Business
Sales
Sales is the third row of the studio sidebar, after Onboarding and Your Guides. It has two tabs: Payments, every purchase of your guides, and Customers, the people who bought them and the friends you gave a guide to. It updates on its own: a new purchase or a refund shows up without a reload, and phones buzz when one arrives while the page is open.
The amounts here are what buyers paid, VAT included, before Sceniq's share. They are not your earnings: what you earn from these sales collects on Payouts. Your share of a sale is 85 percent of its price without VAT when the buyer came through you, and 65 percent when Sceniq brought them; Fees, prices and taxes shows how it is worked out.
Payments
Every purchase, newest first. The buttons above the list narrow it to one status: All, Succeeded, Refunded or Disputed, each with how many it holds. Disputed holds the open disputes and the lost ones. On a computer the payments are a table; on a phone, a list with the amount on top.
| Column | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Amount | What the buyer paid, VAT included, in the currency of the purchase. |
| Status | Where the purchase stands (next section). |
| Guide | The guide that was bought, with its picture. A buyer Sceniq brought, from the explore store, the homepage, the blog or the Sceniq app, adds Store sale after the guide's name; a sale from your own link or profile adds nothing. On a phone, Store sale stands in the line under the customer. |
| Customer | Who bought it, as far as you may know: buyers' names and email addresses are never shared with creators, so a Sceniq buyer shows as the country they bought from ("Buyer in Germany"), or as Sceniq buyer when the country is unknown. Customers from your own sales history that Sceniq imported for you keep their email address. |
| Date | When the buyer paid. |
The line under the list says how many payments it shows, for example "1–50 of 1,233 payments"; Load more adds the next batch of older ones.
Status
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Succeeded | The purchase went through and the buyer has the guide. |
| Partial refund | Part of the price went back to the buyer. The buyer keeps the guide. Pointing at the status shows the amount and the date of the refund. |
| Refunded | The whole price went back to the buyer, and the buyer no longer has the guide. Pointing at the status shows the date. |
| Disputed | The buyer's bank opened a chargeback. The buyer has no access while it is open. If the dispute ends in the sale's favour, the purchase goes back to its earlier status and the buyer gets the guide back; if not, it reads Dispute lost. |
| Dispute lost | The dispute ended in the buyer's favour: their bank gave them back the disputed part of the price, and they keep no access. Your share of the disputed part is gone; when only part of the price was disputed, your share of the rest stays yours and counts on Payouts like any sale. |
Customers
One row per buyer, newest first by their first purchase. The buttons above narrow the list: All, Top customers (the most purchases first), Returning (people who bought more than once) and Gift links (next section).
| Column | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Customer | The buyer, shown the same way as on Payments. |
| Guides | The guides they bought from you. |
| Purchases | How many purchases they made. |
| First purchase | When they first bought. |
| Total spend | What they paid in all, minus refunds, per currency. Money in different currencies is never added together. |
Gift links
A gift link gives one of your published guides to one person for free. You do not need their email address: you send the link however you like, in a message, a DM or a comment.
- On Customers, press Give free access.
- Pick the Guide and, if you like, fill in Who is it for: a name only you see, in your list of links.
- Press Create link. Your gift link appears with Copy link, and Share on a phone. Create another makes the next one; Done closes the window.
The person who opens the link sees the guide and that it is a gift from you. Signed out, they can create a free Sceniq account or sign in; a new account confirms its email address first. Then they add the guide to their library, and it is theirs like a bought guide. Each link works for one person: anyone who opens it after that is told it was already used. Someone who already has the guide keeps the link unused, so it can still go to someone else.
You can make 100 gift links a calendar year; the window shows how many are left. A link you remove before anyone used it does not count. Gifts are not sales: they do not show on Payments, earn nothing, and do not count as buyers.
The Gift links list shows every link you made:
| Column | What it shows |
|---|---|
| For | The name you gave it, or Gift link without one. |
| Status | Not used yet, or Used once someone added the guide. You never see who used a link. |
| Guide | The guide the link gives away. |
| Created | When you made the link. |
Copy link copies a link again while it is unused. Remove asks once more before it acts: Remove link stops an unused link from working, and Take guide back takes the guide back from whoever used it. A guide that person bought themselves is never taken back. Keep leaves the link as it is.
Refunds and disputes
Refunds are handled by Sceniq: a buyer asks Sceniq, and Sceniq issues the refund. The studio has no refund button. A refund always takes back your share of the refunded part:
- before you withdraw the sale's money, the refund simply comes off your balance on Payouts;
- after you withdrew it, Sceniq takes it back from your payout account, and anything it cannot take back there comes off your next withdrawal (see the balance ledger).
A disputed purchase leaves your balance while the dispute is open. If the dispute goes against the sale, you do not get your share of it, and a share you already withdrew is taken back the same way as a refund.
Before your first sale
Until someone buys one of your guides, the page shows Sales reporting lands with your first sale with Give free access under it. The tabs appear with your first sale or your first gift link.
For how people reach your sales pages and how many of them buy, see Statistics.