# Streamer Support

Find information you need to know about being a streamer on JoystickTV

# Earnings and Payouts

# Earnings

Multiple ways to earn.

  • Subscriptions - Set your own price, starting at $3.99/month.
  • Live Streaming - Receive tokens live with the option to set tip goals.
  • Direct Messaging - Send direct messages, videos, and images for an amount of tokens you set.
  • Post Content - Share posts with exclusive content for your subscribers or set a token amount to unlock.

# Revenue Share

Streamers earn 80% revenue share. No prerequisites to start earning.

The amount is calcuated based on the purchase amount that a user makes. If a user spends $100 to purchase tokens, and tips you all of those tokens, you earn $80. Keep in mind that some users may be given discount coupons to encourage more spending, or joined through an affiliate link other than yours. If they are given 20% off, then their purcahse price is $80. Instead of earning 80% on $100 purchase, you’re earning 80% on an $80 purchase.

We provide extensive analytics and reporting to help you keep track of your money.

For other questions or help, please email support@joystick.tv, or contact us on Discord. You can also visit our FAQ page for more info.

# Token Values

Every token tipped on Joystick will have a monetary value. Sometimes tokens may be given away for free as promotional tokens, but these will still have some monetary value to the streamer. They may range from $0.03 to $0.10 cents per token.

The value of a token is calculated by taking the purchase amount (excluding fees), and removing 20% for Joystick’s cut. The remaining 80% is used to get the value of each token.

# Payouts

Payouts can be requested once you have earned the minimum withdrawal amount in available funds. All funds received are considered “pending” for 30 days from the day you receive the money. You can think of your earnings like a sliding window. If you receive $1 on July 1st, that $1 will be available to you on July 31st. We do this in order to protect us and you from fraud.

Payout Options

  • Check ($50 min / $2 fee)
  • ACH ($100 min / $2 fee)
  • Masspay ($100 min / $2 fee)
  • Wire ($400 min / $35 fee)
  • Joystick Wallet ($0 min / $0 fee)

Please note that with Wire payouts, the first time you receive a payout there will be a slight delay for us to setup your account. After the first payout, there will be no more delay.

Your payout breakdown is available from the menu, under payouts.

# Receiving Payout

Payouts are sent weekly with the cutoff day being Tuesday. Payouts requested before Tuesday will be sent that Friday. Payouts requested after Tuesday will be sent out the following week. A payout may take 3 to 7 business days to process. Once processed, they are generally sent on Fridays.

Payments have 3 stages:

  • Unpaid – Your payout has not been received by our accounting department to be processed, yet.
  • Processing – Your payout has been received by our accounting department, and is currently being processed
  • Paid – The money has left our offices, and is headed to you. Some payments may take longer to reach you than others (i.e. checks, or first-time wires, etc…)

As a U.S. based company, we observe all U.S. Banking holidays. During these times, there may be slight delays which will always be conveyed via announcements the week prior or sooner.

Checks

Checks are for North American streamers only as these are mailed through the U.S. Postal service (USPS). These are standard U.S. bank paper checks made out in USD. Once a payout request is processed, this is usually delivered to you within 3 – 5 business days.

Checks not deposited after 30 days may be cancelled and reissued for a $15 fee

ACH / Direct Deposit

ACH (automatic clearing house) is similar to a Wire transfer where we use your bank details to automatically deposit funds in to your bank account. We process ACH deposits as next-day (next business day). If your payment is sent Friday, then you’ll receive the funds Monday unless Monday is a bank holiday. ACH is only available for streamers in the United States as the process required only works with U.S. banks

A $5 fee may be added if we’re unable to process your ACH deposit due to incorrect information.

Masspay

Masspay https://www.masspay.io/ is a service for receiving funds that works like a bank account. You only need an email address, and your account is automatically setup by us. We transfer funds directly to your Masspay account. Once a payout request is processed, this is sent within 1 business day.

Once you’ve received the funds in Masspay, you’ll have the option to withdraw the funds in several different ways. This could be a direct deposit to your local bank, cash out using crypto currency (e.g. Bitcoin, Etherium, etc…), or many other options depending on your country. Each option will have a different fee associated, but many options have no additional fees. The fee will be listed next to the option.

Wire

This is a bank to bank wire transfer. If you’re in the U.S. you’ll give us your bank’s account number and routing number to receive the deposit directly in your account. For banks outside of the U.S. you will need your SWIFT code and bank account number. Once a payout request is processed, this is delivered in 1 business day.

Note: We will also ask for the bank’s address for verification. If you have an online bank, you will just need to provide the website address to the bank.

First-time wires may take an additional 3 business days to send due to Bank approvals. Payments after the first are sent same day.

# Joystick Wallet

You are never required to request a payout. Though, the money is still yours, you have control over how you want to use it. The Joystick wallet allows you to use your funds to purchase tokens, subscriptions, or gifting subscriptions to other streamers. There are no fees or minimums to use funds in your wallet.

# Taxes for U.S. Streamers

Streamers based in the United States are required, by law, to file taxes on income earned from streaming. For this reason, we require all streamers in the U.S. to fill in an IRS form W-9. Streamers may use their personal Social Security Number (SSN), or Business TaxID if you file as a company (e.g. LLC, S-Corp, etc…).

Streamers outside of the United States are not required to fill out any tax or business related documents, but you may need to look up laws in your country regarding earning funds from a U.S. based company.

# Tax Documents 1099-NEC

As of this writing, the minimum threshold to receive a 1099 is $600 for the entire tax year. If you made this amount, or more, during the previous year, a tax document will be created for you and sent during January of the current year.

# Uploaded Media Content

Verified streamers are allowed to upload their own personal media content. All content must be approved and verified before it may be displayed on the website.

# Examples of good content

  • A profile photo
  • Online banner image used when your stream is live
  • Offline banner image used when your stream is offline
  • Video clips of you
  • Previously recorded streams of yours
  • Your custom emotes
  • Promotional images for your upcoming streams

# Examples of bad content

  • Photos of anyone else not verified on your stream
  • Videos of anyone else not verified on your stream
  • Content that violates any terms/acceptable use
  • Illegal content
  • Any file types other than images and videos

# Direct Messaging Campaigns

Direct Message Campaigns are like Direct Messages but sent in bulk or when someone follows you.

To use this feature, visit this link Direct Message Campaigns. To create a new campaign, click the Create Your First Campaign button.

When creating a campaign, you have to fill in the first two fields. Campaign Name is for your use only. It can be helpful to name a campaign and see how it performed compared to other campaigns you may create. The message to send is what you would like to say in your Direct Message. You have the option to attach any previously uploaded media as well. You can set all of the content to be free or even have it be purchasable with tokens.

There are also several filtering options you can select when sending the message. You can use these filters to help target specific people who follow you.

When you’re done and push the Send Now button, your campaign will be sent within just a few minutes. If you would like to schedule the send for later, you can check the Send Message Later box and select the date and time.

# Moderating Streams

Streaming content while also moderating your own community can be quite time consuming and daunting. In order to keep your streams orderly, we have several tools you can use for moderating your stream.

# Why moderate?

Unfortunately, we live in a world where not everyone has the best of intentions, and some that do may not be able to “read the room”. You may be sensitive to certain words, or want to avoid specific individuals. This is when moderation comes in handy. Moderation tools include things like…

  • Muting users
  • Blocking users
  • Adding banned words or phrases
  • Changing stream and chat states

But moderation doesn’t always have to be negative! You may also need a way to keep track of users in chat that you’re unable to get to, and get back to them at a later point. Maybe someone asked a question, and you’re in middle of a heavy raid in WoW. JoystickTV gives you the option to add trusted users in to your moderation team to help keep your stream moving.

# Moderating Tools

Muting When you “mute” a user, they are unable to chat in your stream; however, they are still able to watch your stream. You may want to mute someone that has broken a rule to give them a chance to read your stream rules. When you’re ready for them to talk in chat again, you can unmute them.

To mute a user, you’ll see an icon appear to the left of their username in chat. Click this icon to reveal a menu item to mute the user. You can unmute them from your stream configuration menu under the “muted users” section.

Blocking A “block” is a full lockout of your profile. Users that are blocked are muted first, then removed from your stream. They are no longer able to see or visit your profile, nor able to interact with you in any capacity on JoystickTV. Keep in mind that blocks are never a full-proof solution. If you ever feel harassed by a user, please contact support immediately.

To block a user, you can use the same context menu from chat as muting, or you can go to your Blocked Users page. You’ll also see a button to block a streamer from their profile page, from within your DMs, or on any post comments.

Banned Words These are words or phrases you do not want to see in your chat. Joystick has several words and phrases that are commonly known to be hate speech already, but you can extend this list with additonal words or phrases.

To add a banned word, you can go to your Stream Settings or from your stream configuration menu during a live stream.

Stream States By default, your stream is fully public. Anyone can just come in and start chatting, and watching you. You may not want this all of the time though. Joystick currently offers a verified user state which only allows verified users in your chat, as well as a subscriber-only state which requires a user to subscribe to you in order to watch. When you change the state, this alters the permissions of who is allowed to chat or watch your stream.

From your publisher view, you’ll see the buttons to change this state while you’re live.

Moderators Moderators (or mods) are individuals you know and trust to help you keep your streams in order. Mods have limited abilities to control your stream such as muting users, or adding banned words, as well as updating your tip goals! Mods are also given additional chat commands that allow you to “whisper” to your mods during a chat and keep conversations private and inconspicuous.

Adding a moderator is simple! From your stream settings page, you can click Moderators, then type in the username of the person you want to make a mod.

Moderators must be verified users that follow you.

# Media Library

Every streamer has access to their own private Media Library on Joystick. This is where you can upload any images you may use; for example, profile photos, emotes, or sexy photos; or any videos you you’d like to show to your community such as short clips, or highlights of past streams.

All media uploaded must be approved by Joystick staff before you can use it for your purposes. Media that is reviewed must follow our strict guidelines for what is allowed and what isn’t.

  • All media must adhere to our Community Guidelines.
  • All media can only contain individuals approved on your account. They must either have a stream approval, or be invited through Stream Invites.
  • Profile picture, online, and offline banners must be labled as “SFW” (safe for work). More info below.
  • Emotes should be smaller in size, and square. See emotes below.
  • Images must be in the formats .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .gif.
  • Videos must be in the formats .mkv, .mp4, .mov.
  • Images should never be larger than 20MB in size.
  • Videos should never be larger than 3GB in size.

We are moving to a tiered media system, and increasing video size for streamers. This guide will be updated once that is available.

# SFW vs NSFW

It may seem a bit counterintuitive that a site based around “NSFW” (not safe for work) content would even have a policy for what constitues “SFW” or not. We do this for a few reasons; one of which is reducing what adult based content is displayed while users are logged out. This also gives users the ability to capture images of our home page to post on other social media sites without the fear of being banned. We feel that we can create a healthy balance between what other non-adult-based sites do, and full on porn sites.

When reviewing media, we will mark each media as “SFW” or “NSFW”. When you’re selecting your profile image from your media library, you will only be allowed to choose from the images that have been marked as “SFW”.

Here’s a noncomprehensive list of what we may look for to mark images as “NSFW”.

  • Bare chests, nipple, areola, including see-through tops.
  • Genitalia.
  • Bare and/or spread butt cheeks.
  • Erections, outlines, or “prints”.
  • Adult toys designed to look like human anatomy.
  • Drawings, digital or CGI of any of these items.

If we are ever unsure, we will tend to mark as NSFW as a fallback.

# Emotes

Emotes are images used in your chat to help express emotion. As a streamer you have the ability to upload your own custom emotes. Subscribers of your stream are allowed to use your emotes on any live stream chat on Joystick.

Emotes are allowed to be NSFW, but as with all media, they must be approved first before you can use them.

For the optimal emote image, a .gif, or transparent .png work the best. The file dimensions should be between 64x64 and 250x250 with a max filesize of 1MB.

You can have a max of 50 emotes.

# Posts and DMs

With your uploaded content, you can create Posts, or send Direct Messages (DMs) for users to purchase your content using tokens. This is a chance to earn additional income when you’re not streaming. Set your locked price, or give away teaser content for free!

Locked content you post to your feed will be accessible to subscribers for free, but others must pay. Locked DM content must be purchased by everyone including subscribers.

# VODs

VODs (videos on demand) are videos of your previously recorded streams. These videos are only accessible to users that subscribe to you.