You land on a creator’s page. Cool. Then it’s “join me on Patreon.” Then “buy the pack on Gumroad.” Then “merch is over here.” Then a fourth tab for the newsletter and a fifth for the actual work. By the time anybody finds the thing they came for, they’ve already bounced. I hate that as a consumer. I hate it even more as the person who has to keep all those dashboards in my head.

So this update is me cutting the middleman and putting the house back together.

Off-platform is the default. I’m done treating it like one.

Patreon and Gumroad did their job when I needed something standing up fast. They still do that job for a lot of people. I’m not throwing shade at the tools. I’m throwing shade at the pattern: every real action lives somewhere else. Support lives over there. Files live over there. A hoodie lives on a third site that looks nothing like the first two. Tracking lives in four inboxes and a spreadsheet you swear you’ll clean up on Sunday.

That split is annoying on both sides. You have to remember which platform you used last time. I have to remember which platform actually paid out, which one held a payout, which one changed a fee, and which one decided my post “didn’t meet community guidelines” because the algorithm woke up in a mood. Off-platform also means the experience never quite matches. Different checkout. Different login. Different “where did my receipt go.” Different brand. It never feels like one place.

I want one platform. Mine. Seamless for the people coming through the door and easier to track for me. Same look. Same nav. Same account energy. You shouldn’t have to open five tabs to hang out, pay, or pick something up.

The Room

The membership side now lives on the site as The Room.

It’s a pattern-style membership page — rooms, categories, drops — not a generic “tier 1 / tier 2 / please clap” wall. Videos, voice notes, photo sets, quizzes, the behind-the-scenes stuff that doesn’t belong in a public feed. Your house, your rules. You come in through this site. You stay on this site. You’re not getting yoinked to a third-party membership feed that looks like every other creator’s third-party membership feed.

That’s the whole point of moving it in-house. The Room should feel like a room in this house, not a rental unit with someone else’s furniture.

The Store

The Store is where it all lives. Digital and physical, same shelf language.

Digital is the aisle I’ve been building toward anyway — sound, LUTs, books, presets, the files you grab and actually use. Physical is merch that used to live on an island. Hoodies, prints, the stuff you can hold. I didn’t want a separate “merch store” tab that dumps you onto a page that looks like it belongs to a different person.

Physical merch is running through Fourthwall and sitting inside the Store on this site. Same roof. You browse here. You check out without feeling like you left. I’m not going to nerd out about how the pipes connect — that’s backstage. Front of house should just feel like a store that belongs on iamchrispaezjr.com.

Why this actually matters

Creators keep getting told to “build a funnel.” Fine. I still want the funnel to look like one room with doors, not a strip mall. When everything lives here, I can see what people actually open. You can find the membership, the files, and the merch without guessing which logo to trust. Support isn’t “uhh which platform did you buy on.” Updates aren’t split across three inboxes. The site stops being a link tree with extra steps.

This is the version I wanted when I ditched the template hosts in the first place. A living hub. Not a billboard that points at other billboards.

The Room and the Store are up. Come through the front door. Stay in the house.

Edit: I forgot to mention my latest addition — BLOOP.

Inspired by my love of J.A.R.V.I.S. from Iron Man. Yeah. That one.

I’m a major Iron Man fan in general — the armor, the sarcasm, the “I built this in a cave with a box of scraps” energy. That whole vibe is a big reason this website exists the way it does. I didn’t want another flat brochure. I wanted a house with a little personality floating around it. So BLOOP showed up: Buddy Linking Our Online Projects. My little site companion. Ask it stuff. It answers. It’s not Tony’s AI (copyright lawyers, please breathe), but the inspiration is absolutely “helpful floating assistant who lives in the interface.”

If you see a blob hanging out on the page… that’s the bit. Say hi. Or don’t. J.A.R.V.I.S. would still be polite either way.