Monetizing Content in 2025: How Fast 10 Creative Platforms Pay Creators (and What Percentages They Take)
Practical advice for earning on Substack, Patreon, YouTube, TikTok, Bandcamp and more!
Creative Jobs’ happy mascot is named Hatmaster Jobby Job, and he was created by Richard Alexander Caraballo
For the past seven years, I’ve been studying and experimenting with several platforms that allow users to monetize their original content and then pay them directly. In that time, I’ve learned how quickly — or slowly — many of the most popular ones pay creators, what percentages and other fees they take for their services and what, if any, obstacles need to be cleared for monetization to even be possible.
In the below guide, I’ll share my insights on 10 popular platforms, including Substack, TikTok, YouTube, Bandcamp, Patreon and Kickstarter. I hope that it helps you think about how online platforms can potentially be a part of your income streams in 2025. If you’re looking to be paid quickly, I’ve got my recommendations of places where you can focus your efforts — and notes on which may be most precarious.
Substack
How long it takes to get paid: 1-2 weeks for first payment, around two days thereafter.
Percentage taken: Substack takes 10%, Stripe takes 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction and 0.7% for recurring subscriptions/transactions.
Notes: The platforming of some particularly evil and misinformation-propagating views remains a problem. I can understand if you wouldn’t want to set up shop here. It’s also understandable if you still want to take advantage of the money-earning potential of building newsletters on Substack.
On the positive side, in the two years that I’ve been building newsletters here, I have connected with a lot of incredible authors and newsletters and have only had to block one troll. It’s been a positive experience over here. And I love the immediacy of pay.
More info: How do payouts work on Substack?
YouTube
How long it takes to get paid: Once a $10 earning threshold has been met, payments are issued once a month for the prior month’s earnings.