What these platforms actually pay, with the receipts
Fees, payout minimums and waiting times, pulled from the company's own pages and dated. If a number here isn't sourced, it doesn't go up.
FIG 1 · EUR/USD / USD
What you must reach before each of these will pay you
The lowest published threshold on each platform we cover, with the method it belongs to. Every figure is that company's own, read off its own page on the date shown there. Nothing is converted between currencies: where a company publishes one number for both, it prints as EUR/USD.
How a one-person shop gets a bot that answers customers from its own shipping, returns and sizing pages: the policies as files, a browser prototype in Google AI Studio, then one API call with the files attached through OpenAI file search, Anthropic prompt caching or Gemini File Search, a fallback message for the 429, and the honest answer on putting it on the website (OpenAI's no-code Agent Builder shuts down November 30, 2026; ChatKit needs your own server). A thousand exchanges cost about a dollar or two; the ceiling on your tier decides whether the 1,001st is answered. Every step read off the providers' own documentation in 2026.
How to get a usable 1,500-word first draft for a client out of OpenAI, Claude, Gemini or Mistral: write the brief as the system instruction, run it in a browser (Google AI Studio, Mistral Studio) or with one API request, strip the preamble, do the edit pass, and hand over the file. Then the arithmetic: 1,500 words is about 2,000 tokens, and at published output prices the draft costs between a tenth of a cent and ten cents. Every step read off the providers' own documentation in 2026.
The transcription gap, turned into a service: ElevenLabs Productions charges $2.00 a minute for a human-reviewed transcript, Rev pays the typist $0.40 to $1.10 a minute, and Scribe v2 by API does the hour for $0.22. Upload, ten minutes of fixing names, export text and SRT, quote per audio minute. Every step walked through in a real ElevenLabs account, with screenshots, in 2026.
How to get a blog in a non-English language from nothing to its first ad: check the language against AdSense's list of 50, register a .com for $11.08 and hosting for $5.88 a month, draft the first posts with an API for cents, apply to AdSense (the only door with no traffic number) and connect the site, install Google Analytics before the next gates ask for it, then aim at 10,000, 25,000 or 250,000 monthly visitors. Then the splits and the 21 to 65 days between month end and money. Every step read off the networks' and hosts' own pages in 2026.
How to buy a channel without buying a ban: the due-diligence sheet built from the only figures a platform publishes, the YouTube handover done the one way its help pages describe (Brand Account, owner invite, your own AdSense, a fresh review of about a month), and the honest answer on Twitch, Kick, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, whose terms forbid a transfer or say nothing. Then which account the money actually flows through, and what happens to the balance earned before the handover. Every clause read off the platforms' own terms and help pages in 2026.
How to get a channel to the point where a viewer can pay you: the four Twitch numbers inside one 30-day window, 2FA and the onboarding steps in the Creator Dashboard down to the tax interview; the Enable Subscriptions button on Kick after 5 hours; the Apply Now button in YouTube Studio's Earn tab after 1,000 subscribers. Then what a $5 subscription becomes, the payout floors of $50 and $100, and the 15, 21 and 30 days between month end and money. Every step read off the three platforms' own help pages in 2026.
KK
Buying traffic instead?
There is a second set of pages here for media buyers: what each ad network pays out at, how it pays, and how often.
