# Producer Guide

How to start selling local food and goods on Milk Market.

1. **Create your account** with a Nostr identity (new or existing).
2. **Choose your membership**: a free plan with unlimited listings, Herd ($21/month or $168/year, saving 33%) with a 30-day free trial for new sellers, or Wrangler (one-time $2,100) for lifetime access to every Herd feature, plus the option to self-host a private, single-tenant copy of your store on your own server.
3. **List your first product**: title, description, price, images, categories, shipping, pickup, variants, and bulk pricing.
4. **Manage orders & communication** through encrypted buyer chat.
5. **Customize your storefront** (Herd): colors, fonts, page builder, SEO/OG meta, and a custom domain.
6. **Automate your email flows** (Herd): welcome series, order follow-ups, re-engagement, with open, click, and conversion analytics for every flow and one-time send. You can also send these emails (plus order confirmations) from your own SendGrid-authenticated domain; if your domain isn't verified, sending automatically falls back to the platform's verified sender so messages always go out. Analytics are private to each seller: every request is scoped to the seller's own account, so no other seller can see them and the platform does not access an individual seller's raw email analytics.
7. **Buy shipping labels** (Herd): connect your own Shippo account, quote live rates, buy labels, and issue returns from the orders dashboard.
8. **Connect AI agents with MCP** (Herd) so autonomous agents can manage listings and orders.
9. **Grow your business**: update listings, build relationships, share your story, and expand reach.

To accept card payments, connect either Stripe or Square (one card processor per stall, your choice). If you connect a Stripe account, you can also turn on automatic US sales tax (free). Stripe calculates it from the buyer's shipping address and shows it at checkout on card orders.

Start at the [marketplace](https://milk.market/marketplace) or read the [FAQ](https://milk.market/faq).