Article & Series Purchases

In addition to subscriptions, readers can make one-time purchases for individual premium articles or entire series.

Premium Articles

Set a price on any article to sell it individually:

1. Open the article in the editor
2. Toggle Premium and set a price (e.g. $2.00)
3. Publish — non-subscribers see a paywall with a purchase option

Readers who purchase the article gain permanent access to that article regardless of subscription status.

Paid Series

Bundle a collection of articles into a series and sell access as a package:

1. Create a series in Dashboard → Series
2. Set visibility to Paid and enter a price (e.g. $9.00)
3. Add articles to the series
4. Readers purchase the series once and access all articles within it

Tips

Readers can send a one-time tip to support your work from any article or your profile page. Tips have no fixed price — readers choose the amount, from a $1 minimum to a $500 maximum.

How Payments Work

All one-time purchases go through Stripe. A payment intent is created and confirmed client-side, recording a payments row with status = pending. When Stripe confirms the charge, the payment_intent.succeeded webhook:

• Updates the payments record to status = succeeded
• Upserts an article_purchases or series_purchases record, granting permanent access
• Adds the net earnings (amount minus platform fee) to your available balance

Idempotency

Each payment carries a unique idempotency key (article_<user>_<article> or series_<user>_<series>), so retrying a failed checkout never results in a double charge.