How it works

Every creator on Outseat gets one sponsor spot, and only one. We call it the seat.

Whoever is sitting in it gets their name, a link and one short line shown at the top of that creator's newsletter, bio, stream or channel.

The seat goes to whoever pays the most. Anyone can take it at any moment by paying at least the price shown on the page. Nothing is left to chance, nothing is pooled and paid back out, and nothing is wagered. You are buying an advertising spot, the same way you would buy an ad.

A creator's first week starts at $5. After that, each week starts at whatever price that creator sets as their floor.

While the seat is under $50, you take it by paying $1 more than the sponsor sitting there. At $50 and up, you pay either $5 more or 10% more, whichever is bigger, rounded up to the nearest dollar.

You never have to work that out. The page always shows you the exact number. You can always pay more than it asks.

Already in the seat? You can pay extra at any time to raise your own price. That makes the seat more expensive for the next person who wants it.

This payment is non-refundable. You hold the seat until someone outseats you or until the Sunday reset.

Losing the seat thirty seconds after you pay is not a bug. That is the product doing exactly what it says. We do not refund because you changed your mind, because someone took it from you quickly, or because it got cheaper later.

One exception, and it is in your favour. If your payment lands after someone else has already taken the seat at your amount or higher, you do not get the seat and we refund you in full, automatically, without you having to ask. Money that does not buy the seat never quietly becomes a donation.

At midnight UTC on Sunday, every seat clears out and opens again at the creator's floor price. That floor is normally 30% of what the seat closed at, rounded to the nearest $5, and never under $5. Creators can set their own floor before the reset.

This is on purpose. Without it, prices only ever climb and one sponsor sits there forever. Every week is a fresh start, and whoever is in the seat when it empties is that week's sponsor.

The creator and Outseat can each pull a sponsor at any time, with no refund. We use that for anything that puts the creator's reputation or a visitor's safety at risk: slurs, sexual content, scams, impersonation, malware and phishing.

Names and messages are checked the moment you submit them. Links are checked separately. Your name and message go up straight away, but your link stays unclickable until we have checked the site behind it. Links that fail are never switched on, and domains that keep failing are blocked for good.

When we pull a sponsor, the previous sponsor goes back in at their old price and we write down the reason.

You pay Outseat, and Outseat is the merchant of record for your payment. Our name is what appears on your card statement. Payments are processed by Stripe; we never see or store your card number.

Refunds and payment disputes are ours to handle, not the creator's. If something has gone wrong with a payment, we are who you talk to.

We keep 15% of what you pay. The rest is the creator's, and card processing fees come out of our share rather than theirs. Some creators keep more than that by arrangement with us. What any particular creator keeps is between us and them, and it never changes the price you see.

We keep the name, link and message you chose to show, the amount you paid, and your email address if you gave us one. The email is used for two things only: your receipt, and telling you when someone has taken the seat from you.

Clicks on a sponsor's link are counted using a scrambled, one-way version of the visitor's IP address, grouped by hour. We do not store raw IP addresses, and we do not pad the numbers.

Every seat is set up by us, by hand, after a creator asks for one. Nobody can open a seat in someone else's name. The page carries that person's name and collects money against it, so we read every application and only publish once we are satisfied the person behind it is really them.

Setting one up is free. We take 15% of what a seat sells for and nothing else: no listing fee, no monthly charge, and no deduction for card processing, which comes out of our share. Some creators keep more than that on terms we agree with them directly, and we tell them exactly what those terms are before their seat goes live.

A creator can connect a Stripe account, in which case their share reaches them automatically each time a sponsor pays. A creator who has not connected one has their share held by us until they ask for it. We hold it for as long as it takes: nothing expires, there is no minimum, and not connecting an account forfeits nothing. It is their money and we pay all of it when they ask.

Any creator can ask us to take their seat down at any time, and we will. Anything we are holding for them is still theirs afterwards.

You must be 18 or older, because the payment providers involved require it.