PennyPeeps Author Earnings Program

Operator: Lumon LLC, Tennessee, United States. Version: October 13, 2026 (`2026-10-13`).

How Lumon pays authors

No Pennies purchases are currently offered. After email confirmation, eligible users receive a one-time grant of 100 free Pennies. There is no daily or per-visit allowance. Pennies cannot be redeemed for money. Buying or spending Pennies is not a payment to any author and is not a way to send money or monetary value to anyone.

Lumon pays authors for their content from its own earnings program, out of its own funds as a fee for services, under Lumon's rate table. Lumon sets the rate table and may change it; changes apply prospectively, to later Likes and Boosts only. Under the current table, a qualifying Like at 1, 5, 10, 15 or 25 Pennies earns you 1¢, 4¢, 9¢, 13¢ or 22¢ of pending earnings in total. You may choose a size when you Like, or start at 1 Penny and Boost later. Above the 1-Penny size, a portion of the Pennies spent buys visibility and score on PennyPeeps and is not a payment to the author. Your earnings are not a transfer of any buyer's money: anyone who buys Pennies buys them from Lumon, and no earning is funded by or held for a particular purchase. A buyer's refund, dispute or chargeback does not reduce, hold, cancel or offset your earnings, including earnings already paid; Lumon absorbs that loss. Lumon may void earnings for fraud, abuse or breaking these rules, as described below.

An author's own Pennies are not withdrawable; earnings are a separate record. To earn, you must be a US person, 18 or older, enroll under the current terms, and be verified by Stripe (identity and US bank account) through Stripe Connect. Payouts are made by Stripe, and setting up payouts means you also accept the Stripe Connected Account Agreement (stripe.com/legal/connect-account). Public attribution uses handles, not legal names or bank details.

Earnings from free-Penny backings, and cents restored after a reversed Dislike, are paid from Lumon's company budget: up to $1,000 per UTC calendar month in total, within a current $200 overall cap, and at most $5 of such earnings per author per calendar month. The overall cap is a lifetime budget for company-funded earnings; an administrator may raise it prospectively, with the change recorded. A potential earning reserves budget when backing occurs, not when Pennies are granted. Cancelled or expired unpaid earnings release their reservation. Paid amounts continue to count. Lumon can change the monthly budget and the overall cap prospectively. Once the month's budget or your cap is used up, free-Penny backing remains a reaction (it still counts for score) but creates no earnings. Earlier unfunded reactions are not automatically funded by a later increase. Compensation is not guaranteed merely because a post receives reactions.

Authors participate as an independent contractor, not an employee or partner. Maintain only one earnings account. Authors are responsible for their applicable taxes. Lumon collects required tax information and reports payments on tax forms, issuing Forms 1099 where required. Stripe onboarding does not itself prove that tax reporting is configured.

Qualification, pending window and Dislikes

Dislikers need trust level 2. A member reaches it with a confirmed email and an account at least 24 hours old, or with a confirmed email and a verified mobile number, provided there is no related-account or ring flag or overriding administrative restriction. If PennyPeeps turns on its phone check for all reactions, every Liker and Disliker must verify a mobile number; each number can belong to only one account. A Like from a lower-trust backer does not yet create qualifying earnings. If it does not qualify within 30 days, the provisional amount expires, releasing its budget reservation without refunding the backer.

Pending amounts are provisional estimates, not money owed until they qualify and settle under these rules. Qualifying earnings stay pending until you lock them in yourself; you can lock in any cent once it has been pending for 24 hours, and nothing settles on its own. While a cent is pending, a trusted user can spend at least 2 Pennies to Dislike and cancel it, however old it is: a Dislike cancels the newest unlocked pending cent on the post immediately. Larger fixed sizes require enough eligible cents for their full effect. If nothing is eligible to cancel, the Dislike is unavailable and no Pennies are spent. Replies to comments are posts under these terms and earn the same way. The fixed Dislike sizes are 2, 10, 20, 30 and 50 Pennies, cancelling 1¢, 4¢, 9¢, 13¢ and 22¢ respectively. No custom amounts. Before you lock in, a Liker may undo their Like or step their Boost down once; the matching pending earnings are then removed. Once you lock in any earnings from a Like, that Like is final. It never affects settled earnings or your own Pennies and cannot make earnings negative.

The Disliker receives no money, prize or refund. The Liker gets one Penny back for each cancelled cent, even from a larger Like, as the same kind of Penny they spent. Lumon keeps the Disliker's Dislike Pennies; a cancelled company-funded cent returns to the available budget. Free Dislike Pennies are promotional value, not cash revenue. Related-account reactions are blocked; free Dislikes from flagged ring accounts do nothing and spend nothing. Daily Dislikes are capped at 100 Pennies spent per user.

Moderators may reverse abusive Dislikes. Because the backer already has their Penny back, a restored earning is funded from the company budget; the backer is neither charged again nor refunded twice. Restoring an earning requires budget capacity and starts a fresh 24-hour wait before it can be locked in again. If budget is unavailable, only the backing reaction is restored. The disliker is not refunded. Promotion of an unqualified backing also restarts that wait.

Payouts and holds

Payout requests remain disabled for launch until funding, tax reporting and payment operations are ready. Disabling requests does not erase recorded obligations. Once requests are enabled, the ordinary threshold is $10 of payable earnings through a verified Stripe Connect account, and payouts are monthly: you can request one payout per UTC calendar month.

The 14-day payout hold applies: an earning becomes payable no earlier than both 14 days after the backing and 24 hours after you lock it in. The later date applies and is shown as its payable date. Other safety or account holds can delay payment further. A restored earning must be locked in again before the post-settlement hold begins. Pending amounts do not count toward the payout threshold.

Lumon may withhold, void, offset or recover earnings for fraud, abuse, self-backing, related-account activity, backing rings, or content removed for rule violations. After a documented review, an administrator can void all of an author's unpaid earnings and freeze payouts; payouts already sent are not reversed by that step. These adjustments are recorded with their reason and reviewable. Earnings from backings by an account suspended for farming are voided before payout. Related accounts are checked again at settlement and payout. Automatically generated and team-seeded posts cannot earn; misrepresenting generated content as original is a rule violation. Misdeclaring automatically generated content as your own can result in withholding.

Rewards (promotional Pennies for comments and invites, described in the Pennies terms) are Pennies, not earnings: they never become money and are never paid out. Likes and Boosts between you and a friend you invited, or who invited you, create no earnings for 30 days after the invite. You can post one comment per discussion and edit its text; editing does not change earnings already recorded, and misleading edits (for example changing a comment's meaning after it is liked) can be moderated.

Reciprocal backing and cycles of three or more accounts are reviewed. Free-Penny reciprocal backing earns nothing and is excluded from take shares and trending. Historical purchased backing beyond the first qualifying Penny per reciprocal pair also cannot earn. No manual balance editing replaces the ledger.

Buyer refunds and chargebacks are handled with the buyer only: Lumon removes the refunded purchase's unused Pennies from that buyer's balance, and your earnings are unaffected. The one exception runs in your favor: if a Dislike was paid for with Pennies whose purchase is refunded or disputed, Lumon reverses that Dislike and restores your cent from the company budget, if budget is available. Good-faith billing disputes alone never justify account punishment.

Earnings already paid that are later found to come from fraud, backing rings or related accounts create a recorded offset against future payable earnings. Transfer reversals and recovered offsets are reconciled so the same unit is not debited twice. Rate changes apply prospectively only; qualifying past accruals are not retroactively repriced.

Removal, closure and support

Deleting your own post forfeits its pending earnings and restores pending backers' Pennies, and their Boost Pennies, subject to loading limits. Settled backing is not restored, and a backer whose Penny a Dislike already returned is not refunded a second time. Deletion does not erase financial history.

Lumon may modify or end this program with notice. Settled earnings remain payable subject to the stated holds, adjustment grounds and applicable law. Closure does not convert them into forfeited revenue. Final balances, including balances below the ordinary threshold, require reconciliation and a valid payout account; undeliverable amounts remain recorded and subject to applicable unclaimed-property rules.

Contact support@pennypeeps.com for review of an earnings hold, grant-farming flag, moderation adjustment or payout error. Send identity, bank and tax information only through the designated verification process, never by email.