Originally Posted by AmateurFlix

well, after reading this thread and seeing tayax's post I decided to develop some software to analyze the stats data provided; I'm not done yet, however from the info I've gotten so far, basically everything I had assumed was entirely wrong.

what really surprised me is that in the past ~2.5 years (all the stats data that I could download), customers who joined prior to that point 2.5 years ago, have generated nearly 50% more income than those who've joined since. Meaning that even over that 2.5 year span, my earnings were more about what I did prior to that, than they are about my current traffic.

Also, check out the vast difference between the median and the mean earnings per capita (these are different methods of calculating an "average"):
Median: $28.6
Mean: $305.03

now, at 98%, having removed the top 2% of spenders:
Median: $26.3
Mean: $172.39

and again at 95%:
Median: $25
Mean: $120.93

^^this demonstrates the difference whales can have on your overall income
When the average can change from $305 to $120 merely by removing the upper 5% of spenders, that is telling me that 1/20 of the customers are determining nearly 2/3 of my income from this sponsor.

I also averaged some Running Totals of earnings per customer, m+0 indicating earnings in the first month, m+1 earnings of the second month, etc., until it reaches "max" which is simply all earnings generated after m+6. We see the running total after 7 months is only $87.30, and that number is nearly doubled in the period after that. Keep in mind these customers may continue to buy in the future.

m+0: 29.72
m+1: 42.01
m+2: 51.54
m+3: 59.81
m+4: 69.43
m+5: 79.16
m+6: 87.3
max: 160.34

So, in conclusion, whales seem to have a much much much bigger effect on income than I expected; they don't merely provide a "bonus" as I assumed, rather they appear to be responsible for the majority of earnings. Meaning, one cannot expect any kind of income stability until there is a sufficient quantity of whales to even out the earnings - which in turn means that the level of income this threshold of stability corresponds with is likely quite high, unless you get lulled into a false sense of security by having one or two steady whales.

Also, earnings are spread out much more than I anticipated; that last data above shows only $29.72 earned in the first month after an initial purchase, of a total of $160.34 (and climbing).

Maybe that will help clear up some of the concern around income fluctuations.