Shipping a creator storefront for $0: Firebase Spark, CC0 assets, and an honest ad slot

This article was written with AI assistance (an AI coding agent) and reviewed
against the project's own test suite. Disclosed per DEV's guidelines; see the

ABotWroteThis tag.

The problem we started from

Small digital assets are easy to make and hard to sell. The usual path is:
pick a marketplace, pay a listing fee or a monthly plan, upload files, hope
the platform's search shows you. We wanted the opposite: own the storefront,
own the catalog, spend $0, and only pay a cut when something actually sells.

AEFRI is that attempt. It is a stdlib-only Python kernel plus a living
repertoire of channels, and one of its products is a static storefront that
ships 12 small digital assets (icon sets, prompt packs, an ebook, a UI kit,
web apps, motion packs) under CC0 or permissive terms.

The stack (all free tier)

• Hosting: Firebase Hosting on the Spark plan. Measured limits: 10 GB storage, 360 MB/day transfer, no payment method required, custom domain + SSL included. The build is a plain static site (HTML + CSS + a JSON catalog), so it fits comfortably.
• Storefront build: a Python module renders index.html, one page per product, sitemap.xml, robots.txt, and ads.txt from the catalog. No framework, no bundler, no node.
• Payments: Ko-fi (https://ko-fi.com/aefrinet) and itch.io (https://aefri.itch.io/interface-essentials-svg-icons). The agent never touches payment credentials; listings are published only through a human-approved gate.
• Ads: Google AdSense. The publisher ID and one ad unit (storefront-footer, slot 8528294418) are wired into the site, with ads.txt at the root. The site is currently in AdSense's review queue (a few days to 2-4 weeks); ads will not serve until approval lands.

The catalog

Twelve products, all generated or curated in-repo:

• Modu Stroke Icon Set - 12 SVG icons, CC0
• Freelance & Listing Prompt Pack - 4 working templates
• The Zero-Budget Creator Playbook - start earning without spending
• AEFRI Interface Kit - 22 components, dark + light, CC0
• Interface Essentials - 16 stroke SVG icons, CC0
• Focus Deck - offline focus timer and task list, one HTML file
• Freelance Contract & Invoice Kit - 6 fillable documents
• AEFRI Everything Bundle - all products, one download
• Interface Motion - 16 animated stroke icons (GIF + MP4)
• Invoice Writer - offline invoice generator, one file
• Kit Filler - fill contract templates in the browser
• Interface Motion Sample - 3 animated stroke icons (free, CC0)

Full catalogue and previews: https://aefristore.web.app

How to buy

1. Browse the catalogue at https://aefristore.web.app and open any product page.
2. Each product page links to its purchase surface: Ko-fi for most items, itch.io for the icon packs.
3. Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/aefrinet (PayPal/card via Ko-fi; no account needed to buy).
4. itch.io: https://aefri.itch.io/interface-essentials-svg-icons
5. After purchase, downloads are delivered by the platform; the storefront itself never handles money or files.

What we'd do differently

• Discovery is the hard part. A storefront nobody visits earns $0 even with perfect products. Social and content channels (Dev.to, Bluesky, a blog) are the next lever, and they are the part we are still building out.
• AdSense review takes patience. Budget 2-4 weeks and make sure the code sits in <head> on a page with real content and regular visitors, with an ads.txt at the root. Missing any of those stalls activation.
• Keep the site static. Every dynamic feature we considered (search, accounts, carts) was dropped in favour of plain HTML. It deploys in seconds and never breaks at 3am.

Where it lives

Catalogue and previews: https://aefristore.web.app
Ko-fi shop: https://ko-fi.com/aefrinet
itch.io: https://aefri.itch.io/interface-essentials-svg-icons

If you build something similar, the honest constraint is not the code - it is
the distribution. The products are the easy half.