This is a VERY VERY VERY early stage idea, so please take it with a grain of ?.

Stripe has a feature where we can pay out to customers, which has been incredibly difficult up until this product was released (a few years ago). I'm interested in the ways that we could use this to achieve two goals:

1. Continue to grow our player base, by bringing in the ability to make real cash on Subeta
2. Give CW creators something for the things they create. This one is a little sticky because I know that CW creators & the artists are separate in a lot of cases, so would creators get pushed out for artists who can now get money?

I was thinking something like a X% split of the "profit" of a CW (Which is something we'd need to figure out -- what is the cost of putting the item on the site and making it available to users, getting it through the queue, the great redlines that are provided, etc) that would be provided back to the creators monthly.

There are a lot of numbers to run (like, if this didn't increase the amount of money coming in Subeta would suffer greatly since CWs are our profit driver) but I wanted to know if this is something that would generate interest here!

So the only real way that we could work it it out is if it went to the person who submitted it -- so I could see two outcomes here:

1. Artists start submitting their own work, so that they get the $ from purchases on the site. This would remove submitters from the equation, even though they do the very important work (now) of managing their stores, getting players to sign up for batches, etc.
2. Submitters make agreements with artists when they purchase the art for the CW that they own the image & profits that come from it. I imagine in this case that artists would start asking for an increase of upfront for the art, or some sort of profit sharing (that those parties would need to manage).

The goal of this would be to make the market more sustainable, give players (esp artists) who participate in the system & largest revenue driver for the site something for doing that.

Thanks for the feedback everyone, I just want to point out that I mis-typed on the taxes thing in a few ways and want to clarify:

1. This would be open to additional countries, not just the US. The support is for: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, or the United States
2. The minimum payout for Subeta to require sending out a 1099 is $600. You are required to report any income (obviously) to the IRS, but $600 (in a year) is the minimum requirement for a business to send out 1099s.

I want to reiterate as well that this was a VERY EARLY idea that would take a long time to plan or implement -- was using this thread to gather feedback on the idea. There isn't any reason to come out on the thread like we're pushing it out tomorrow, or use such heavy language against it ;)

We're taking other ideas and suggestions from this thread too, so keep them coming! We've also got a cool new feature coming up in the V4 wardrobe (something to do with limbs...) that should be cool for all of you

You would have to report income to your own tax agency, you would not have to deal with the IRS if you were not in the US.

You misunderstood me, I said that this was an early stage idea which is why it was posted here, not that it's absolutely going to happen. It's an idea that I'm collecting feedback on, which everyone has provided, and I appreciate. I don't appreciate that it's impossible to ask for feedback without getting people seemingly thinking that this is the end of the CW market as we know it. I'm (as a human being) more likely to take feedback that isn't along the lines of THE WORST IDEA THAT HAS EVER BEEN PRESENTED IN THE HISTORY OF THE INTERNET.

I appreciate the other ideas, and I've started working with on what we can implement easily (including lowering prices, taking out the CSC slot, etc) but am still interested in collecting feedback on this idea even if the consensus appears to be a "no". Other creators (ones who don't check the forums as often, or just haven't given feedback yet) should be able to voice those thoughts without being told that it's already been decided and it's a no because one page of replies has said that.

My goal was to have a conversation about the possibility of paying for CWs and the topic has naturally moved in a few other directions on what y'all think would be better for the community than this idea, which is great.

It's also why I posted here first because it's the group that is most impacted, and makes it easy to get very direct feedback from a small group. The "world is ending" feel of this thread I think would have been x20 if it were in an open thread :)