And (this will be news, too), you’ve reached the {{tier_name}} status tier, just by reading YAP.

Yep, every time you’ve opened, clicked, or shared this newsletter with a friend, you were earning points (and actual YAP dollars you can spend).

Wait, why? Well, two years ago today we sent our first email (crazy, right?). So to celebrate our birthday, we're launching…

It's our way of saying thanks for engaging with what we create (because we put a lot into this thing every day).

As a YAP reader, you have already been earning Status Points for certain actions you do every day. Here’s the breakdown:

Level up through Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum tiers as you hit certain Status Point thresholds.

When you get to a higher tier, you earn YAP Dollars faster. And your YAP Dollars are what you can actually cash in to buy real stuff during our quarterly Rewards Weeks. You can also use them toward event tickets anytime.

We’re pretty excited about what we’ve built for you. So go check out your dashboard (and don’t forget to play the daily games!) 👇

- Charlotte Ellis, Editor ♡

p.s. Our first Rewards Week is 31 March - 6 April (so get ready!)

I didn't know what it would become. I don't think anyone did.

Today, 36,000 of you open it every single day. With a 45% open rate.

Twice the industry average.

Because it doesn't just tell me that people are reading. It tells me that people actually give a damn. That this thing we've poured ourselves into matters to someone other than us.

That means more to me than I'll ever be able to properly explain.

The writers. The systems. The infrastructure behind the scenes that keeps 36,000 emails landing in inboxes every morning without fail. The strategy. The editing. The constant, relentless work of making sure that when you open YAP, it's worth your time.

We've spent $350,000 doing that.

That's not a business budget line. That's money my wife Claire and I chose not to take home. Not to invest in ourselves. Not to use to buy property or build the kind of financial security that most people our age are focused on right now.

Because we believed in what we were building.

And because of you...

Then something shifted.

ChatGPT. Perplexity. These tools became the new search engine for millions of people. And I had a moment of clarity one night that I couldn't shake.

Our entire industry was invisible.

If someone asked an AI to find the best organic social media agency, we didn't exist. Nobody in our space had done the work to be found. The website I'd thrown together on a Sunday afternoon seven years ago wasn't helping us. It was just a storefront. It didn't do anything. It wasn't built to be discovered, to be searched, to grow.

So I partnered with an agency called The Optimisers to fix our discoverability properly.

Because fixing the website forced me to ask a question I'd been avoiding. What does being a YAP reader actually feel like, beyond the email?

Think about it from your side.

You open this thing every day. You give us your time, your attention, the one thing nobody can give you more of. You've been doing it for months, maybe longer. Some of you have been here since the very first edition.

The open rates. The click rates. The numbers that told us you were there. But we had no way to reach back. No way to say: we see you, specifically, and we appreciate you, specifically. No way to reward the people who'd shown up every single day from the loyalty that deserved more than just another email tomorrow.

You were more than a number in a spreadsheet.

We just hadn't built something that treated you that way.

I went back to Claire.

I told her I wanted to keep going. That I wanted to rebuild everything properly, not patch it, rebuild it. That I wanted to build something so valuable, so genuinely useful and rewarding, that it would be stupid not to be part of it.

And that it was going to cost us more.

I want you to sit with that number for a second.

That's a home. That's financial security. That's the kind of investment that most people put into their own future, their own family, their own safety net.

We put it into this.

Looking at it from the outside, I get it. But they showed up anyway, the way they always do, and they gave everything to making it real.

And none of this happens without Charlotte.

Charlotte has been the backbone of this newsletter since the beginning. She didn't sign up to build what this has become. Nobody could have known what it would become. But she showed up every single day and poured herself into it the same way I did. Every edition. Every system. Every behind-the-scenes process that keeps this thing running the way it does.

And then there's Sophie, who brought her voice to the writing and made YAP sound like YAP. Abdel, who worked tirelessly to make sure it actually got sent each day. And everyone else on the team who touched this newsletter over the last two years and left it better than they found it.

Without all of them, this doesn't exist. Full stop.

Let me tell you what we made.

We took all 733 YAP articles, every edition we've ever published, and we brought them home. They live on the new website now, organised across six content pillars, searchable, findable, permanent. When you're looking for something we covered six months ago, you'll find it. This isn't just a newsletter anymore.

It's a library.

Seekers is a loyalty program. Think of it like an airline rewards program, except instead of flying, you just do what you already do: read.

Every action earns you points:

And alongside your tier, you earn YAP Dollars. YAP Dollars are a real currency you can spend on real things:

Log in and you can see exactly where you sit, your points balance, your YAP Dollars, how close you are to your next tier, your current streak, your full activity history. Everything is visible.

Now here's the part that makes this really valuable.

You didn't start from zero today.

Every open. Every click. Every time you showed up since the day you first subscribed. We went back through all of it. We calculated it. We credited it.

Already have a tier. Already have YAP Dollars sitting there, earned, waiting.

Because you were already loyal.

We just hadn't found a way to show you that we noticed.

I want to be straight with you about that. What you're logging into today is the first version. There will be bugs. There will be things that don't work the way they should. There will be features you want that we haven't built yet.

Tell us.

Log in, explore, break stuff, find everything that's wrong, and tell us about it. Be annoying. Send us every piece of feedback you have.

We've spent $350,000 getting to this starting line, and we're committing another $350,000 over the next year to keep building. We are nowhere near finished. We're going to keep pouring everything we have into making this the most valuable free thing you're a part of.

You've given us two years of your attention.

You opened the emails when you didn't have to. You clicked. You read. You came back the next day. Some of you have been here since before we knew what this was going to become.

That's why Claire said yes.

That's why Charlotte, Sophie, Abdel, and the whole team gave everything.

That's why, when the voice in my head said this was crazy, we kept going anyway.

And you deserved more than just another email.

Go log in.

See what you've earned.

This is just the beginning.

Happy birthday, YAP.

-Stanley Henry, CEO