Do I Need A Website?

Well, let’s think about this for a minute…

You’re a writer and the internet is the fastest growing communication medium on the planet. Of course you need a website!

The internet is now a global marketplace. Readers are buying books from amazon.com and other online book stores. The publishing industry is under serious threat from online and self-publishing companies that are gobbling their market share. This means that the majority of your readership is probably online. How better to target them than with your professional website?

As a writer you need a website to showcase your writing talent, market yourself and sell your products. Your website is the perfect way to raise your profile as a professional author, preview your latest releases, reach out to your fans and grab editors’ attention. You can even use it to self-publish and market your own best-seller, but that’s a blog story for another day…

So how do you go about getting a website?

Domain Name

Firstly you will need to select a domain name, in other words, the web address. Use the name your audience will know you by. Having a domain name that ends in dot com is best, but dot net is a good second option if the dot com is taken. So your domain name will look something like this:
http://www.yourpenname.com.  Below are three examples of well known authors’ domain names.

• http://www.noraroberts.com
• http://www.deonmeyer.com
• http://www.michaelconnelly.com

The next step is to register your domain. Use one of the domain registration websites such as http://www.godaddy.com or http://www.itsyourdomain.com to see whether the domain you have chosen is available. If so, you can register it online. Costs for domain registration start around $3 per annum.

Tip: By typing domain registration into Google you will find thousands of sites that will help you select and register domain names.

Web Design

Here you have several options. You can hire a professional web designer or do it yourself using web software, web templates or a free hosting site, such as Yahoo!

Using a professional web design company:

If you have limited knowledge of the internet and web design, it is probably best to use this option. I noticed that several author’s sites I researched, including the three above, used this option. Professional web designers will work with you to design a website to promote your business, set up domains, hosting and blog functionality if needs be. They will also update your website when you need it for a monthly retainer. A good idea if you select this option, is to make notes of all your changes and submit them to your web design company once a month to save on maintenance costs. The only downside is that you have to rely on someone else to make changes to your website.

Do it yourself:

There are free web hosting sites such as Yahoo! WordPress and MySpace which allow you to select a website from a basic template and add your content via a user-friendly interface. For those who are new to the web, this is not a bad option. It allows you to update your own content and the hosting is free. It is however limited in terms of customization and functionality.

Using web design software (like Dreamweaver) requires at least a basic knowledge of web design, a coding language like HTML and how to use an FTP client. Although the user interface is often simple enough, you will have to take time to familiarize yourself with the software and study the tutorials and help files in order to gain sufficient knowledge to use it properly. There is no doubt that learning this new skill is very beneficial in today’s online world, but let’s faces it, not many of us have the time.

Hosting your website

There are three ways to host your website.

1. Free hosting
2. Shared hosting
3. Dedicated server

Free hosting can be found on sites such as Yahoo! WordPress and MySpace, as we mentioned before. This type of site is usually used for social interaction. The social networking perspective can be an advantage for an author, as it makes your site easy to find within the chosen community. I’ll be talking more about how to use social networking as a marketing tool in a later blog post. It can be a powerful marketing tool if used correctly.

Shared hosting is the option most small businesses use. It allows you to share server space with other small businesses at a low cost.

A dedicated server is expensive and only suitable for large corporations who need the large volumes of disc space and extra bandwidth.

As an author, I recommend the shared hosting option. A writer’s website does not require huge amounts of space – only enough to hold your text, images, videos and sound files. You will need limited amounts of bandwidth since you won’t be controlling customer access, nor will your visitors be downloading huge amounts of information off your website (unless they’re downloading versions of your novel in e-book format).

Shared hosting usually has some form of technical support. This is something you’ll need to look into. Questions to ask your hosting company are:
Do they guarantee 24/7 uptime, do they have adequate protection from viruses and spam, and can they offer support when and if you need it?

You will also want email accounts with your hosting. This is usually a standard service with web hosting. It allows you to have an email address such as . Having a professional email address linked to your domain adds credibility to you as a professional author but is by no means necessary. If you’ve been using then it’s probably better not to change it now as it will only confuse your readers and editors.

Maintenance

You will want to continuously add fresh and interesting content to your website. This is important to keep your readers coming back. You need to be able to do this with minimal fuss. Make sure you’ve factored these changes into your maintenance plan with your web design company.

If you’re using free hosting you won’t have a problem making changes to your site, since you’ll add fresh content via a user interface.

My next blog will cover what goes into a writer’s website and what you need to effectively market your profile on the web. We’ll even take a sneak peek at how to make money from your writer’s website using affiliates and sponsored links. Visit us in two weeks to find out more.

Yours in successful online marketing,
Louise Rose-Innes