Media & Publishing · Creator & Membership Media
If someone else holds your audience, you don't have a business. You have a tenancy.
We build the membership, the entitlements, and the payments that put one member record at the center of everything you publish, so access opens the second someone joins, closes when they genuinely leave, and the relationship belongs to you.
R. Adeyemi
Since Mar 2024 · active
Joined the free list
Hit the archive gate twice
Upgraded to Supporter
Renewed · 7th month
Opened 11 of the last 12 sends
This entitles them to
R. Adeyemi upgraded at 21:14: newsletter, archive, community, and the private feed all opened in the same second
How many places would you have to check to answer “what does this member get?”
What renting an audience costs
Five ways a membership leaks money and goodwill
The audience belongs to somebody else's platform
The list, the payments, and the relationship all live somewhere that can change its terms on a Tuesday.
Four tools each hold half a member
The newsletter, the payment processor, the community, and the site each know a different version of who this person is.
Access is granted and revoked by hand
Somebody adds a member to the private feed on Monday and forgets to remove a lapsed one for a month.
A failed card is a silent cancellation
The payment fails, nothing recovers it, and a member who wanted to stay is gone without ever deciding to leave.
Nobody knows what actually converts
Which piece brought someone in, which gate they hit, and what they read before paying: none of it is connected.
// the audience is the asset
The tiers
Most people will never pay you. Build for the ones who do.
Free
$0- Weekly newsletter
- Recent articles
Supporter
$8/mo- Members' edition
- Full archive
- Ad-free audio
- Community
Patron
$20/mo- Everything in Supporter
- Live sessions
- Annual print edition
Shares are illustrative. The shape is the point: most people never pay, and the ones who do should get something real.
What we build
The systems behind an audience you actually own
Memberships, tiers & payments
One record per member holding what they pay, what tier they're on, and when it renews, on a platform you own instead of one you rent.
Entitlements across every surface
The newsletter, the archive, the community, and the private feed all read the same entitlement, so access starts and stops on its own.
One entitlement. Four surfaces. No manual list.
Newsletters & member communication
Sends that know which tier someone is on, so the members' edition is actually different from the free one.
Built on your own processor, your own list, and the community tooling you already use. Nothing here depends on a platform that can change its terms.
Conversion & retention analytics
Which piece brought them in, which gate they hit, and what they read before paying, joined up so nobody has to guess.
Built on your own processor, your own list, and the community tooling you already use. Nothing here depends on a platform that can change its terms.
Hit the archive gate
Second time this month, on a piece from 2023. The gate offers the tier that opens it.
Paid
$8 a month, on your own checkout, on your own platform.
Four surfaces opened at once
Members' newsletter, full archive, community, and the private audio feed, all from one entitlement.
Welcomed once, properly
One onboarding send that knows which tier they joined and what it actually includes.
And when the card fails
Dunning recovers it, or access closes on its own. No lapsed member keeps a private feed for a month.
Flagship · the upgrade
Three minutes from a gate to four surfaces opening at once
Somebody hit the archive twice this month and was offered the tier that actually opens it. Three minutes later they're a member, and the newsletter, the archive, the community, and the private feed all opened from one entitlement. No manual additions in four places, and no lapsed member keeping any of it when the card eventually fails.
- Offers the tier that opens the content the reader was actually blocked from
- Opens every surface from one entitlement, with no manual additions in four places
- Recovers a failed payment before it becomes a cancellation nobody chose
- Closes access on its own when a membership genuinely ends
An open invitation
Bring the audience you don't currently own
The ledger above is illustrative. Point it at your real list (the platform holding your subscribers, the private feed maintained by hand, the lapsed members still getting everything) and see what it looks like when one record runs all of it.
Connects to your stack
One entitlement, every surface you publish to
Surfaces it connects
Systems we connect
Payments & billing
Subscriptions, renewals, and dunning run through your own processor account.
Email & sends
Tier-aware sends go out through the ESP you already use, from your own list.
Community & chat
Access to threads and spaces follows the same entitlement as everything else.
Analytics
Gate hits, conversions, and churn signals join up in one view, out of four separate dashboards.
How it runs
From a rented list to a membership you own
Find out who you actually have
We map the list, the payments, and every place access is granted by hand, and where the audience is currently owned by somebody else.
Make one member record
Tier, payment state, and history live in one place that every surface reads, replacing four half-copies.
Wire entitlements to every surface
Newsletter, archive, community, and private feed all open and close from the same entitlement, automatically.
Close the loop on conversion
Gates, attribution, and churn signals connect, so you know which piece earns members and which loses them.
Your processor, your list, and your community tooling all stay yours.
What changes
A membership that runs itself and belongs to you
You own the relationship
The list, the payments, and the member record are yours, on infrastructure that can't change its terms on you.
Access stops being a manual job
Four surfaces open when someone joins and close when they leave, without anybody maintaining a list.
Failed cards stop being cancellations
Dunning recovers the members who never actually decided to go.
You learn what converts
The piece, the gate, and the upgrade are joined up, so the next commission is a decision instead of a guess.
Bars are illustrative. They show relative emphasis, not measured results.
Questions
What publishers ask first
Do we have to leave the platform we're on now?
Not on day one, but owning the list, the payments, and the member record is the point. Most builds run alongside an existing platform first and move the relationship over once the new one is proven.
How do entitlements reach the newsletter and the community?
They all read the same member record. One entitlement decides whether someone gets the members' edition, the archive, the community, and the private feed, so nothing is added or removed by hand.
What happens when a payment fails?
Dunning runs first, because a card expiring isn't a decision to leave. If it genuinely can't be recovered, access closes on its own, so a lapsed member doesn't keep everything for a month.
Can we run gift, group, and institutional memberships?
Yes. Gifting, group seats, and organization-level access are handled as first-class cases from the start, because for most publications they're where the larger checks are.
Will we know which articles actually earn members?
That's what joining up gates, attribution, and conversion is for. You see the piece someone read, the gate they hit, and the tier they took, which makes the next commissioning decision an informed one.
Anything not covered here, we work through in the first session.
Related services
The systems underneath the ledger
Elsewhere in media
More of Media & Publishing
Let's talk
Running a large platform, shaping a first MVP, or getting a product ready for a funding round? Tell us where you are. We'll shape the process around it, and stay with you after launch.
