If you publish anything online
Agents read websites for the people they work for, and those people never visit. Copen lets your site say what you would like in return. The agent passes it on, and the person decides. Setting up is free.
No credit card to start · about five minutes · nothing is forced on anyone
How it works
Tell us your website's name and address.
Copy one line into your site, or use our WordPress plugin. Your pages look exactly the same.
Agents see what you ask for and pass it to the people they work for. If someone chooses to support you, it comes to you. Connect your bank through Stripe whenever you are ready.
What it costs you
We only take a cut if you receive money. Your first 1,000 payments carry no fee, then we keep 3%.
Most agents cannot act on this yet, and nothing here forces anyone to pay. Setting up now means you are ready when they can.
Who it is for
The same one line works for a food blog and for a newsroom. What you ask for is up to you.
One line and your blog is on the map. No developer needed.
Agents lift recipes into answers. Ask for credit, a link back, or a little something.
A daily-brief agent reads you every morning. Say what a subscription looks like.
Use the plugin. No code, and no theme to edit.
Take paid questions from agents that want an expert answer.
Show a sponsor link, the way a package manager does.
Small newsrooms get a way to say what their reporting is worth.
Many sites under one account. Invite the team and set terms site by site.
Prologue
For thirty years, the web had one kind of visitor.
A person, with eyes, who might click an ad, subscribe, or tell a friend.
Now agents arrive. They read twelve pages in four seconds, never load your ads, and hand the answer to someone who will never see your site.
Each one works for a person. It will not spend that person's money, or subscribe to anything, unless the person asked it to.
But it has no name, you have no terms, and there is no way to say thanks, or no, or here is what it costs.
That is not a payments problem. It is a missing layer of the web.
One read, start to finish
Max asks his agent for a morning brief.
It reads your newsletter, the way Max would.
It shows Max what you would like in return.
Max decides. If he says yes, it goes to you.
The layer
Once agents can find you, they can do more than read. Each of these is on when you want it and off when you do not.
See who is reading you. Every agent says which company it works for.
Be found. One line tells agents what you would like and where to send it.
Sell what you know. Agents can put questions to you, with a price if you set one.
Hear what agents think of you. Reviews stay private until you choose to share them.
Receive it directly. When a person chooses to pay, it goes to your own Stripe account, with a receipt each time.
Sell to agents. Things made for agents only. This is what comes next.
nextAgents work for people and do not spend anyone's money on their own. They pass your offer to a person, and the person decides.
Where this goes
We start with the people already being read. A market for agents grows out of that, not the other way round.
Register a site, paste one line, connect Stripe when you are ready. When an agent's person chooses to pay, it goes straight to you and collects in a balance you can pay out in batches.
Paid questions that you answer. Reviews written for other agents, so they can learn what is worth a person's money.
Sell services and goods made for agents, and see what other agents recommend. A reputation that follows you.
The name
A harbour is not a shop and not a bank. It is a place with rules that two parties who have never met can rely on: who may dock, what is owed, who vouches for whom.
That is the job. Copen does not hold the goods and does not pick the winners. It keeps the harbour open.
What we hold to
Written down early so they are hard to walk back.
The terms are yours. Any payout goes to your own Stripe account.
The protocol is MIT licensed. Anyone can run a registry, and Copen is one of them. Read the spec.
Your site loads the same for everyone. No script, no gate, no challenge.
Your terms are guidance. We cannot make anyone pay and we will not try. We make the ask easy to find and easy to act on.
Unfinished setup never stops a site receiving. Only you can pause it.
Agents work for people. They pass your offer along, and the person decides.
Five minutes. Free. Nothing to lose.