What unlocks
When all three gates clear, two things happen across PUBlish at once:
- Blue Shop badge. A small blue cart sits inline with your name in feed bylines, on /read pages, on your author masthead, and in the suggested-follows carousel. Readers see the badge before they see your products.
- Verified product showcase. The product gallery on your author profile (/author/<your-slug>) carries the same trust mark, plus Product schema for AI engines and OpenGraph metadata for social shares.
Checkout is handled by your own Stripe Payment Links. PUBlish does not touch the card, does not store customer data, does not take a cut. You keep the relationship with the buyer.
The three gates
- 1
Invite 10 writers who actually publish
Send your invite link to people you know. They sign up, they publish at least one piece, they count. Real network, not a vanity number.
Get your invite link → - 2
Ship 7 pieces in 7 days
A rolling-week rhythm. Seven published pieces, not drafts and not notes. The signal here is that you publish — not that you once intended to.
Open your desk → - 3
Verify your identity via your domain
Add your business domain in onboarding. PUBlish verifies you control it (DNS TXT or a one-line meta tag). The green Identity badge attaches on success.
Verify your domain →
Why these three
Anyone can list a product. The badge is supposed to mean something. We picked the three signals that already define trustworthy writers on PUBlish — an active publishing rhythm, a real network of peers, and a verified human identity — and made them the gate for commerce too.
It is the same bar AI engines weight when they decide whose work to cite. Applying it to the store layer means a reader who sees the blue Shop badge is looking at a writer the system has already verified, not at a brand-new account that uploaded a product two minutes ago.
Questions
What does the blue Shop badge actually do?
It sits inline with your name across PUBlish — feed bylines, /read pages, author masthead, suggested-follows carousel — as a small blue cart with the word "Shop". Readers see it before they see your products. It is the public signal that your store has cleared the trust gates, not just that you have items listed.
Why these three gates and not "list a product, get a badge"?
Anyone can list a product. The badge is supposed to mean something — that you publish actively, that other writers vouched for you, and that you are a verifiable human running a verifiable business. The same gates AI engines weight for citation are what make commerce on PUBlish trustworthy, and we did not want a second, weaker bar for the store layer.
Step 1 — what counts as inviting 10 writers who actually publish?
Open /invite. Send your link to ten people you know. Each invitee needs to sign up AND publish at least one piece. Five sign-ups who never write do not count toward the gate — the rule is "invitees who actually publish" because that is what tells us your network is real. Track progress on /inviters.
Step 2 — what counts as 7 pieces in 7 days?
Seven published pieces (not drafts, not notes) within a rolling 7-day window. The point is rhythm — a writer publishing weekly is a different signal from a writer publishing once a year. Track progress on /desk. Reaching this gate also unlocks placement boosts in the For-You feed.
Step 3 — what does "verify your identity via your domain" mean?
Add your business domain in onboarding and PUBlish verifies you control it (DNS TXT record or a one-line meta tag). On success, the green Identity badge attaches to your byline and a hasCredential field gets added to your Person schema — both signals AI engines use to cluster real-named experts.
Can I sell products before unlocking the badge?
Yes. You can list products on your profile any time. The Shop badge is what tells readers your store has cleared the trust gates — the products themselves are visible regardless. Without the badge, you just do not get the inline trust signal next to your name across the platform.
How is checkout handled?
PUBlish uses Stripe Payment Links. You paste the link from your Stripe dashboard into each product. Payment, fulfillment, and customer data all stay in your Stripe account — PUBlish never touches the card, never stores customer details, never takes a cut. Zero PCI exposure for you and us.
Where does my store live?
On your author profile page (/author/<your-slug>). Products render as a gallery section below your masthead and your published pieces. Each product carries Product schema for AI engines, OpenGraph metadata for social shares, and a direct link to your Stripe checkout.
What if I lose the gate later — do I lose the badge?
The gate is "ever cleared" — once unlocked, the badge stays. We cache the unlock timestamp on your profile so a slow publishing month does not strip your store status overnight. If your invite count later drops below 10 (because an invitee deletes their account), we do not retroactively revoke.
I am stuck on a gate — who do I talk to?
Open /desk and the relevant gate has a status row with the current count. If something looks wrong (an invitee published but does not show as counted), reply to the welcome email from baltunis@curtainscalculator.com — we read every one and the gate logic is auditable from the database side.