Payout on delivery
A creator is paid from the day they publish, not the day sponsors are charged, and if the content never goes up every sponsor gets their money back.
When a sponsor is charged, the money comes to ShoutOrbit and waits there. The creator is paid only after they publish the content and paste the link, and then only after 7 more days. If there is no link, the creator is paid nothing and every sponsor who was charged is refunded in full.
How it works
- Winners are charged after bidding ends. That money is not the creator's yet, and their dashboard says so.
- The creator publishes and pastes the link. It has to be on a channel they declared before the Orbit opened. For a YouTube video or a Twitch past broadcast they also give the time the shout-out starts.
- Every sponsor in the shout-out gets an email with a link that jumps to their moment where the video allows it, and one question: were you in it?
- 7 days pass. This is the sponsors' window to say they weren't in it, or to refund themselves from their receipt.
- The creator is paid for each winner whose payment has landed. A bank payment still clearing is paid out once it lands.
If there's no link by the publish date plus 7 days, every sponsor who was charged is refunded in full, and the creator is paid nothing. The creator is emailed once the publish date passes without a link, and again 2 days before the refunds go out.
"Were you in it?"
The question in the delivery email is evidence, and only that.
- Yes tells us the creator kept their promise. It doesn't pay them any sooner.
- No answer is fine. It holds nothing back.
- No pauses the creator's payout on that Orbit until a person has watched the content. No timer clears it by itself.
You have 7 days from the link appearing to say no. If all you want is your money back, you don't need to say no: use the refund button on your receipt while it's there.
Why it works this way
Why from publishing and not from the charge. The creator's promise is in their own words, and we can't check it ahead of time. A published link is objective: it exists or it doesn't. Tying the payout to it means a sponsor never pays for a shout-out that didn't happen.
Why the wait is the same as the window to complain. The 7 days the creator waits are exactly the 7 days a sponsor has to flag or refund. If the window were shorter, the creator's money would sit there with no reason to wait. If it were longer, a sponsor could ask for money that had already been sent.
Why sponsors are asked but never waited on. Making a creator's pay depend on every sponsor signing off would let one difficult sponsor hold a creator's money hostage. So a yes and silence change nothing, and only a no, which a person then checks, pauses anything.
Why a payout is never taken back. A creator who got a surprise debit weeks later would stop trusting the platform with their next video. Once a creator has been paid, a refund or a bank dispute after that is ShoutOrbit's cost, not theirs.
What can go wrong
- The content never goes up. Every sponsor charged is refunded in full after the publish date plus 7 days. Winners who were never charged are simply not charged.
- The creator publishes on time but a bank payment is still clearing. The Orbit is not refunded for it. That sponsor's share is paid to the creator once it lands, and never if it bounces.
- A sponsor says they weren't in it. The payout on that Orbit waits for a person to watch the content.
- A sponsor's bank disputes their charge before the creator is paid for it. Only that sponsor's share waits, until the dispute closes. Everyone else's share is paid as normal. See Disputes.
- A sponsor asks for a refund after the creator was paid. That's a message to us rather than a button, and we cover it. The creator keeps what they were paid.