Building Sponsor Me in public
Product Updates
Product updates are the dated record of changes that have actually shipped on Sponsor Me.
Sponsor Me is built and maintained by one person, in the open. Every entry below is a real change with a real date. There are no roadmap promises and no backdated history.
Clearer homepage, and honest trust signals
- Reworked the homepage hero so the first line says what Sponsor Me actually does, with Browse Sponsors and Become a Sponsor side by side.
- Added a 'See How Sponsor Me Works' walkthrough built from the real interface, using clearly-labelled example data only.
- Added a founder note, a Trust & Safety summary and this Updates page.
- Built the plumbing to collect real member quotes later. Publication consent is required, you choose first name, initials or anonymous, and an admin reviews it first. No testimonials are published yet.
Human sponsor vs AI comparison page, and better analytics
- Published /vs/ai-sponsor, a factual comparison of human peer sponsorship and AI recovery companions.
- Expanded privacy-safe analytics to cover navigation between pages, so we can see which pages help people and which do not.
- Ran a full regression sweep across the API and every page.
Safety FAQ, live sponsor counts, About page and SEO
- Added the sponsor safety and FAQ section to the homepage, including the honest answer that sponsors are not background checked or certified.
- Sponsor counts on the homepage now come live from the database, with proper loading, empty and error states.
- Published the About page with the real founder story.
- Reworked the pricing page and added social metadata and structured data for search engines.
- Installed privacy-safe product analytics.
Admin insight tools
- Added a signup funnel view and site traffic panel to the admin area, so drop-off can be found and fixed.
Memberships and first public deployment
- Wired up Stripe webhooks so memberships stay in sync automatically.
- Deployed Sponsor Me publicly for the first time.
Sponsor Me begins
- First working version: sponsor profiles, browsing, sponsorship requests, private messaging, block and report tools, and privacy-first accounts with no legal name required.
Spotted something broken, or want to suggest an improvement? Send a message - it reaches the person who builds this.