The Scholarship

I DID IT, YOU CAN TOO

100% above cost goes to UT Martin.

I'm not making money on this. I'm paying subscriptions, and everything else goes to a scholarship at the University of Tennessee at Martin called "I Did It, You Can Too."

That's the whole model. There's no board. There's no salary. There's no marketing budget. There's me, a phone, a handful of AI models, and a scholarship goal.

How the money moves

Every dollar that comes in through this site does one of two things:

1. It keeps the lights on.

Claude subscription. Ghost subscription. Netlify subscription. Suno subscription. These are what make THE NET exist — the AI thinking partner, the website host, the domain and deploy pipeline, the music platform where Underground Frequency lives. Costs run roughly $200-250 a month. That's the floor.

2. It funds the scholarship.

Every dollar above the $200-ish monthly floor goes directly to the scholarship fund. 100% of it. I take zero. No salary. No "founder draw." No expense account.

Once the fund hits $20,000, that's the endowment. Twenty grand held at UT Martin earns roughly $200-$250 a year in perpetuity. That becomes the annual "I Did It, You Can Too" scholarship — every year, forever, to one student who needed it.

That's the first goal. After $20K, we reassess and see where the rest goes.

Why UT Martin — and what "I Did It, You Can Too" actually means

UT Martin is the University of Tennessee at Martin, in the northwest corner of the state. Rural. Blue-collar. Full of kids like me who didn't always know college was a door they could walk through.

But this scholarship isn't named that because it sounds good on a marketing page. It's named that because it's literally what happened to me.

My UT Martin story

I went to UT Martin the first time from the fall of 1995 to the spring of 1997. Didn't finish. Life happened. Then in the spring of 2017 — twenty years later — I went back.

I was living in Nashville by then. Martin is two hours and forty-three minutes one way. I drove it anywhere from two to five times a week for three years — some weeks I'd stay overnight in Martin if I didn't have Thursday classes, other weeks (especially senior year with labs) I'd run all five days straight. Every fall semester. Every spring semester. 4:30 AM alarm clocks, 11 PM drives home, ice, construction, the whole thing.

Why drive two hours and forty-three minutes one way when there are universities in Nashville? Because going back to UT Martin meant my old credits counted. I didn't have to restart from basic math. I could pick up where I left off at twenty years old instead of rebuilding the entire foundation.

Day one back on campus, I met with the Dean. He looked at my transcript and said:

"Dude — you took Calculus 1 a year ago. Twenty years ago. Guess what. Monday morning, 8 AM, you're in Calc 2. It's our cut class. 60% failure rate. Good luck."

That hit me like a ton of bricks. I said "OK. If you were me, what would you do?"

He said "Khan Academy."

A million-and-a-half Khan Academy points later — six weeks from Thanksgiving to spring semester starting around January 10th or 11th — I walked into Calc 2 ready. Passed it. Three years of commuting later, I had my engineering degree.

That's what "I Did It, You Can Too" actually means. It's not a marketing tagline. It's a literal description of what I did — at 40, driving five hours a day, after a 20-year gap, by grinding a Khan Academy tab for six straight weeks in the dark.

Every scholarship dollar that goes to UT Martin goes there because right now some kid is sitting in that Dean's office getting told the same thing — and a $200 scholarship and a Khan Academy tab is the difference between them walking out or showing up Monday at 8 AM ready to work.

Founder #500

The Founder's Circle tier is capped at 500 numbered units. Numbers 1 through 499 are for sale.

#500 is reserved for UT Martin.

No auction. No raffle. No "final buyer wins the box." If 499 people sign up for the Founder tier, #500 ships to UT Martin as the scholarship-relationship anchor — their copy of the cards, their copy of the foil set, their name in the Founder credits as the institutional Founder.

If the full 500 never sell, #500 still goes to UT Martin. Either way, they end up on the roster.

Live transparency ledger

Below is what's real-time and what's real. These numbers update as the site runs. No marketing fluff — just the actual ledger.

Monthly operating cost: ~$200-250 (subscription stack: Claude + Ghost + Netlify + Suno — exact figure published monthly)

Total revenue since launch: [placeholder — will update]

Current scholarship fund balance: [placeholder — will update]

Progress to $20K endowment goal: [placeholder — progress bar]

Founders sold: [placeholder — e.g., 47 of 499 + #500 reserved for UT Martin]

Scholarships awarded to date: [placeholder — recipient names with permission, once awarded]

I'll publish the actual numbers monthly. The honest versions. If the site only makes $300 in a month, I'll say so. If it makes $3,000, I'll say that too. Transparency isn't a feature here — it's the whole point.

What about the rest — writer fees, image fees, printing, shipping?

Fair question. Here's the breakdown on things that aren't monthly subscriptions:

Writing: zero cost. I wrote all of it. AI tools helped me think, but there are no ghostwriters, no editors on payroll, no contracted authors. Writing cost is $0.

Images: generated across multiple AI image platforms. Those usage fees are bundled into the monthly subscription floor.

Physical trading cards (Founder tier only): The $499 Founder price covers physical card printing, custom numbered box, stickers, and domestic USPS shipping. This is a pass-through cost — the per-unit fulfillment is roughly $90-130, and the Founder margin above that goes straight to the scholarship alongside everything else.

Music: Suno fees are in the monthly floor. All 130+ Underground Frequency tracks are on Travis's personal Suno account. Streaming stays free on the song pages — we're not charging for that.

What happens after the endowment is funded

When the scholarship hits $20K and the first UT Martin student gets the check, the model adjusts. Options I'm considering:

• A second endowment at a different school (an HBCU, likely — my mom graduated from FAMU in 1986, so that thread runs deep through the universe)
• Classroom licensing donations — free Classroom tier seats to Title I schools
• A second "I Did It, You Can Too" scholarship cycle building toward $40K total

I'll decide that in-flight, with input from Founders and subscribers. The rule doesn't change: I'm not taking a salary. Whatever comes in above costs is going back out.

How to support

If you want to help fund the scholarship faster, the fastest paths are:

Subscribe — $7/month NET Operator or $15/month Builder. Monthly support, cancel anytime, every dollar above $200 total goes to the fund.

Go lifetime — $149 Builder lifetime. One payment, you own it forever, ~$135 of that goes straight to the endowment.

Join the Founder's Circle — $499 one-time, capped at 499 numbered units. The foil card set ships, the scholarship gets the biggest per-unit push, and your name goes in the credits.

Classroom bulk — if you're a teacher, the Classroom tier starts at $99/year and funds the scholarship at the same 100%-above-cost rate.

Or just read the free stories — no guilt, no pressure. The 15 free stories across five regions are permanently free, no email required. If you can't afford any of the tiers, read those, tell a friend, and we're square.

The math on this, stated plainly

If 100 people subscribe at $7/mo for 12 months, that's $8,400. Subtract ~$2,800 for a year of subscriptions = $5,600 to the scholarship fund.

If 50 people buy the $149 lifetime, that's $7,450. Subtract minimal passthrough, roughly $6,800 goes to the fund.

If 40 people claim Founder tier at $499, that's $19,960. Subtract fulfillment (~$100/unit × 40 = $4,000), roughly $15,000 goes to the fund.

Any ONE of those scenarios gets the endowment close to goal. All three together overshoot it — and that's when the Stage 2 plan kicks in.

This is the honest version of a for-profit indie website. If you want to help, you help. If you can't, you read. If something feels off, email me.

Contact: travis@the-net.ghost.io

A NET Universe Production
Written by Travis Jenkins — User Zero
MPC Universe | 875+ Characters | 18 Regions | 333 Cards
Music: @Underground_Frequency on Suno