Building an Independent Literary Publication in 2025

The feeling is liberation. Pure, unfiltered freedom. After years of posting daily on Medium, watching four stories get boosted in November and earning real money, then watching December slip past the halfway point with no boosts at all, I'm done waiting for algorithmic validation. I'm done writing for someone else's distribution system.

## What Static Blogs Can Offer That Platforms Cannot

I want to start something independent. My own domain, [Eleventy](https://www.11ty.dev/) as my static site generator, [Buttondown](https://buttondown.com) for newsletters. I already have the IndieWeb facilities in place, [microformats](https://microformats.org/), [Webmentions](https://webmention.net/), the whole ecosystem of human-owned web infrastructure.

But I don't just want to *have* an independent publication. I want it to be *good*. I want the branding to immediately signal "this is independent literary journalism with credibility and meaning." I want readers to understand they're getting something they can't get anywhere else.

So I'm asking myself what exactly can an independent publication like mine offer? What am I missing? What haven't I thought of? Let me research this properly and figure it out.

I'm very anti-big corporations. I'm trying my best to only use small, independent solutions for analytics, hosting, and everything else. No Google. No Meta. No surveillance capitalism masquerading as "free" services.

The good news? There are excellent alternatives to Google Analytics that actually respect your readers' privacy.

**[Plausible Analytics](https://plausible.io/)** is my top choice. It's made and hosted in the EU by a [bootstrapped, debt-free team of 10](https://plausible.io/about) who refuse venture capital. Their script is **75 times smaller** than Google Analytics, meaning faster load times and lower carbon footprint. No cookies. No personal data collection. No cross-site tracking. Pricing starts at **$9/month** for up to 10k monthly pageviews. They're also [fully open-source](https://github.com/plausible/analytics), so you can audit the code yourself.

Other options include:

- **[Fathom Analytics](https://usefathom.com/)** ($15/month): Similar privacy-first approach, slightly cheaper than Plausible for high traffic - **[Simple Analytics](https://www.simpleanalytics.com/)** (€9/month): Encrypted at rest, no IP addresses stored - **[Umami](https://umami.is/)** ($9/month or self-hosted): Open-source, can be self-hosted for free - **[Pirsch](https://pirsch.io/)**: Made and hosted in Germany, beautiful theming options

All of these are **100% GDPR and CCPA compliant** out of the box. No cookie banners needed. Your readers' privacy is protected by default.

### Ethical Ad Networks

Now, about monetization. I definitely don't want to use Google AdS