A place to call home (for your author website)
Last email I talked about the problem of premium, custom-built author websites costing too much for many authors.
In this email, I want to talk about some options you do have.
You may have heard of Wix, or Squarespace, or Weebly, or Webdoodle? (ok I made that last one up!)
Now, the big promise of these build-it-yourself sites is that you can pay a low-cost subscription and build your own site.
Sounds good right?
It’s not a bad idea.
Only thing is…
You don’t own the site. It’s a rental. You’re literally paying them to be able to build a website on their website hosting.
It’s like buying a home, on someone else’s land, with a hidden clause that if you stop paying rent to them for the land, you lose the house as well!?
Only other thing is…
These platforms just want a ton of paid users. So they try to be everything to everyone.
They don’t focus on your unique needs as an author.
To make it worse…
Since you can’t leave the platform, you’re tied to whatever new business moves they decide to make in future. Or if they’ll even exist in future.
You basically operate on their terms or leave (and lose your website).
And finally…
While there is some support on these platforms, it’s just technical support. These guys have no idea what you need to do to market books well.
So…
What’s a good alternative then?
Well, let’s take a zoomed-out view of the internet.
We’ll immediately notice one giant player:
WordPress
which powers about 35% of the entire internet.
Wix, Squarespace and all those? Barely 1% to 2% each.
So 1 in 3 website owners use WordPress. Way more than any other website platform available.
Why?
- It’s free and a non-profit organization.
- You can load it on any hosting (WordPress doesn’t own your site. You do!)
- You can do virtually anything with it.
- Because it’s the biggest, it’s also the most compatible. Everyone wants to be able to connect with the biggest player in town.
- It keeps getting better all the time. I mean way better.
This is just one of the reasons we’ve made our own agency fully WordPress-based. When something is simply the best option, why use anything else?
So… when I dreamed up my new affordable website option for authors, I knew I wanted to make sure it was built using WordPress.
I like the idea of giving some of the power to users to enable them to make their own sites.
I don’t like the idea that someone else will forever own the site they make.
The only thing with WordPress, and it’s quite a thing…
The barrier to entry is quite steep!
If you’ve never used it before, you have no idea what you’re doing.
To get started it’s super scary looking.
WordPress is so powerful it can do almost anything online.
It’s like having a rocketship that can go anywhere in the galaxy but has a million different buttons you need to press in the right order.
You need a co-pilot who knows how to fly it, to help you take off.
And that’s exactly what I’ve been working on!
In my next email, I’m going to go over exactly how I figured out how to do this. It’s 100% tailor-made for authors. Keep an eye on your inbox. You’re going to want to see this.
All the best,
Matt “helping authors takeoff online” Ziranek
PS: Let me know if you’re excited about getting affordable help with your author website. Just hit “Reply” and tell me what’s on your mind.