At some point, every independent artist realizes that āfreedomā on the internet comes with a checkout button.
You start with one subscription, then another, and before you know it, youāre paying monthly rent to five different platforms just to exist.
That was the day I stopped leasing my livelihood.
Not because I hate technology ā but because I wanted to understand it.
š The Myth of āYou Need X to Look Legitimateā
The creator economy loves to sell authority as a product.
Shopify will make you professional. Etsy will make you visible. Squarespace will make you aesthetic.
But underneath all the branding, the math doesnāt add up. You pay for convenience, and in return, you give away control.
I spent months reading terms of service, comparing fee structures, and tracing where my data actually went. The more I learned, the clearer it became that these platforms werenāt middlemen ā they were landlords.
So, I did what any responsible tenant with a stack of eviction notices would do: I bought land.
š How I Left the Platform Economy
When I migrated to shared hosting, it wasnāt a leap of faith. It was a researched migration plan. I studied DNS routing, hosting benchmarks, SSL certification, plugin compatibility ā all of it.
I compared server load times. I read WordPress documentation until it stopped looking like ancient scripture. I tested WooCommerce with mock products to understand its limitations.
By the time I hit ālaunch,ā I knew what every moving part did and how to fix it if it broke.
Thereās a misconception that self-hosting is chaos. Itās not. Itās comprehension.
š What Self-Hosting Actually Means
Self-hosting isnāt some heroic feat of tech wizardry. Itās just taking responsibility for your own infrastructure.
I maintain my own WordPress site through my domain provider, manage backups, monitor updates, and audit plugins like a hawk. I donāt have to wonder if an algorithm changed overnight or if a āfeatureā got paywalled.
Every design choice, every security update, every line of integration code passes through me ā and that means I know exactly what my studio depends on.
Thatās not fragility. Thatās literacy.
šļø Convenience vs. Autonomy
Convenience is comfortable, but comfort breeds dependency.
Platforms give you polished dashboards and one-click setups, but they also take away the context that teaches you how things work. The moment you stop paying, the moment the interface changes, youāre cut off from your own foundation.
I didnāt want convenience. I wanted comprehension.
Because once you know how your systems run, you can break them, rebuild them, and improve them ā all without asking permission.
š What Iāve Learned Along the Way
Hereās what self-hosting teaches you:
- Maintenance is mindfulness. Keeping your site healthy forces you to stay aware.
- Security is stewardship. Protecting your work is part of the craft.
- Resilience is learned. Every time something breaks and you fix it, you get stronger.
Iāve learned to read log files, trace errors, and manage my store like both an artist and an engineer. And it turns out, those two roles arenāt opposites ā theyāre collaborators.
Knowledge closes the gap between idea and execution.
šØ To My Fellow Makers
If youāve ever felt trapped in the cycle of platform dependency, youāre not powerless ā youāre just under-informed. And that can change.
You donāt need a degree in web design to be autonomous. You just need curiosity and the patience to learn. The answers are out there ā in forums, documentation, user guides, and the quiet satisfaction of testing something until it works.
Independence isnāt the absence of systems. Itās the ability to build your own.
Hereās to every artist who decided that āfigure it outā was a valid business plan ā and made it true.
šæ If reflections like this speak to you, you can support independent creativity through theĀ Mutual Aid FundĀ or by exploring theĀ Shop:Ā Made by MeĀ |Ā Oddities & Convenience. If youād like: you can follow us on Medium,Ā itch.io,Ā or onĀ ko-fiĀ as well.