The ledger

The rule at the till

A thing sells at the market for what its buyer chose to pay, from what it costs its maker up. Out of that: the card's cost goes to the card company. The rest goes to the maker, into their own account, the same day. Whimsible takes nothing at the till.

It is the same for every sale, however it arrived: through the market, through a maker's own page, through a link they shared. Nobody pays more for being found.

Joining is free. Your page, your hosting, your stall in the market and the till are free, as much as we can make free. Nobody pays to build a place or keep it up. Anybody selling here makes the whole thing stronger, so the door is open. Money comes in only after money is made: a member who profits chooses a share of that profit, and it goes round as written below. What Whimsible itself needs to run is paid from the advertising it sells for itself; until there is enough of it, by Magpie.

Then, choose your contribution. Only a member who made a profit beyond their expenses gives more than the membership. To receive a payout at all, the contribution is at least twenty percent of that profit; it can be anything up to all of it, and it can be changed at any time. Nothing is taken from the price of a thing, ever.

What comes in is shared back by tier of contribution, tiers first: give eighty to a hundred percent of your profit and you stand in the top tier, sixty to eighty the next, forty to sixty the next, twenty to forty the last. Each tier in turn takes twenty four percent of what is left, and mutual aid, which anyone may draw from by need, takes the rest. Of every hundred dollars contributed that is twenty four to the top tier, then eighteen, fourteen and ten, and thirty three to mutual aid, the largest share. A tier's share is divided equally among the members standing in it. Every quarter, every three months, anyone can look again at the share they give, see what each share earned, and change theirs. The pool is paid out twice a year. the split is where the numbers get moved around. Every project also keeps its own fund that anyone may give to; a gift goes to the project and the people doing it, and Whimsible only holds the door open. The ledger records cost and profit on every sale so that none of this needs a second set of books.

The sums, in the open

Asking the door…

Given to Whimsible

Contributions go into the cooperative's own account, never through Magpie's. The card's cost comes off; the rest is kept for what the papers say the pool is for. Every payment is a line here, dated, with no name on it. The ways to contribute.

Asking the door…

Beside it: what Etsy keeps

Read from Etsy's own fee policy and its 2025 annual report, on the fourteenth of October 2026.

The whole study is in the papers. The market is at the market; a maker's own side is the stall.