Machines + Words · Cape Town

Your words already work.
Now build the machine.

Your readers would pay you today.
But...there isn't a way for them to do it.
This page shows you how.

Apply for a build ↓
A reader finishes your post and decides to give you money.Can they?

You hit publish last Thursday.

And the replies came in...by the evening.

Someone asked you..."how should I pay?"

But...you didn't have one.

That's what the Till Test is for.

Your words are half of it...
The machine is the other half.
Machines + Words builds the half you're missing.

I - The Counter
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Machines + Words
The Four Machines
Machines + Words · Cape Town

Your words already work.
Now build the machine.

Your readers would pay you today.

But...there isn't a way for them to do it.

This page shows you how.

Apply for a build ↓
THE FOUR MACHINES, opening frame: the robot at the pharmacy counter

A reader finishes your post and decides to give you money.Can they?

You hit publish last Thursday.

And the replies came in...by the evening.

Someone asked you..."how should I pay?"

But...you didn't have one.

That's what the Till Test is for.

Your words are half of it...
The machine is the other half.
Machines + Words builds the half you're missing.

The whole idea, in three lines:

Words earn attention.

You've built this half:
The audience. The trust. The craft.

Machines earn money.

This half can be built:
The capture. The offer. The till.

You need both halves.

Proof by counting
4,015
hours of meditation across 11 years
171
timed 4AM mornings: 2020 to 2021, each one logged to the minute
~15
books of sales pages, handwritten
13
years in one pharmacy: student to manager
400+
scripts a day: checked and signed
500%
of revenue targets at peak: one branch grown from inception
3,075
Substack publications in the economics corpus
7+
concept sites live
1,026
Notes in 304 days. 3,900 reactions. It peaked at 334 subscribers and has since fallen to 297.
I'm writing both numbers down.
Why?
Because...a count you only run when it flatters you isn't a count.
I published daily.
And I told nobody it wasn't working.
That's the lesson underneath the Till Test.
The four questions

Run the Till Test on your own publication.

01

The Bridge

If Substack changed tomorrow, could you still reach your readers?

02

The Front Door

Is there somewhere of your own to send a reader?

03

The Offer

Is there anything to buy that isn't the subscription?

04

The Till

Can a reader pay you any way other than subscribing?

The machine you get

One machine. Four moving parts.

It's what gets added when a publication fails the Till Test.
The writing stays yours.
The machine gets built around it.

The robot behind an honest wooden market stall, light flowing from a typewriter into an open till
The four machines · Bridge → Front Door → Offer → Till
1

The Bridge

Reach them without Substack
  • A free lead magnet that helps capture emails
  • Opt-in pages that convert
  • A list you own (on a platform of your choice)
2

The Front Door

Somewhere of your own
  • A site on your domain
  • Pages that rank on Google
  • One place that holds everything you sell
3

The Offer

Something else to buy
  • A back-end offer, built from your own archive
  • Sales pages that sell it
  • Something to say yes to that's not only your subscription
4

The Till

More than one price
  • Checkout on your own domain, in your own Stripe
  • The email sequence that sells it (running in the background)
  • More than one price tag: working today
You own the list, the pages and the checkout.
The full machine
$5,000
30 days
  • Three price tags (built and wired)
  • The email sequences that sell them
  • A revenue dashboard, so you'll always know the number
Apply for a build

Yours is one of 3 builds a month.
Why?
Because...every build gets personalized and enhanced the way you like it.

Apply for a build

Three minutes...and nothing to book at the end of it.

The same form for a $97 teardown or a build.
I take on 3 builds a month.
Tell me about your publication and I'll reply either way:
with the first thing I'd change.

That's in.
I read every one myself.
And I'll reply from hello@machines-words.com, usually within two working days.

Start free

Two free machines...working today.

The 5-day Publication Audit

Your publication, measured against the Till Test.

One email a day, for 5 days.
Each one measures a different part of your machine.
By the last email you'll know two things:
what's missing, and what building it would take.

You're in. Day 1 is on its way.

The Note Grader

Paste a Note. Get it graded.

It reads your Note the way the feed does.
And tells you why.

Grade a Note
Straight answers

The seven questions people actually ask.

Including the two that are awkward for me to answer. Those are the ones worth reading.

What exactly do I get?

$2,500 buys one price. In 15 days.
Built end to end:
the page that sells it.
The opt-in that captures the email.
And a list you own.
Not one that's sitting on Substack's servers.

$5,000 buys the full machine. In 30 days.
Three price tags, built and wired.
The email sequences that sell them, running in the background.
And a dashboard:
so you can always see the number.
Both are built around your writing.
Neither touches it.

How much, and why is the price on the page?

Here's the price list:
$97 for the recorded teardown.
$2,500 for one build.
$5,000 for the full machine.

It's on the page for one reason:
you should be able to work out whether this is for you without talking to me first.
An agency that hides its pricing isn't pricing the work.
It's pricing you.

How long does it take?

Two commitments:
15 days for one build.
30 days for the full machine.
Those aren't estimates. They're promises.

I take on 3 builds a month.
And 3 builds is what fits alongside doing them properly.

Do I have to leave Substack?

No. Never. That's not what this is.

Your publication stays where it is.
Your subscribers stay where they are.
You keep publishing the way you already publish.
Everything I build sits around it.

Think of Substack as a very good market stall.
I'm not asking you to leave the market.
I'm building you an "after party" of your own.

What if I only have 2,000 subscribers?

For a build? Then this probably isn't for you yet.
And I'd rather say so.

Below about 20,000 free subscribers?
A build doesn't pay for itself.
Nothing's stuck.
You could afford it and it still wouldn't be solving your problem.

The teardown is a different door.
Any size list.
It isn't a promise you're ready to build something.
It's $97 to find out what's missing.

Do you write my newsletter?

No, and I wouldn't.

Your readers are there for your voice.
They can tell within a paragraph when it doesn't sound like you.
And when they pick this up?
What I built for you stops working.

The whole premise here is that your words already work.
If they didn't, no machine would save them.
What's missing is the half that takes money.
And that half isn't writing.

You are in South Africa. Does that matter?

It matters to the price. And in your favour.

A US or UK agency can't do this work at $2,500.
Their costs won't allow it.
Their number starts around $7,500 a month.
For most publications this size?
That's more than the publication earns.
So they don't take the work.
That's why nobody's offered it to you.

I'm not cheaper for the sake of it.
I can serve a band the market walked away from.
The work's delivered remotely.
The same way every operator in this field already works.
And you're paying in dollars either way.