You pay the commission. You pay the guy who checks the chats. You pay to train the next one when this one leaves. Then you look at what the account made and wonder who's working for who.
The fix has two parts. Work out what a chatter really costs you per dollar sold. Then move the chats that can't pay for a human to something that only charges you when it sells.
What a chatter really costs
Human chatters are commonly paid 8-20% commission. Everyone quotes that number and most people stop there. The real bill has more lines:
- Base pay. Plenty of teams pay a wage or hourly rate on top of commission, or instead of it.
- Management. Someone reads the chats, catches mistakes and sorts out disputes. If that someone is you, it's still a cost.
- Training. Chatter turnover is often reported at 2-3 months, so you pay this one again and again.
- Coverage. One chatter is one shift. Full cover takes several people, and the night shift is usually your weakest.
- Dead time. A chatter's hour costs the same whether he spends it on a guy who pays or a guy who never will.
Say a chatter on 15% sells $10,000 gross in a month. That's $1,500 commission. Say you also pay him $500 base and spend $400 of manager time on him. He now costs $2,400, or 24% of what he sold. Those figures are made up. Put your own in and see what comes out.
Where AI changes the sum
The useful change is when you pay. A chatter costs money while he sits there. We charge after a sale. A guy who chats for a week and never buys costs you nothing on our side.
That matters most in the long tail, the fans who are worth keeping warm but not worth a human's hour. In the first 8 days of our own AI chatter on Fanvue, she sent 645 paid offers. 64 were bought, by 24 buyers, for $1,865 gross. The 10% on that comes to $186.50. Now price a human team to send those 645 offers and hold all the chat around them, at every hour, for 8 days.
That's our own account, one AI model and a small sample, so don't read it as a forecast for yours. It shows what the workload looks like.
Where the comparison gets honest
10% won't always win. A good chatter on 8% beats us on commission alone. A chatter who closes your biggest spender may be worth every cent he costs. Owners tend to judge AI against their best guy, and that's the wrong match. Set it against the hours your best guy isn't working and the fans he never gets to.
Check one more thing before you compare. Our 10% is on gross, which is what the fan paid before the platform's cut. If your chatters are paid on net, convert one number so you're comparing the same thing.
What it costs with us
- 10% of the gross of what the AI sells, meaning PPVs and tips the AI earned.
- 0% on subscriptions and renewals.
- 0% on sales a human made himself.
- No monthly fee and no setup fee.
- Every new account gets $10 starting credit, which covers the fee on $100 of AI sales.
It's a prepaid balance. You top up on Whop and the fee comes off after each sale. At -$2 the AI pauses until you top up, so there's no surprise invoice at the end of the month.
What to do this month
- Add up everything you spent on chatting last month and work out your real rate.
- Sort your fans by what they've spent. You'll probably find a short list at the top that carries the account.
- Keep your best chatter on that list. The per-fan switch turns the AI off for one guy, and his human sales carry 0%.
- Give the AI the rest of the fans and the hours nobody covers.
Then look at the next month's real rate. If the number moved the right way, you've got your answer without taking anyone's word for it.