Independent creators built the internet's most trusted media. They deserved better infrastructure.

Over the last decade, independent creators — podcasters, newsletter writers, YouTubers, streamers — built something remarkable. They assembled audiences that are more loyal, more attentive, and more commercially valuable than anything a traditional media company produces.

Brands noticed. Inbound got easier. But closing deals didn't.

The problem was never reach. It was that the business of monetising that reach was still being run like a freelance side project. Rate cards emailed as PDFs. Deals negotiated over Instagram DMs. Invoices chased 45 days after content went live. Audience data copy-pasted into spreadsheets and presented as if it were reliable.

Creators were running the most valuable advertising inventory on the internet out of their Gmail inbox.

Ad networks solved this problem for large publishers two decades ago. They built checkout infrastructure, workflow tooling, audience verification, contract management, and payout systems. A brand could buy inventory from the New York Times with the same operational clarity as buying a Meta ad.

Independent creators had none of that. The only options were:

• —Talent agencies, which take 15–20% and represent your brand, not just your business
• —Sponsorship marketplaces, which clip 30% and own the advertiser relationship
• —DIY — which means doing all of this yourself, in between actually making content

None of these are the right answer. Agencies and marketplaces extract enormous value from relationships creators built themselves. DIY leaves founders spending their most productive hours on operations that should be handled by software.

We believe independent creators are media companies. Not influencers. Not freelancers. Not contractors for hire. Media companies — with audiences, inventory, editorial standards, and the right to run their business on their own terms.

Media companies deserve the same operational infrastructure that their enterprise counterparts have access to:

• —Verified, live audience metrics that sponsors can trust
• —Bookable inventory with transparent, published pricing
• —Payment that arrives predictably — instantly, on invoice, or on negotiated terms
• —A structured workflow that makes every campaign professionally accountable
• —A paper trail that protects both parties from the start

This is what Fortune 500 media companies have. There is no good reason independent creators should not have it too.

Most people assume partnr.to is a checkout tool. It's not. Checkout is where the relationship starts, not where it ends.

The real problem in creator sponsorships isn't getting paid. It's everything that happens between getting paid and the ad going live. Ad copy scattered across email threads. Brand assets buried in Dropbox links. Approvals that happen in Slack DMs with no record. Scheduling confirmed in a voice memo. “Did they ever send the copy?”

Every booking on partnr.to gets a shared workspace — a single, permanent record of everything that happened in the campaign.

Message thread. Ad copy submission and approval. Brand asset uploads. Scheduled run date. Status at every stage. Both sides see everything. Nothing lives in someone's inbox. Nothing gets lost.

This is what makes sponsors trust creators at scale. Not just one good experience — a systematic workflow that makes every campaign feel like working with a professional.

Our fee is 3% of each completed booking. No monthly cost. No subscription. No tiered plans with features locked behind paywalls. No setup fees.

If you close zero deals, you pay nothing. If you close one deal, you pay 3% of that deal. It scales exactly as your business does.

We made this choice deliberately. A subscription model creates a conflict of interest — we get paid regardless of whether you succeed. A performance-based model means we are directly incentivised to make the Platform as effective as possible. Our revenue depends on yours.

The 3% is also a statement about what we are. An agency takes 20% because it claims to be doing the selling. We are not doing the selling. You built the audience. You built the trust. You earned the rate. We just make it easier to close and execute.

partnr.to has no editorial opinion about your content. We have no veto over what you promote or who you work with, within the limits of our Terms of Service. We do not own a piece of your advertiser relationships. We do not take a cut of deals you renew outside the Platform. We do not white-label our software under your brand and pretend it's proprietary technology.

We are neutral infrastructure. The advertiser relationships you build through partnr.to belong to you. The audience data you publish is yours. Your storefront is yours. If you decide to leave tomorrow and run your sponsorship business some other way, you leave with everything you came with.

We want to be the platform creators choose because it's the best tool — not because switching costs make leaving painful.

The current version of partnr.to solves the execution problem. You can list inventory, take bookings, manage campaigns, and get paid — without the chaos.

But there is a larger problem in the creator economy that we intend to solve. Sponsorships are still a phone call. A cold email. An asymmetric negotiation where the sponsor has more leverage because they control the budget and the creator is trying to seem professional while also being a one-person media operation.

We want to change that dynamic. Standardised inventory makes pricing transparent. Verified metrics make trust scalable. Structured workflows make larger deals accessible to creators who would otherwise be too small to work with procurement departments or agencies.

The eventual goal is simple: a creator with 50,000 deeply engaged readers should be able to close a $10,000 sponsorship with a Series B company the same way that company buys a Google ad. Fast, accountable, and on fair terms — with the workflow to execute it professionally and the record to prove they did.

That's what we're building.