Are you ready for something more professional than a link tree? In that case, it’s time to build your first website. Whether you’re an indie or a traditional author, I highly recommend building your own website – at least for now. You can maintain control of your author brand, save money, and easily update your site as frequently as you need to.
Here are three platforms to consider, in order of simplicity and ease of use:
Carrd
Carrd specializes in clean, one-page websites, and it’s the platform I often recommend for getting your first simple site online quickly. Many free carrd.co domain names are still available, making them the best free option if you’re just starting out. Their ‘Sectioned’ template category can also simulate the style of a multi-page website.
Pros: Most affordable website builder, simple and streamlined one-page designs, ideal for a first website
Cons: One page may not be enough depending on your needs, becomes techy if you don’t want to stick with the template, doesn’t offer professional email hosting
Wix
With nearly 1000 free templates (including a few dozen in their ‘Literary Arts’ category) Wix makes it easy to build a highly professional site. Although you can’t change templates once you’ve started, their Strips feature makes it easy to edit and add elements to your site. (Just make sure you like the style of your header, or you’re starting over from scratch.) I built my salon website using Wix.
Pros: Can build your site in its entirety before committing to a free plan, drag & drop editing, user-friendly interface, almost 1000 free templates.
Cons: Most expensive of these options, can’t change templates once you’ve committed, and you can’t transfer your site to another hosting platform.
WordPress.org with Bluehost
If you’re reading this journal entry on my website, you’re looking at a wordpress.org site. This version of WordPress is open source, meaning anyone can build a template, plugin, or add on – but you’ll need to buy your domain name separately and pay for hosting. I bought the domain from Hover and use Bluehost for inexpensive hosting. If you plan to use your website as a blog, I recommend WordPress.
Pros: Hundreds of templates, (some free and some paid), affordable, highly customizable, ideal for blogging, tons of plugins and integrations, easily migrates between WordPress hosting platforms
Cons: Setup is a little more technical, steeper learning curve than some, can easily get bogged down in too many plugins, blog posts attract a lot of spam comments
*Note: There is a difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com. The .com version takes care of all of the hosting, but you won’t have access to all of the features.
ACTION STEPS:
If you don’t have a website, it’s time to get started, even if your books aren’t published. If none of these platforms appeal to you, take some time this week to research other options.
If you plan to use your website primarily to sell your books directly, you might consider using Shopify. Squarespace is a comparable platform to Wix, but their website layouts aren’t as customizable.