Creator Finance · 4 min read
One Substacker Made $119k. Took Home $68k.
Substack calls the difference a platform fee. We call it fifty-one thousand dollars.
Two Shares Research · 2026
The numbers
A finance Substacker publicly shared their 2022 earnings breakdown: $119,000 in gross subscription revenue. $68,000 in actual take-home. The gap wasn't taxes alone.
GROSS REVENUE
$119,000
TAKE-HOME
$68,000
Gap: $51,000 — 42.8% of gross
Where the $51k went
The key compounding factor: taxes are calculated on the gross $119,000 — not the $68,000 you kept. You pay tax on money Substack already took.
The fee that doesn't show up in the headline
When Substack says “we take 10%” it sounds manageable. Run the math:
$119k/yr → $11,900 to Substack
$150k/yr → $15,000 to Substack
$200k/yr → $20,000 to Substack
The faster you grow, the more expensive it gets. At $200k, you're writing Substack a $20,000 check annually — for infrastructure that costs them pennies to run.
What Two Shares does differently
Your supporters pay the 5% access fee on top of what they send. You receive 100% of what they intended. On $119k gross, Two Shares takes $0.
Substack
$107,100
of $119k gross
Two Shares
$119,000
of $119k gross
The math compounds
That's not a platform fee. That's a salary — going to Substack.
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