TPT's headline rates sound simple — Basic sellers earn 55%, Premium sellers earn 80%. Then your first payout arrives and it's a few dollars short of the headline, and the difference is the transaction-fee small print. Here's the whole system in plain English, current as of August 2026.
On Basic ($29, one-time), every resource sold pays you 55% of its price minus a $0.30 transaction fee per resource. That flat 30 cents is why cheap resources hurt: a $1 item pays you 25 cents, a 25% effective royalty. On Premium ($59.95/year), you keep 80% and the fee drops to $0.15 — charged only when the whole order totals under $3. Buyer baskets over $3 pay no transaction fee at all on Premium, which quietly rewards bundles and multi-item purchases.
A $4 resource: $1.90 on Basic, $3.20 on Premium. A $2 resource: $0.80 on Basic, $1.45 on Premium (the sub-$3 fee applies). A $10 bundle: $5.20 on Basic, a clean $8.00 on Premium. The effective royalty on Basic ranges from about 25% at $1 to 52% at $10 — "55%" is the ceiling, not the experience.
Two more things shave payouts without being listed as fees. Buyer discounts and sales: your percentage applies to the discounted price, so a 20%-off sitewide sale is a 20% pay cut per unit (hopefully offset by volume). PayPal/bank transfer: payout methods can carry their own charges depending on where you are — non-US sellers should check conversion costs, which are between you and your payment provider, not TPT.
Because the two accounts differ in both percentage and fee structure, there's a crossover volume where Premium's $59.95 pays for itself — at typical $3–5 price points it's around 4 sales a month. We've written the full break-even walkthrough separately, and the calculator does it for your exact numbers.
Verified against TPT's official seller pages, August 2026. Rates change; check theirs before deciding. Not financial advice. Not affiliated with TPT/IXL.