How I Added Paid Tiers to My Discord Bot Without Stripe or Any Payment API

The author describes monetizing a Discord bot using manual grants via Ko-fi instead of integrating Stripe or other payment APIs. Customers pay through Ko-fi, and the author manually runs a grant command to unlock paid features, avoiding webhook, subscription, and refund complexity. This approach works well for early-stage bots with few paying customers, with a recommendation to switch to automated payments around 20-30 customers.