Brief to publish, audit-able.
Pitch logged, brief assigned, draft tracked through edit, fact-check, sub, publish. The editor sees the issue ladder a week ahead, not the morning of.
- Notion or Airtable spine
- Pitch CRM
- Per-stage WIP
- Issue ladder view
Skip to main contentThe publishers stack 01 · Editorial pipeline 02 · Contributor pay 03 · Subscription engine 04 · Email lifecycle 05 · Ad ops 06 · BrainBase Sample engagement Adjacent industries
Media · Publishers
Pitch, write, edit, publish, paid.
UK publishers — magazines, newsletters, indie outlets — Substack / Beehiiv / WordPress + Stripe — editorial pipeline, contributor pay, subscription engine.
Magazine · newsletter · digital
Staff, typical
Revenue mix
Paid subs in 9 mo
Publishers Magazine · newsletter · digital1–15 Staff, typicalSubscription · ad-led Revenue mix600 → 2,400 Paid subs in 9 mo
Six instruments, calibrated.
UK publishers — magazines, newsletters, indie outlets — Substack / Beehiiv / WordPress + Stripe — editorial pipeline, contributor pay, subscription engine.
Stripe Connect, paid on publish.
Contributors invoiced on word-rate or flat-fee, paid via Stripe Connect on publish or schedule. No 60-day NET, no payment chase, no goodwill spent on admin.
- Stripe Connect payouts
- Per-piece or flat fee
- Auto-invoice on publish
- Tax export (HMRC-aware)
Substack, Beehiiv, or custom — whichever fits.
Free + paid tier, gift, group, lifetime — built on the platform that serves the title best. Subscriber data owned, exportable, never platform-locked.
- Substack / Beehiiv / custom
- Tiers + gift + group
- Subscriber data export
- Cancel + retain flow
Welcome, nurture, win-back, retain.
Subscriber lifecycle automated — welcome series, paywall trial, lapsed-reader win-back, churn retention. Every send measured against subscription LTV.
- ConvertKit / Beehiiv flows
- Trial → paid conversion
- Lapsed win-back
- Churn retention sequence
Sold against verifiable numbers.
Newsletter sponsor reads, banner inventory, classified, ad reports landing the week of the spend. Plus a CRM of advertiser relationships, repeat-buy rate, and yield per send.
- Sponsor read tracking
- Banner inventory + yield
- Advertiser CRM
- Sponsor reporting packs
Style, contributors, rates — searchable.
House style guide, contributor roster with rates and past pieces, archive of every issue, source library. The editor briefs a writer in minutes, not days.
- Style & tone guide
- Contributor roster
- Issue archive search
- Source & quote library
The indie newsletter that quadrupled paid subscribers in nine months.
Six hundred paid subs. One founder-editor. Subscription on Substack, contributor pay in Notion, ad ops in head.
An indie newsletter publisher had 600 paid subs and a single founder-editor doing everything — Substack handled subs but contributor pay lived in a Notion table chased monthly, ad reads were sold by DM, and the lapsed-reader win-back never fired. Four-week build: Beehiiv migration with paid-tier preserved, Stripe Connect for contributors with auto-payout on publish, lifecycle email flows for welcome / trial-to-paid / lapsed win-back, and a BrainBase of contributor roster and past-issue search. Nine months in: paid subs from 600 to 2,400, contributor pay zero days late, advertiser repeat-buy doubled.
How we measure: Paid subscribers measured month-over-month from billing platform across the 9-month window; contributor pay latency measured as publish date to payout date across 180 contributor invoices; advertiser repeat-buy = % of advertisers booking a second placement within 90 days.
600 → 2,400paid subscribers
0 dayscontributor pay latency
2xadvertiser repeat-buy
Different shape of the same problem.
If your work isn't exactly this, the nearest sectors share the rhythm. Or browse every industry we build for.
Get on rails.
Bring the sub count, the contributor table, and last quarter's ad reads. That's the brief.