> It means we are not... focused purely on money and spamming the shit out of you

Sure looks like you are. In fact I can't even find a single datapoint to the contrary. My browser made over 900 requests to other entities who's raison d'être is spamming me for money.

Even your default affiliate link is Amazon instead of Bookshop for crying out loud. You didn't even put them side by side -- you hid bookshop behind a drop down menu. Seems like you don't care one bit about being independent.

> You want a diverse and indie web so that the only search results and voices you here are Forbes, Disney, and other giant media conglomerates.

I can't tell the difference between shepherd and the rest of the dead internet. There's only one person or a small team behind most blogspam and SEO-spam but it's still ruining the web.

Independent web does not mean "We're not rich (yet)". Also 'web' implies links to other indie websites. A (hidden, even. Lol.) affiliate link to bookshop doesn't count.

> Independent does not mean we don't eat.

Independent means... Not dependent. You are dependent on Medium for Shepherd's blog for crying out loud. You could host your own blog on your server in minutes for zero marginal cost, and yet there you are paying big tech to put some words under a header.

> Independent does not mean we don't have server bills.

Use less (as-a-service). Even a small and cheap dedicated server or two should be able to handle this just fine. Maybe not as-built but you're doing nothing that needs expensive hosting.

> Independent does not mean our part-time developer works for free.

You have nearly 1000 subscribers and the minimum tier is $25. That's far from "works for free".

> There is no malware on the website crazy.

You don't even know what runs on your own website. It attempted to run code from hundreds of places who's whole purpose is to dox your users and run targeted ads to take their money. (That's money that might have been going to shepherd fwiw.)

> just an ad network that pays for our servers

"just" dozens of them. "Just" dozens of tracking and analytics.

There are ways to do ethical advertising without tracking. You could even sell ads yourself (maybe you are, I haven't looked that closely at the website).

How many servers do you have that those are a significant cost center when you have multiple employees?

> I will remove all those ugly display ads as soon as we have enough income from readers and authors directly.

Going into this I thought you were making shepherd yourself, but reading between the lines, you already hired 1-2 (or more) people before you made money. That's fine if this is a business venture -- but speculatively hiring multiple people in the hopes of becoming profitable is far from the "indie web". Light years away. It's standard operating procedure for the hyperscaler corporate web though.

I'm not trying to be harsh here, I promise. My original post had a little bit of snark because of the medium blog. But every time I look at this it gets uglier.

If you truly care to be independent you can. Get rid of the garbage you've accumulated (ad networks, trackers, minimize APIs, bring everything in-house). Slim down the network requests and JavaScript. Rethink how you do ads. Lastly, focus on being part of the indie web instead of another cog in the corporate web machine.