Introduction

Our goal is to keep seller fees to a minimum, however as a small self-funded startup we don’t have huge piles of cash to offer everything completely for free. We use Stripe for processing and the fee structure is somewhat complicated, we have made our best effort to explain and simplify it below but if you have any questions or concerns please feel free to contact us!

What do I pay as a creator?

As a creator you will pay the following:

Processing Fees
Platform Support
Payout Fee

You never pay to list resources, you only pay if you sell a resource. Free listings are just that free. They are free to list and free to download for learners and learning facilitators.

There are two components that will reduce the amount transferred to your stripe account balance from each transaction. The processing fees and your voluntary contribution. Processing fees are approximately 4% of the list price and your voluntary contribution can be set from 0% - 100% of the remaining funds from a transaction.

When you choose to move funds from your stripe balance to your bank account or debit card a $2.25 transfer fee will be charged to your Stripe balance and the remainder will be paid out.

Processing Fees

These are a direct pass through expense. LearnGrove does not receive any compensation from collecting these fees.

Stripe fees work out to about 4% of “volume” (aka the total dollar amount of a transaction including any sales tax collected). These include (together “Processing Fees”):

2.9% payment processing fee*
0.5% tax calculation fee*
0.25% payout fee

Fees marked with a * are collected on the sales tax as well as the amount of the transaction, these fees can therefore change as much as 10% based on the location of the buyer so the fee percentage as an amount of the available funds also fluctuates.

Stripe also charges a base fee per transaction of $0.30 (“Base Fee”), which may not seem like much but when combined with the fees on smaller dollar transactions it can be up to approximately 40% of the transaction in fees.

To cover the fees we charge all our creators 4% of the list price of their items for Processing Fees. We divide the Base Fee amount among all the products in an order so if the purchaser buys 3 items the creator of each resource pays $0.10 to cover the Base Fee for that transaction. If a buyer buys multiple licenses for a single item that is still considered a single item for the purpose of dividing the Base Fee.

The Processing Fees and Base Fee are deducted before the transfer is made to your stripe balance for that transaction.

Platform Support

We want LearnGrove to be a true community for all of its members. It requires a significant investment of resources to keep this community available and develop new and exciting features to improve everyone’s experience.

You may choose any amount from 0% to 100% as a voluntary contribution to maintaining this community resource. Many similar platforms charge between 20%-45% for similar services. In the interest of lowering barriers and building an open and accessible community we wanted to allow our creators to choose the contribution amount that they were comfortable with. As a starting point we recommend 15% which would bring your total fees to 19% which is in line with the lower end of fees charged by similar platforms. Your voluntary contributions go directly towards platform improvements and adding features.

Examples

Sales Examples

Product A:

Voluntary Platform Support: 15%
List Price: $4.99

Product B:

Voluntary Creator Contribution: 10%
List Price: $5.99

Product A purchased by itself:

Creator receives $3.81 to Stripe Balance
- ((4.99 * (1- 0.04)) - 0.3) * (1- 0.15)
  - ((List Price * (1 - Processing Fees)) - Base Fee) * (1 - Voluntary Contribution)
LearnGrove receives $0.67
- ((4.99 * (1 - 0.04)) - 0.3) * (0.15)
  - ((List Price * (1 - Processing Fees)) - Transaction Fee) * (Voluntary Contribution)

Product B purchased by itself:

Creator receives $4.90 to Stripe Balance
- ((5.99*(1- 0.04)) - 0.3)* (1- 0.10)
  - ((List Price * (1 - Processing Fees)) - Base Fee) * (1 - Voluntary Contribution)
LearnGrove receives $0.54
- ((5.99 * (1 - 0.04)) - 0.3) * (0.10)
  - ((List Price * (1 - Processing Fees)) - Transaction Fee) * (Voluntary Contribution)

Product A and B purchased together:

Creator A receives $3.94
- ((4.99*(1- 0.04)) - 0.15)* (1- 0.15)
  - ((List Price * (1 - Processing Fees)) - Base Fee) * (1 - Voluntary Contribution)
Creator B receives $5.04
- ((5.99*(1- 0.04)) - 0.15)* (1- 0.10)
  - ((List Price * (1 - Processing Fees)) - Base Fee) * (1 - Voluntary Contribution)
LearnGrove receives $1.25
- ((4.99 * (1 - 0.04)) - 0.15) * (0.15) = $0.69
  - ((List Price * (1 - Processing Fees)) - Transaction Fee) * (Voluntary Contribution)
- ((5.99 * (1 - 0.04)) - 0.15) * (0.10) = $0.56
  - ((List Price * (1 - Processing Fees)) - Transaction Fee) * (Voluntary Contribution)

Payout Examples

Seller Stripe Balance: $56.43
Amount Transferred: $54.18 ($56.43 - $2.25)

Seller Stripe Balance: $325
Amount Transferred: $322.75 ($325 - $2.25)

Seller Fees and Payout Rates