Square Town for indie hackers: a $1 square for every side project

You ship more things than you can promote. A dollar a project is a price that matches the effort budget you actually have.

Square Town (square.pov.town) is a favicon wall where one 1×1 square costs $1, one-time, and shows your site's favicon linked to your URL on a live, 3D grid. For an indie hacker it is the cheapest way to put every project you have ever shipped in one visible place, get a counted click-through for each, and play a small territorial game while you're at it.

TL;DR for indie hackers. Paste a URL, click an empty cell, pay $1 via Stripe. No account, no logo upload, no subscription. Your favicon sits on the wall until someone pays $2 to evict you. Each square has its own deed page with views, clicks and kisses; $5 unlocks per-day charts. Ten projects = $10. The wall is at square.pov.town; the full rulebook is on How Square Town works — the complete rulebook.

The problem: you have more projects than marketing hours#

The indie-hacker failure mode is not "no projects". It's eight half-promoted projects, each with a domain, a favicon and a landing page, and a launch that lasted a weekend. Product Hunt wants a launch day per product. Directories want a submission form per product and often a backlink or a fee. Your own portfolio page gets the traffic your portfolio page gets, which is none.

What you actually want is one place that shows all of them, that people other than you look at, and that costs so little you never have to justify it. That is a strange product brief, and Square Town is roughly built to it.

What a $1 square gives you#

1. A permanent spot on a live wall. Your favicon appears in the cell you picked, for everyone with the wall open, within a second of Stripe confirming. It stays there with no expiry and no renewal — forever*, where the asterisk is "unless someone evicts you for double".
2. A counted click-through. Clicking your icon opens a small card (domain, clicks, kisses); clicking through goes via /go/:id, is counted, and lands on your site tagged utm_source=square.pov.town&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=square, so it shows up as its own row in your own analytics.
3. Per-square view and click counts. Every square has a deed page showing views (someone opened your card), clicks and kisses. For $5, one-time, that deed shows per-day charts. Most of your projects don't need that; the one or two you're serious about might.
4. A tower that grows with clicks. Ctrl+drag (two-finger drag on touch) tilts the wall into 3D. Every favicon is a box whose height is its click count, tinted with the icon's dominant colour. A project people actually click becomes visibly taller than the one nobody uses. This is honest in a way your landing page's "loved by makers" is not.
5. The game. Anyone can evict you by paying double what you paid; you can evict them back for double that. Anyone can kiss your icon for free; an icon nobody has kissed in 90 days fades to grayscale. There are leaderboards for most clicked and most kissed. It's small and petty, and it is the reason the wall gets looked at.
6. All your projects side by side. This is the bit that matters for indie hackers. Squares are 1×1 and $1 each, so a person with eight projects can put all eight on the wall for $8 — and, if the cells are free, pick adjacent ones so they form a little block that reads as "this is one person's stuff". See Showcase all your projects as favicons for the neighbourhood approach.

How to do it#

1. Check every project has a favicon. Open https://yourproject.com/favicon.ico or look at the browser tab. No favicon means a clown emoji on the wall and a spot in the public Hall of Clowns until you fix it. Fix it first: How to add a favicon.
2. Open square.pov.town and look around. Only the central 16×16 is live at launch; the gold 4×4 in the middle is the Throne ($100, one owner) and the ring around it can't be built on. Zoom, pan, and tilt with ctrl+drag to see which towers are tall.
3. Pick a cell. Hover an empty cell, click it. If you want your projects next to each other, count out a run of empty cells first — a row of eight, or a 2×4 block.
4. Paste the URL, pay $1. Stripe checkout, card, done. Square Town fetches the favicon via Google's favicon service; you don't upload anything.
5. Save the deed URL. After payment you get a secret deed link. It is the only proof you own the square — there are no accounts, so there is no "forgot my password". Bookmark it, put it in your password manager, or at least leave it under the "My deeds" button in this browser (that's localStorage, so it doesn't survive a wipe).
6. Repeat for each project. Each square is its own purchase and its own deed. Do the neighbourhood in one sitting — while you're in checkout the cell is held for you, but the one next to it isn't.
7. Optionally, unlock analytics on the deeds that matter. $5 one-time per square for per-day views and clicks. Skip it for the projects you don't care about.

Tips from people who've done this#

• Near the Throne is the visible bit. The wall opens centred, so cells close to the middle are what everyone sees first. They're also the ones most likely to get evicted. Read How to pick a good square before you commit a row.
• Kiss your own icons. It's free, it resets the 90-day fade timer, and kisses are counted publicly. Set a reminder every couple of months, or accept that a grayscale icon is a fair signal that you've moved on.
• Don't be a clown. A missing favicon is the one thing that makes a $1 square look bad. There's an "I fixed my favicon" recheck button, but easier to check first.
• Buy analytics only where it changes a decision. Views versus clicks per day tells you whether the icon is being seen but not clicked (bad favicon, boring domain) or clicked but nobody sticks (bad landing page). If you wouldn't act on it, save the $5.
• Save every deed URL somewhere you'll find it. Eight projects, eight deed links. A single note titled "Square Town deeds" is enough.
• Watch the tower, not just the number. In 3D, a project's height is its click count relative to its neighbours. That comparison is what tells you which of your eight things people actually want.

What it won't do#

• It won't help your SEO. The wall is a WebGL canvas and clicks are 302 redirects. There is no backlink, no "dofollow", no link equity. If a directory is selling you ranking juice, this isn't that.
• It won't guarantee traffic. Nobody promises visitor numbers, and any pixel wall that does is guessing. What you get is a counted click each time someone clicks.
• It won't keep your spot for you against a determined evictor. Anyone can pay double to take your cell. For a $1 square that's $2, which is not much of a moat. The consolation: it costs the next person $4, and you can take it back for that.
• It won't recover a lost deed. No accounts, no email, no reset.
• It won't take a logo upload. Favicon only. If your favicon is bad at 16 pixels, fix the favicon.

FAQ#

How much does it cost to put five side projects on Square Town?#

$5, one-time — one dollar per square, one square per project. If you want per-day analytics on any of them it's $5 more per square, but that's optional.

Do I need an account?#

No. There are no accounts on Square Town. After paying you get a secret deed URL, which is your only proof of ownership. Lose it and it's gone.

Can I put my projects next to each other?#

Yes, if the cells are free. Squares are bought one at a time, so pick a run of adjacent empty cells and buy them in one sitting. Nothing stops someone taking a cell in your row before you get to it, or evicting one out of the middle later.

What happens if someone evicts one of my squares?#

They pay double what you paid, your icon comes down, and the eviction is announced in the live feed. You can evict them back for double what they paid, or shrug — it was $1.

Is this good for SEO?#

No. Clicks go through a redirect and the wall is a canvas element, so there is no backlink and no ranking benefit. The value is visibility to the people looking at the wall, the click-through, and the stats.

What if one of my projects has no favicon?#

It shows as a clown emoji and joins the public Hall of Clowns until you add one. Add a favicon, then press the recheck button on your square. See How to add a favicon.

How do I know if it's working?#

Open your deed page: it shows views, clicks and kisses. In your own analytics, look for referral traffic from square.pov.town — outbound clicks are tagged with UTM parameters. Or tilt the wall and see how tall your tower is.