The Hub

Quick Wins

• Start Here Checklist for creators: Simple first steps when you're starting (or restarting) your creator journey
• Niche of One Business Strategy Template
• One Page a Day writing template
• Minimalist Content Planning Template
• The 10-Step Newsletter Blueprint
• The Niche of One Method: Why trying to compete with everyone means you compete with no one
• The "Do Less to Be More" Framework: the mindset shift that makes everything else easier

Here's where you can find the newsletter archives.

Minimalist Resource Lists

• Creator Stack: Your actual tools (Ghost, Canva, Atticus, Claude, etc.) with honest takes on each
  • Ghost CMS - Ghost is an open source blogging/website/newsletter platform, all in one. It makes SEO a simple thing you don't have to worry about. It's easy to customize through themes or a little coding. It's self-hosted or you can use a service. Connects to Stripe easily for membership needs. As of the 6.0 update, it's federated on the ActivityPub protocol which means millions of potential new eyeballs. In short, it does everything you need it to do, and you can maintain ownership of your platform. I personally use digitalpress.blog for my hosting provider. They're amazing and they have excellent pricing.
  • Substack - A lot of people use Substack as their primary newsletter provider. I don't. I use it for engagement and to drive people to this website. The Notes feature is amazing. I like the chat feature. It's a great place to start, build some numbers, but I strongly encourage people to settle on their own platform.
  • Medium - Medium is where you can start making some immediate money. Pay them $5 a month, paywall your stories, stay consistent with posting, be useful, and you should make enough to cover the cost of subscription plus add to your income.
  • Canva - Free or paid version, Canva beats all the competitors in my opinion. I use it all the time for just about everything design related. The paid version offers quite a bit more in the features department, but the free version works well for just about anything you could need.
  • Raindrop.io - I've been using Raindrop for years. The free version is awesome and the paid version makes it even better. But it makes bookmarking much easier, especially if you see something you want to share later since your bookmarks are searchable.
  • Atticus - I've used a lot of different writing tools, but I like Atticus for a couple of reasons. (1) It's very easy to use and has a surprising number of helpful options when writing eBooks. (2) It allows you to download the formats that work best for digital downloads and Amazon KDP.
  • Google Workspace - I've tried a lot of different office suite apps. I always come back to Google Workspace. I loathe Google as an entity, but their Workspace Apps are just... good. They make my workflow much, much easier.
  • Claude by Anthropic - I'm not a Luddite, so I've used a lot of different AI LLMs since they became a thing. I base their usefulness all on one thing - does this help me speed up my creative process in a way that works? Claude does that. It's my second brain and sounding board. My writing assistant who tells me when I just dumped a load of hot garbage everywhere. I would say it speeds up my process by giving me at least a 50%-75% increase in productivity. It handles the small stuff so I can handle the writing.
• Essential Reading:
  • The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitaka Koga
  • Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
  • Company of One by Paul Jarvis
  • Essentialism by Greg McKeown
  • Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

Indie Web Resources: Links to help people own their platform

Core IndieWeb Sites

• IndieWeb.org - The main hub for principles, getting started guides, and community
• IndieWebify.me - Step-by-step tools to make your site more independent
• Getting Started Guide - Your roadmap from zero to IndieWeb

Essential Philosophy

• Own Your Content Manifesto - The core argument for controlling your platform
• POSSE Strategy - Publish Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere
• The IndieWeb is for Everyone - Ben Werdmuller's accessible explanation

Practical Tools

• Micro.blog - Social network built on IndieWeb principles (Manton Reece's project)
• Bridgy - Connects your site to social media for POSSE and backfeed
• Webmention.io - Simple webmention receiving service
• Telegraph - Simple webmention sending service

Inspiring Examples

• Manton Reece's Blog - Micro.blog founder practicing what he preaches
• Aaron Parecki - IndieWeb pioneer with excellent examples
• Jeremy Keith's adactio.com - Long-running IndieWeb site

Anti-Corporate Philosophy

• Enshittification by Cory Doctorow - Why platforms decay and how to fight back
• Pluralistic Blog - Doctorow's surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog
• The Internet Con - Doctorow's book on seizing the means of computation

Technical Implementation

• Webmention Specification - How independent sites talk to each other
• Microformats2 - Markup for rich social interactions
• IndieAuth - Use your domain as your identity

Why This Matters

The IndieWeb isn't about going back to 1995. It's about taking the best parts of social media—the connections, conversations, and community—while keeping control of your content, your audience, and your creative work.

When you build on someone else's platform, you're building on rented land. They can change the rules, delete your content, or disappear entirely. When you own your platform, you control your destiny.

The goal isn't to abandon social media. It's to make your website the hub, then syndicate everywhere else. Post on your site first, then push to Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, whatever. That way, even if those platforms disappear, your content remains.

This is how we build a more human, more honest internet, one independent website at a time.

Future Pipeline (Coming Soon)

• Templates in development
• Next eBook release dates
• Mini-course previews