With The Rebel Lore Vault expanding at the end of February, ALL of my readers can spread the word far and wide.
For the past six years, I’ve had the luxury of living the so-called “laptop lifestyle.” Most of that time was spent sportswriting, covering the NHL’s Buffalo Sabres and later the Detroit Red Wings from the comfort of my living room.
It wasn’t always as glamorous as it sounds, but it was freedom-based until Sep. 2025. While I considered myself lucky to have made between $50 and $60 grand a year writing about a sport, something nagged me.
Almost everyone I knew—writers, bloggers, artists, YouTubers, Substackers, indie authors—worked full-time day jobs while trying to build something of their own on the side. Many of them were more talented than the people already making a living online.
But they weren’t earning much, if anything, from their work. It wasn’t because they lacked talent or discipline. Instead, the system they were trying to succeed in wasn’t built for them.
Not when institutions and algorithms sanitized the content.
The system was never built for indies who colored outside the lines
Creators today are often given the worst advice. And trust me, during my final months covering the NHL at (Company Redacted for obvious reasons), I was given the same soul-sucking advice:
- Post more content
- 120-plus articles a month in my case.
- Feed the algorithm
- Google Discover or bust.
- Chase trends
- NHL Insider spilled the tea on Player Name
- Write what’s “safe.”
- Be beiger than beige, TC. That’s “good” writing.
- Avoid anything controversial
- I nearly got an article rejected because I mentioned Johnny Gaudreau’s name.
- Stay inside the lines
- Or else we’ll humiliate you in front of the company…
And if you do all that, maybe—just maybe—you’ll get a slice of the pie. But someone else owns that pie. Obviously, or else I’d still be enjoying pumping out hockey content.
Platforms like Google control reach, retailers like Amazon control the visibility, and institutions control what gets promoted.
And indie creators who color outside the lines are expected to be grateful for whatever crumbs fall off the table.
I’ve lived inside that system. I’ve benefited from it at times. But I’ve also seen how fragile it is, and how quickly it can turn on you.
Before I seceded from that company, I offered to stick around and keep covering the Wings as a freelancer since most of the people working with them are contractors. They told me to kick rocks.
That’s one of many reasons I started building something different. Not just to throw a giant middle finger at Big Tech, but to also show the one-track-minded senior director that there are more ways to thrive in the digital world.
Why I built The Rebel Lore Vault
The Rebel Lore Vault’s a place where I don’t need to sanitize my fiction, and where my characters can challenge State-driven institutions.
The Vault carries my books that have themes of liberty, resistance, and self-ownership. And guess what? They’re not treated like contraband. Best yet? Readers, not algorithms, decide what survives.
But there was a bigger realization behind it: If independent creators want to survive, we can’t just sell to readers. We need to build networks if we’re interested in taking a flamethrower to Big Tech and its minions that bow down to it.
We need readers, bloggers, Substackers, YouTubers, and other creators to become partners in this endeavor.
A different kind of opportunity
So instead of just asking you to buy my books I want to invite you to help out the cause and promote them with me.
The Rebel Lore Vault now has an affiliate program, and you’re invited to be part of it.
This means you get your own referral link, you share it with your audience, and every time someone buys through your link, you earn a 50 percent commission that I’ll pay out at the first of each month.
Simple as that. There’s no inventory on your end, no customer service inquiries, and no complicated start-ups.
Just stories you believe in, and a system that pays you for sharing them.
What you’d be promoting
The Rebel Lore Vault isn’t a mass-market bookstore. That means you won’t find sanitized, committee-approved fiction here.
Instead, you’ll find:
- Liberty-leaning speculative fiction
- Anti-authoritarian survival stories
- Fantasy worlds built on merit, not messaging
- Characters who resist central control
- Narratives about self-ownership, secession, and freedom
They all just happen to have a genre attached to them. These are stories written for readers who feel like modern entertainment has left them behind.
If that sounds like your audience or your social network, you’re already halfway there.
How the affiliate program works
Here’s the basic process:
Step 1: Sign up as an affiliate at the following Payhip Link.
Step 2: Get your personal referral link once I approve you.
Step 3: Share that link anywhere you want:
- Substack
- Blog posts
- Social media
- Email newsletters
- YouTube descriptions
- Podcast show notes
Step 4: Earn commissions every time someone buys through your link.
You don’t need a huge audience. That’s business marketing of yesterday. You just need the right audience interested in indie fiction with strong pro-liberty themes in e-book and, come Mar. 1, paperback format, with audio to follow in the future.
Who this is for
This program is especially suited for:
- Substack writers
- Bloggers
- Indie authors
- Podcasters
- YouTubers
- Creators building niche audiences
- Readers who want a side income
- Anyone who believes independent fiction deserves a fighting chance
If you’ve ever recommended a book to someone, you already know how this works. Now you can get paid for it.
This is bigger than commissions
Yes, the affiliate program is about earning money. But it also goes deeper.
It’s also about building a creative black market. A parallel system where readers decide what survives, motivating creators who don’t need institutional approval to start building their own personal stores, and for stories that spread because people believe in them, not because a soulless algorithm boosts them.
Instead of begging the gatekeepers for visibility…
We build our own network, reward our own allies, and fund our own stories.
Join the Rebel Lore Vault Affiliate Network
If you want to earn 50 percent commissions promoting independent fiction, support stories that challenge the mainstream, and become part of a parallel creative economy, then you can sign up through my Payhip store.
Don’t just read the resistance.
Help fund it. And if you’d like a few samples of what I’m all about, check out my short novel Deceived Mage. You’ll INSTANTLY find out that my work lives on the edge. You can get Deceived Mage here.
(This article first appeared on The Rogue Scribe)
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