Small capital. Serious appetites.
The postcards stop at the Beehive and the cable car. The Wellington people actually live in is Cuba Street coffee, Newtown bakeries, Courtenay Place at night and weekend runs over to Petone. SIGNL is forming its Wellington founding roster now: local creators who post that city, and local businesses ready to comp them.
The post is the job.
SIGNL is free for creators. Always. Businesses pay the platform. You never pay to join, to list, or to get booked.
Comp visits are the core. Paid bookings sit on top: set your own rate from a NZ$90 floor, the business pays it, and the platform fee is 6 percent total, split evenly, so you keep 97 percent of your rate. Paid bookings are held by SIGNL until your post is live. Headliners (15,000+ followers) are also first in line for featured paid campaigns when businesses run them.
Wellington eats close to home
The coffee capital
Wellington roasts, pours and argues about coffee like nowhere else in the country. A café here is a daily ritual, not a treat, and the people who post the ritual hold real sway over where the city drinks.
Compact enough for word to fly
You can walk the whole central city in twenty minutes: Te Aro, Courtenay Place, the waterfront, up into Mount Victoria. When a place is good, Wellington hears about it by Friday. Creators here post that word first.
Wind, rain, still out
Wellingtonians do not stay home for weather. Cuba Street fills in a southerly, Newtown queues in the rain, and the hospo scene runs on people who show up anyway. That loyalty is what founding businesses are buying into.
City, valley and coast
The market runs past the city limits: Petone and the Hutt Valley across the harbour, Porirua up the coast, and the Kapiti Coast towns beyond. Small rooms keep opening in all of them, and each survives on local word of mouth.
How it works for Wellington creators
Claim your founding spot
Sign up free with Wellington as your market and finish your profile: your handles, your suburbs, what you post about. Founding creators are reviewed in sign-up order, and your tier is set automatically by your total audience.
Go be a customer
Show up, redeem the comp in the app, and experience the business for real. Bring a guest when the offer covers two.
Post within 48 hours
The Standard Visit: 1 post or reel plus 1 story that shares the post, with the goal of posting within 48 hours of the visit, and a week as the outside limit, honest and clearly disclosed as comped. The platform tracks the post, so the business gets proof and you get credit for the visit.
Coffee houses, bakeries and Cuba Street tables
Restaurant meals are the start: roasteries and cafés around Cuba Street, bakeries in Newtown and Aro Valley, dinners on Courtenay Place, seafood in Island Bay and Seatoun. Salons, barbershops, fitness studios, galleries and event spaces run comp offers too.
Students count here. If you are at Victoria University of Wellington or Massey University, name your school when you sign up or finish your profile: your profile carries your campus, so businesses near your school can find you first. A Standard Visit fits between classes, and alcohol offers are 18+ only.
Where do you land?
Tiers are set automatically by your total audience across platforms, and they rise as you grow. A small, genuinely local audience beats a big, scattered one.
- Everyday people with a local following
- Comp visits, and paid bookings at your own rate
- Perfect first step into local posting
- Regular local posters, the roster's sweet spot
- Comp visits, and paid bookings at your own rate
- Priority access to new businesses
- Established local creators
- Comp visits, and paid bookings at your own rate
- First pick of grand openings and launches
SIGNL starts at 500 total followers across your platforms. Your tier is set by your follower count, and it moves up as you grow. What matters most is not the number, it's that your audience is actually local and actually engages. Nobody picks their own band.
Wellington businesses: be the room locals post about
Wellingtonians choose the neighbourhood café over the famous name, and they choose it because someone they follow ate there. Founding businesses get that someone: real local creators, comped at your cost, posting honestly to the followers who fill your tables.
Ads reach everyone except the people who live nearby. SIGNL puts Wellington creators who live here inside your business, posting to neighbors who can walk in this week.
Join the founding business list
Apply in a few minutes. Your category spot in your trade area is held in application order, and nothing is charged today.
Founding pricing, held for you
NZ$349 a month for Self-Service (up to 5 creator visits a month, about NZ$70 per creator visit), NZ$619 a month for Growth (up to 10 creator visits a month, about NZ$62 per creator visit) or NZ$1,239 a month for Managed (up to 20 creator visits a month), with a 3-month minimum and then month to month. Founding businesses get NZ$175 off the first month, and all prices are plus GST. Visits you don't use roll into the next month, then expire. The only other cost is the comp the business chooses to offer, provided at its cost, not retail. Founding businesses keep founding pricing while they remain subscribed, and the plan begins when the Wellington market opens.
Activate when Wellington opens
Pick creators from the founding roster, offer a comp at your cost, and get honest, tracked posts delivered in 48 hours* of each visit.
*Creators have up to one week to post. The goal is to post within 48 hours of the visit, and hitting it earns their Momentum. If a week passes with no post, the visit is replaced and does not count against your plan.
If a booked creator does not show up or does not post, that visit does not count against your monthly visits. It is replaced.
How content rights work: on a comp visit, you can share the creator's post natively with the creator credited, and nothing more: no downloads, no reposting the file, no ads. On a paid visit, you can also repost the content on your own channels and run it as an ad for 90 days under the standard license included in the booking. The creator always owns the content. Rights follow the visit, never the plan.
Suburb by suburb
The founding roster lives where Wellingtonians actually eat, drink, gather and get their hair cut.
- Te Aro
- Mount Victoria
- Newtown
- Aro Valley
- Thorndon
- Kelburn
- Island Bay
- Karori
- Petone
- Lower Hutt
- Porirua
Questions, answered straight
Is SIGNL live in Wellington yet?
Not yet. Founding sign-ups are open now, the founding roster is forming, and founding businesses are joining the founding list. Offers begin when the Wellington market opens, and founding creators see every offer first.
Does it cost anything to join SIGNL as a creator?
No. SIGNL is free for creators. Always. Businesses pay the platform. You never pay to join, to list, or to get booked. Your compensation on standard visits is the comp itself: the meal, service or experience the business provides.
What would I actually post about in Wellington?
Real Wellington days: a coffee verdict from a Cuba Street roastery, a bakery run in Newtown, dinner on Courtenay Place, fish and chips around the harbour in Seatoun. The Standard Visit is 1 post or reel plus 1 story that shares the post, with the goal of posting within 48 hours of the visit, and a week as the outside limit, honest and clearly disclosed as comped.
I am a student at Victoria University or Massey. Can I join?
Yes. Name your school when you sign up or finish your profile and your profile carries your campus, so businesses near your school can find you first. The Standard Visit fits between classes, and alcohol offers are 18+ only.
How does a Wellington business join, and when is it charged?
Apply for the founding business list and your category spot is held in application order. Nothing is charged today. Your plan begins when the Wellington market opens, at founding pricing: NZ$349 a month for Self-Service (up to 5 creator visits a month), NZ$619 a month for Growth (up to 10 creator visits a month) or NZ$1,239 a month for Managed (up to 20 creator visits a month), with a 3-month minimum and then month to month. Founding businesses get NZ$175 off the first month, and all prices are plus GST. Visits you don't use roll into the next month, then expire.
Which parts of Wellington does the roster cover?
The whole market, suburb by suburb: Te Aro, Mount Victoria, Newtown, Aro Valley, Thorndon, Kelburn and Island Bay, plus Porirua, the Hutt Valley and the Kapiti Coast. If your followers live here, your audience counts as local here.
This page is the Wellington founding story: why this city, and what founding means here. The Wellington market page carries the directory view: founding terms and roster details for this market.
Wellington's founding roster is forming now
Creators join free and are reviewed in sign-up order. Businesses join the founding list at founding pricing, charged nothing until the market opens.