Platform Migration Guide

How to move your creator business to makenot.work from wherever you’re selling now.

Two facts govern every migration, whatever you’re coming from:

No platform offers automated subscription transfer. Every subscriber has to re-enter payment details on the new platform. This is not a limitation anyone chose; card details live with the payment processor under the old platform’s account, and there is no path to move them.

Email is the only portable audience asset. Follower counts, member counts and subscriber counts stay behind. An email list comes with you. Everything below is, in one way or another, about that.

First: work out what you can export

Before planning anything, find out which of these four your current platform is. The category decides the whole strategy, and it is usually documented under Settings, Account, or a data-export or privacy page.

Class	What you can take	Typical of
Full export	Subscriber emails and post content, both as bulk files	Newsletter platforms, self-hosted publishing software
Customer list only	Buyer emails and sales history, but no bulk content download	Digital storefronts and product platforms
Partial emails	Only the addresses of people who ticked a share-my-email box	Membership platforms
Nothing	Sales figures at best, no way to contact anyone off-platform	Large marketplaces, video platforms, course platforms

Two things worth checking rather than assuming. First, “export” sometimes means analytics rather than addresses; open the file and look for an email column. Second, almost no platform bulk-downloads the files you uploaded, so confirm you still hold local originals of everything before you plan a sunset.

The migration, by class

Full export

The easiest case, and mostly mechanical.

Export on day one. Take the full export before you announce anything, and back the subscriber file up in more than one place. It is the most valuable thing you own.
Download the images. Post exports usually reference images by URL on the old platform’s CDN rather than including them. Those URLs die when the account does.
Set up here with your best work, not with everything. Ten to twenty strong posts make the new home look inhabited; a complete archive migration can wait or never happen.
Email your list directly and say why you’re moving. Readers chose you for the work, not for the platform.
Point your custom domain at your new home, through custom domains or your own site.
Leave the old archive up. Inbound links from search engines, social posts, and other people’s newsletters still point there. A final post linking to the new home converts that traffic for years.

Members still have to re-subscribe by hand. Offering the first month free to anyone who was already paying you elsewhere is a fair trade for the friction.

Customer list only

You have the buyers but not the files, so the prep is inventory.

Export the customer list and the sales history, then verify you hold local copies of every product file. If you don’t, download them from the product editor one at a time before anything else.
Rebuild the catalog here at matching prices, so nobody feels the move cost them.
Email every past customer on day one. Same products, same prices, new home, with direct links to each one. People who have already paid you once are the easiest audience you will ever convert.
A migration discount in the 10-15% range gives them a reason to bookmark the new store now rather than later.
Update every outbound link you control: website, social bios, pinned posts, video descriptions, email signatures, course materials, embedded buy buttons. Embeds or plain links both work.
Sunset over 30-60 days. Stop listing new products there, edit existing descriptions to point here, and leave the listings up. Old links and search results keep sending buyers.

Partial emails

You can take some of your audience with you, and how many depends on work you do before you leave.

Run an opt-in campaign first, for two to four weeks. Ask supporters directly to tick the share-my-email box. Pin a post explaining you’re adding another way to support the work.
Collect emails independently in parallel, through a form linked from your profile or bio. Anything that captures an address will do. This catches the people who never tick the box.
Run both platforms for 60 to 90 days. Post here first, then cross-post there, with a line in every post saying where it also lives. Do not lock or delete the old content during this period.
Then redirect. Hide your tiers there from new supporters, repoint every external link, and pin a post explaining the move.
Sunset after three to six months. Email whoever’s address you have with a final reminder, and leave the old page live with a pinned redirect.

Give at least 30 days notice of any change to where content appears, and consider grandfathering people who move at the rate they were already paying. The parallel period is what makes this work: by the time you ask anyone to switch, the new home already has a library.

Nothing exportable

There is no audience to migrate here, only one to build, so treat this as a funnel exercise rather than a move. It takes months.

Start an email list immediately, before any other step. Nothing else is portable, so until you have addresses you have nothing.
Mention it everywhere, constantly. End of every video, every product description, profile bio, channel banner. A free resource in exchange for an address converts far better than an unadorned signup link.
Set up here as the place support happens, not as a replacement for the discovery you already have.
Send new work here first. Early access, bonus material, the full version, or exclusive releases, with a delayed or truncated version going out on the old platform.
Probably don’t leave. See below.

When the old platform is your discovery engine

Large marketplaces, video platforms and course platforms have organic traffic you cannot replicate from a standing start. If people find you there rather than arriving from somewhere you control, leaving costs you the audience you were trying to keep.

Redirect the support, not the audience. Keep publishing where the discovery is, and make it the top of the funnel. Existing work stays up as a billboard; new and premium work sells here, at your prices, on your terms.

Only consider closing the old account once your direct supporter base here exceeds the one there, and even then, keeping the profile alive for discovery usually beats deleting it.

If your old platform is exclusive by contract and you’re paying for that exclusivity with a better royalty rate, going non-exclusive is the first move. The rate cut is the price of being able to sell anywhere.

Things that hold in every case

Announce early, then again. 30 days minimum before anything changes for the people paying you.
Migrate the back catalog before you ask anyone to follow you. A new home with nothing in it converts badly.
Time the announcement with real work. Publish something worth reading or hearing alongside the move, so the work is the story and the migration is a footnote.
Never delete the old presence. Inbound links, search results and other people’s references keep arriving for years. A pinned redirect turns all of that into traffic.
We don’t handle physical products. If you sell merchandise or anything shipped, that stays wherever it is now, and only the digital side moves.