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Pay and pricing

A fee on each paid order. Payouts through Stripe. Profit shared with the people doing the work.

Arsclepius charges nothing to join and nothing to list. It earns a platform fee on what is sold through it, and that includes every billing cycle of a membership a community, an instructor or anyone else sells. That fee is not the community's or instructor's money unless they choose so: by default the buyer pays it on top of the price, and a seller can choose to absorb it instead, on each event, offering, plan or course. It covers the platform's costs, and what is left is for the people and communities who keep running things here. Voluntary support, which buys nothing, is the only other money it takes, and it never goes into the share. This page is the whole model, with nothing rounded up.

  • Nothing to join or list
  • 6% + $0.29 standard fee per paid order
  • Pass it to the buyer or absorb it
  • Share: quarterly, after costs

What things cost

Students: nothing to join

A student account is free. You pay only when you buy something: a ticket, a lesson, a course, a session pack, or a membership a community or instructor sells. When the fee is added on top it is its own line at checkout, and on a membership its own line on every bill. When the seller has absorbed it, the price you see is the whole price. Either way nothing is hidden.

Instructors, performers, communities: nothing to join

No listing fee and nothing to subscribe to. The platform earns its fee on what you sell, including every cycle of a membership you sell. By default that fee is added on top for the buyer, so the price you set is the price you are paid. You can choose to absorb it instead on anything you sell.

The fee on a sale

The standard fee is 6% of each paid order plus $0.29. Card processing is added to the fee: 2.9% of the price and fee together, plus $0.30. The fee never exceeds the order itself, so a very small order pays the order and no more. Some kinds of sale carry a different fee. Checkout always shows the exact fee before anyone pays. Passed on, it is added on top for the buyer as its own line at checkout. Absorbed, the buyer pays your price and the fee comes out of your share.

The fee on a membership

When a community, an instructor or anyone else sells a membership, the platform fee is charged on every billing cycle: 6% of each paid billing cycle plus $0.29. A membership that includes free sign-ups or courses carries 12% of each paid billing cycle plus $0.29 instead. Card processing is added to the fee: 2.9% of the price and fee together, plus $0.30. By default the fee is its own line on the member's bill, so the member pays it and the seller is paid the full price they set. A seller can choose to absorb it on a plan instead: the member is billed the price alone and the fee comes out of the seller's share.

You choose who pays it

Pass it on, which is the default: the buyer pays the fee on top as its own line, and you are paid your full price. Or absorb it: the buyer pays your price and nothing more, and the fee comes out of your share. You choose on each event, offering, plan and course when you create or edit it, the same choice Eventbrite gives organisers. A change applies to new sales only; everyone who already bought keeps the terms they paid under.

Card processing

Every payment runs through Stripe, and Stripe holds the bank details, not us. Card processing is added to the platform fee at 2.9% of the price and fee together, plus $0.30, so it does not come out of the platform's own part. It follows the fee: passed on, the buyer pays it with the rest of the fee; absorbed, it comes out of your share with the rest of the fee.

How payouts work

  1. Connect Stripe

    Every seller connects a Stripe account from Settings. Stripe handles the identity checks and the bank details.

  2. Ticket money is held for a week after the event

    Ticket revenue is held until seven days after the event ends, then released to the host. The window exists so refunds under the event's refund policy, and any disputes, are settled before the money moves.

    The release date is fixed at the moment of sale. Rescheduling an event never pulls a payout forward.

  3. Packs and subscriptions settle as Stripe processes them

    Session packs and subscription plans deliver immediately, so they pay to your connected account on Stripe's normal schedule with no hold.

    When you pass the fee on, a member's bill shows your price and the platform fee as separate lines, and you are paid your price. When you absorb it, the bill is your price alone and you are paid your price less the fee.

  4. Refunds follow the event's policy

    You choose the policy when you create an event: all sales final, refundable until a cutoff, until the event starts, or any time. A refund a buyer asks for returns the seat price and tax, less the platform fee, whether it was added on top or absorbed into your price, and the buyer is told that before confirming. When a host cancels the event, the refund is automatic: everything the buyer paid, minus card processing, and never more than the platform fee is held back.

The revenue share

After costs, what is left of the platform's fees is for the people and communities who keep running things here. Here is exactly how that is computed, and what can stop it.

After costs
profit is shared, never revenue
Quarterly
when it closes and pays
Two years
of steady activity, at least, before you share

How the pool is worked out. The platform's fees collected in the period, less the card processing paid on them, less any fee given back on a refund, less the budgeted costs of running the platform: operations, salaries, advertising, a safety and support net, and leadership, which is the founder's pay. Costs that earlier periods could not cover carry forward and are covered first, including costs from before the pool's start date. The one exception is the founder's pay: it is taken out before the pool in each quarter, but whatever a quarter cannot cover of it is dropped, not owed later. Whatever remains is the pool, and it is never negative.

What can stop it. The share is not a guarantee. A quarter pays only when the fees the platform kept are more than its budgeted costs and the costs earlier quarters left uncovered. The company sets that budget, and it includes the founder's pay. A quarter that does not get past its costs pays nothing, and nothing is owed for it later.

Who is in. Instructors, performers, event hosts, and communities and venues: anyone who earns points for what they run or sell here. You do not switch it on, and it is not limited to teaching. Learners and attendees are outside it, and so are people who work for Arsclepius.

What counts. Each skill you verify for another person counts one point, and each hour you teach one to one counts one point; both need a teaching or performing account. A skill counts once a quarter for each learner, and one teacher's verifications count at most ten times a quarter for one learner and 100 times a quarter in all. One-to-one hours count up to four hours a lesson, 40 hours a quarter for one learner and 200 hours a quarter in all. Each person checked in at an event you host counts half a point for each day they are checked in, on up to seven days, as long as their seat paid the platform fee or came with a membership that paid it. A free seat does not count. The points for an event go to its host, so a performer booked by another host earns none from that show. Each course sold and each membership cycle paid counts half a point. A single lesson or a session pack counts through the hours taught, not through the sale. A seat or a sale counts in full once the platform has kept one dollar on it, and in proportion below that, so a hundred very cheap seats are not a hundred full ones. Above that, prices never count. Ranking people by revenue would pay whoever charges the most, which is close to the opposite of the point.

Communities. When an event is attached to a community, each check-in is split evenly between the community and whoever hosted the event. It is never counted twice. A community builds its own active quarters. Its part is paid to the Stripe account of the person who created the community page, because a community has no bank account of its own.

The wait. You can share from the quarter after you have eight active quarters behind you, which is at least two years of steady activity. A quarter is active when you earned one point or more in each of at least two of its three months; a quarter with less is a quiet quarter. A quiet quarter pauses the count and never resets it, and once you are sharing, a quarter only pays if it is active. Active quarters from before the pool's start date count. A quarter's count is fixed when that quarter is closed. The app does not show your count yet: write to us and a person will tell you.

The split. Nothing is divided equally per person. Your part is your points out of everyone's points that quarter: half of the pool goes by points alone, and half by points times tenure. Tenure is your active quarters out of twelve: nine out of twelve in your first paying quarter, and full once you have twelve active quarters, which takes at least three years. It weights your points; it does not fix an amount. Only people past the wait are paid their part. The part earned by people who are still in their wait is paid to nobody else: it stays with the platform, which is what the wait is for.

People who work for Arsclepius can teach on it too. Their pay is a salary, which is taken out first as a cost. They are not in the pool.

What changed. An earlier rule on this page split half the pool evenly among instructors with any activity in the quarter. It was replaced on October 8, 2026, before any quarter was closed or paid: there is now a wait, event hosts and communities are included, and nothing is split evenly.

Where it stands. The share is new, and it has a start date: no quarter before October 1, 2028 distributes anything. From then, the first distribution comes at the first quarterly close where fees are more than the platform's costs and somebody is past the wait. This page will say so when the first payout has gone out.

Standings, not money leaderboards

Communities, instructors, performers and services are ranked by live members, with recent activity shown alongside. Never by revenue. Publishing income to competitors rewards charging more, not teaching better, and a blended score nobody can explain is a leaderboard people assume is rigged.

Every professional can see where they sit on each board, and the boards only show published, approved pages. A private or draft experience never appears in someone else's ranking.

The shared skill library

The part that lets the platform grow safely and fairly, without a founder as the bottleneck.

Every skill on Arsclepius lives in one shared library. A discipline's ladder is drawn from it, and an instructor's experience picks from it and can add to it.

When you add a skill nobody has taught here before, it is usable in your experience straight away and it joins the shared list marked as new. Other professionals in that discipline, the people who teach and do it, can review it with one tap: real, duplicate, or not a skill. Votes can change, and the history of every vote is kept for years, so a determination is never a mystery.

Progressions are reviewed the same way. One skill leads to another, and the people teaching it can agree or disagree. Your own syllabus order stays yours; the shared graph belongs to everyone.

Duplicates are merged, never deleted, so no card, sign-off or XP is ever orphaned. Curated ladders are marked as platform canon so they do not sit in review, and a skill you pull from the library arrives at the tier the ladder gives it, so a heavy lift never lands on Tier 0 by accident.

What stays yours: the tiers you sign carry your name for as long as the student holds the card. The share rewards work done for other people, and nothing in the library or the ledger pays for buzzwords.

Questions people ask

Is there a monthly fee for instructors or communities?

No. There is no listing fee and no monthly fee. The cut is a fee on each paid order, 6% plus $0.29 as standard. Card processing is added to the fee: 2.9% of the price and fee together, plus $0.30. Checkout always shows the exact fee before anyone pays. If you sell memberships, each billing cycle is a paid order: it carries the platform fee, which the member pays on top of your price unless you choose to absorb it on that plan.

Does the platform take a cut of the memberships we sell?

Yes: the platform fee is charged on each billing cycle, as it is on a ticket. It is not the community's or instructor's money unless you choose so. By default the member pays it on top: set $100 a month and you are paid $100 a month, with the fee as its own line on the member's bill. Choose to absorb it on that plan and the member pays $100 while you are paid $100 less the fee. The rate is under "The fee on a membership" above.

Who pays the platform fee?

You choose, on everything you sell. Pass it on, the default, and the buyer pays it on top: its own line at checkout, and on a membership its own line on every bill, so the price you set is the amount you are paid. Absorb it and the buyer pays your price alone, and the fee comes out of your share. It is the same choice Eventbrite gives organisers.

Can the fee change?

Yes, and this page always shows the rate in force. A change applies from the date it starts and never alters an order already placed: every order records the fee it was actually charged, so a past quarter keeps the rate it was charged under.

Can I sell a membership to my own students?

Yes. Add a subscription plan to an offering, set its price and interval, and choose what members get: a number of included sign-ups each month, all-you-can-attend, a discount on what you sell, or specific courses included. You can mix them, and any single event can be marked as not included or discount-only, for a visiting guest. Each billing cycle carries the platform fee, paid by the member on top of your price unless you choose to absorb it on that plan.

When do ticket sales pay out?

Seven days after the event ends, to the Stripe account you connected. Packs and subscriptions pay out on Stripe's normal schedule with no hold.

How are refunds handled?

A refund a buyer asks for follows the policy you chose for the event: it returns the seat price and tax, the platform fee stays with the platform (whether it was added on top or absorbed into your price), and the buyer sees that before confirming. If you cancel the event, every buyer is refunded automatically: everything they paid, minus card processing, and never more than the platform fee is held back.

How do I qualify for the revenue share?

Run or sell something here and keep going. You can share from the quarter after you have eight active quarters behind you. A quarter is active when you earned one point or more in each of at least two of its three months: people checked in at events you host, courses or membership cycles sold, skills verified for others, or hours taught one to one. Fewer than two active months in a quarter does not count.

I only run events. Am I in?

Yes. You do not need a teaching account. Each person checked in at an event you host counts, as long as their seat paid the platform fee or came with a paid membership, and the same wait applies to everyone.

I perform at shows other people host. Am I in?

Not for those shows: the points for an event go to its host. Shows you host yourself count, and so do skills you verify for others and hours you teach one to one.

Are communities in the revenue share?

Yes. A community earns its own points from the people checked in at events attached to it on seats that paid the platform fee, builds its own active quarters, and is paid through the Stripe account of the person who created its page.

Can I teach outside Arsclepius as well?

Yes. What you do elsewhere is your business. Only what happens on the platform counts toward the share.

When does the share start paying?

Not before October 1, 2028, and it is not a guarantee. From then, a quarter pays when fees are more than the budgeted costs and the costs left uncovered from before, and somebody is past the wait. This page will change the day the first payout goes out.