An average needs a defined denominator
Dividing lifetime marketplace sales by current account registrations mixes different periods and populations. Registrations can include buyers, inactive accounts or sellers who joined near the end of the period. It cannot produce a reliable monthly seller income.
Even a correctly calculated mean can be driven upward by a small number of large accounts. A median, percentile distribution and proportion with zero sales make the result easier to interpret—but only when the underlying cohort is well defined.
A new seller needs a mature first-month cohort
A first-month report should follow everyone in the same starting cohort for the same amount of time. Someone who joined yesterday has not had the same opportunity to make a sale as someone who joined a month ago.
Choose the start event explicitly: registration, verification, first published listing or paid-plan activation. These answer different questions. Include people who never made a sale and state whether removed or suspended accounts remain in the cohort.
- Report the complete observation dates and time zone.
- Count zero earners and sellers who did not return.
- Separate gross sales from creator share and plan costs.
- Exclude test/self-payments using a documented rule.
- Reconcile reversals and all supported sale types before publication.
Why earlier income bands have been removed
An earlier version of this page described monthly income ranges without a representative, auditable dataset. Those bands were not established averages and have been removed. We do not replace them with another estimate presented as fact.
The absence of a reliable average does not mean nobody earns money. It means the available evidence cannot tell an individual seller what to expect. Budgeting should allow for no sales.
Use a budget decision instead of an income promise
Choose the amount of time and money you can spend on a trial. Calculate the sales needed to cover the plan and your other costs. After the trial, use completed transactions and actual hours to decide whether to continue.
Track inquiries and purchases separately. More messages can mean more work without more revenue; an expensive listing is not evidence of a completed sale.