Supporting independent creators means more than buying them a coffee. The independent web runs on people who build themes, tools, zines, platforms, and essays in their spare time, and most of the meaningful support is free: attention, links, labour, and presence.

Adapted from How You Can Support Indie Creators, and You Need To on brennan.day.

The alternative to supporting independent work is funding the corporate kind by default. Cory Doctorow's enshittification describes the platform decay cycle: good to users, then users are abused for business customers, then everything is extracted for shareholders. Pew Research found that around 72% of Americans say tipping is now expected in more places than five years ago, yet the people whose work actually builds the open web are rarely tipped at all.

• Share the work. Repost, recommend, link from your blog. Interlinking is the circulation system. See Interlinking.
• Contribute labour. Star repositories, open issues, submit fixes, correct typos, add documentation and examples.
• Refer work. Connect creators to people who could hire or use their services.
• Join the community. Discords, forums, newsletters, meetups. Presence is a contribution.
• Collaborate. Guest posts, joint projects, podcast invitations: work made together circulates further.
• Invite them to speak. Talks and panels build the commons and the creator's standing at once.
• Give feedback. Comments, guestbook entries, and email are the reward that keeps small work going.
• Subscribe. RSS, newsletters, and Patreon free tiers all count. See Blogging Platforms.
• Pay when you can. The platforms, themes, and servers that make the independent web run cost real money. See Independent Platforms.

• IndieWeb
• Community
• Being a Good Neighbour
• Interlinking
• Independent Platforms
• The Internet as a Place
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