15% loss for the company. Their loss is creators' gain.

If you want to support a creator with no fees then you'll have to mail them a check which has the cost of an envelope and postage, so even that's not free. You can use Patreon but that has a fee. The creator can open a merchant transaction account and accept credit cards but that has lots of fees and a lot of paperwork and annual compliance requirements. You could "send a gift" on Paypal and if you are both in the United States, then yes, that would be transaction fee free.

But what creator would want to take the time to process thousands of $.02 to $.04 tips via PayPal? Your time is worth money, so all the convenience of Tapas collecting your tips for you and sending one payment is time saved. Consequently they charge for it, 15%. Wouldn't you if you were doing that service for someone else?

The "flaws" that Tapas has (Premium Comics, Tipping) are actually a predictive response to an almost certain future where ad revenue cannot support most websites and many have no choice but to close down if they cannot self-fund their activities.

I hope this doesn't mean the death of online ads, just the spammy automated ones.

Slight correction about ad revenue: creators actually receive 70% of all ad revenue. Tapas takes 30% of ad revenue money as stated in the ToS, but the point is still the same: creators get a good chunk of the ad revenue.

On the subject of how these companies stay alive, here's what I found on the internet:

Tapas (surprisingly easy to find this information):
Run by 17 employees (from the about page although my source says 11-50)
$10,700,000 in funding from 14 investors
Takes 15% of tips, 30% of ad revenue

Sources: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/tapas-media, https://tapas.io/about, https://help.tapas.io/hc/en-us/articles/115005545248

Webtoons:
101-250 employees (9 employees + a team of designers and engineers according to their about page)
Supported by Naver
Takes 100% of ad revenue (Note:@GoldenPlume ads have actually already come. It's just a little box at the end of each episode though)
Supports 321 US discover creators with varying amounts from $100 -$1000 per month via Patreon (was supposed to be just 300) and however many featured artists they have.
More or less only support the very popular.

Sources: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/webtoons2, http://www.webtoons.com/en/about, http://www.webtoons.com/en/notice/detail?noticeNo=643

Smackjeeves:
One website of unknown credibility claims it has 10 employees (but to be fair, this is a completely reasonable estimate as Smackjeeves was actually run by just 1 person for a while).
The same website claims Smackjeeves has an annual estimated revenue of $10,000,000
Takes 100% of ad revenue.
As far as I know, does not actually give back to creators in any way.
Basically no company information readily available on the internet.

Sources: https://www.owler.com/iaApp/236343/smackjeeves-company-profile3

So take your pick.


Now, if you're really upset about all this there are a number of other ways to earn money:
Patreon:
Takes a 5% fee
But is geared towards monthly support.
PayPal:
2.9% fee + $0.30
Is good for large donations.
Ko-Fi:
Partnered with PayPal and has no fees as far as I can see.

But tipping has 2 main advantages:

  1. Coins are (usually) free. With tipping I can grind ads for an hour or two (well, when they appear, but that's a different problem) while doing something else and you can get a dollar basically for free.

  2. Coins add up. If you get enough tippers, even if they only tip 50 coins which is equivalent to $0.04, those add up and if you have 25 tippers that becomes an entire dollar or $0.85 after fees. But the thing is, for the tippers, that only took 3 or 4 minutes of their life at most.

When it comes down to it, tipping is just another way to get money. It's not like people tipping you is going to prevent them from becoming a Patreon or something. Even if Tapas decided to split tips 50-50, you are still getting money. Yes, that would be a lot less money than you deserve, but it's still money.
If you can convince your readers to become a Patreon or use Ko-Fi, that's actually better for you and by all means, try to do that, but for readers that don't have money, tipping is a free option that allows them to support you with real money without using their real money.

Something also to point out, some of the platforms have minimums. Patreon for example is $1. Some people may be willing to tip something, but not a dollar every month. Tapas allows them to tip as little as $.02. This increases the likelihood of getting something from everyone.