Square Town for newsletters and blogs: a free square for your favicon

Square Town (square.pov.town) is a favicon wall where a 1×1 square is free to claim and shows a site's favicon linked to its URL. For a newsletter or blog, it's a permanent square on a live, 3D wall with a counted click-through, a public "kiss" count your readers can add to, and a click tower that grows with every reader who arrives — for nothing. The dollar only appears if someone wants your cell badly enough to evict you.

TL;DR for writers. Paste your blog or newsletter URL and an email, click an empty cell, claim. Free, no card, no account, no upload, no subscription. Clicks are counted and land on your site with UTM tags. Anyone can kiss your icon (free, public, counted). Several publications? One square each, side by side. Wall: square.pov.town.

The problem: blogs get discovered by search or not at all#

A newsletter grows by referrals and a blog by search, and neither has a natural place to simply be visible to strangers who aren't already searching for its topic. Sponsoring another newsletter costs real money and lasts one issue. Directories of newsletters are lists nobody scrolls. Your favicon — the little mark you chose to represent the whole thing — is seen only by people who already opened a tab.

Square Town is a place where that favicon sits next to a few hundred others, and people wander past. That's it. It's small, but it is a kind of visibility a blog otherwise doesn't get.

What a free square gives you#

1. A permanent square. Your favicon in the cell you chose, in town for everyone with it open, no expiry, no renewal. Forever* — until someone pays $1 to evict you, which for a blog is unlikely to be a business problem.
2. A counted, attributable click-through. Clicks route via /go/:id, are counted per square, and reach your site with utm_source=square.pov.town&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=square. Whatever you use for stats — Plausible, Fathom, GA, your newsletter platform's referral report — will show Square Town as its own source.
3. Kisses from readers. Anyone can click your icon and press 💋. Free, public, counted, and each kiss adds a storey to your tower. Put "kiss our icon" at the bottom of an issue once and watch the count. There's a most-kissed leaderboard in the side panel; a small publication with engaged readers can sit on it next to sites with a hundred times the traffic.
4. Views and clicks on your deed page. After claiming you get a secret deed URL (it can be mailed to you). It shows views (someone opened your square's card), clicks and kisses. $5 one-time unlocks per-day charts — handy for seeing whether the click spike lines up with send day.
5. A tower. Tilt the wall (ctrl+drag) and every favicon becomes a box as tall as its clicks plus kisses, tinted with the icon's colour. Your publication is a building. Height is clicks plus kisses. It's a strange, honest little monument.
6. One square per publication. If you run a newsletter and a blog and a podcast site, each gets its own free square, and adjacent cells make them read as one family. The playbook in Square Town for developers with many side projects applies just as well to a writer with several mastheads.

How to do it#

1. Check your favicon at 16 pixels. It's the entire ad. A blog favicon that's a tiny photo of your face or a wordmark will be mush at 1×1; a bold letter or mark reads fine. Favicon design tips at 16px has the short version. No favicon at all means a clown emoji and a public Hall of Clowns listing until you fix it (How to add a favicon).
2. Decide which URL. Your homepage, usually. For a newsletter, the subscribe page — but use the site whose favicon is yours, not the platform's default.
3. Open square.pov.town, find an empty cell. The central 16×16 is live at launch and grows outward as it fills; the gold 4×4 Throne sits in the middle and its ring is off-limits. Middle cells get seen most and evicted most.
4. Click, paste, add your email, claim. Free, instant, no card; the email is for your deed link and eviction warnings, not a login. Square Town fetches the favicon via Google's favicon service.
5. Save the deed URL. It's the only proof you own the square. No accounts, no reset. Have it mailed to you, bookmark it, or store it with your domain registrar login. The browser's "My deeds" button remembers it locally, which is not the same as safely.
6. Mention it once. A line in your next issue or a footer link. Not to sell squares — to get kisses and let readers find your building in town.
7. Optionally, unlock analytics on the deed page for $5, one-time, if per-day clicks would tell you something.

Tips#

• A spot near the Throne is the visible one. The wall opens centred, so the middle rings get the eyes and the evictions. If you're a blog rather than a startup, a few cells out is fine and calmer. How to pick a good square has the reasoning.
• Kiss your own icon on send day. Free, takes a second, and the tower grows a storey. Ask readers to do it once and watch the count climb without you.
• Don't be a clown. Newsletter platforms sometimes serve their own favicon or none. Make sure the URL you submit serves yours.
• Pay for the analytics unlock if the send-day curve interests you. $5 once. If you'd only glance at it, the free lifetime totals are enough.
• Save your deed URL where you keep the domain login. Same category of thing.
• Match the tower to your archive. If you have a "start here" or a best-of page, that's a fine URL to point the square at — the click lands somewhere that explains the whole publication.

What it won't do#

• It won't help you rank. The wall is a WebGL canvas and clicks are 302 redirects; there is no backlink and no link equity, whatever a directory might have told you.
• It won't grow your list on its own. You get counted clicks; you don't get promised numbers. It's free; treat expectations accordingly.
• It won't protect your cell. Anyone can evict a free square for $1. The next evictor pays $2. Evictions are announced in the live feed.
• It won't email you about anything except an eviction. No accounts; you get that one email, at the address you claimed with. Everything else shows on the deed page or the wall.
• It won't show your name, tagline or logo. Favicon and URL. Every square is 1×1.

FAQ#

Is a free square useful for a small newsletter?#

For nothing, you get a permanent placement, a counted UTM-tagged click-through, and a public kiss count your readers can add to. It won't grow your list by itself, but nothing else that free does anything at all.

Which URL should I put in town — homepage or subscribe page?#

Whichever serves your own favicon and explains the publication in one screen. Homepage or a "start here" page is usually right; a platform-hosted subscribe page may show the platform's favicon instead of yours.

How will I know if readers found me through Square Town?#

Clicks are 302-redirected with utm_source=square.pov.town&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=square, so they appear as a referral/campaign source in your analytics. Your deed page also shows total views, clicks and kisses.

What does kissing the icon do?#

Anyone can click your icon and press 💋. It's free, public and counted; each kiss grows your tower a storey and feeds the most-kissed leaderboard. Ask readers once and the count takes care of itself.

Can I have a bigger square for a well-known blog?#

No. Every square is 1×1 and free. The only exception is the Throne, the 4×4 centre tile at a $100 intro price that doubles with every eviction.

Does Square Town give my blog a backlink?#

No. Clicks are counted redirects through /go/:id, and the wall is a canvas element. No link equity, no ranking effect.

What if I run more than one publication?#

One square each, free each. Claim adjacent cells and they form a block; each has its own deed and stats.