You Don't Have to Pay for a Website

Precisely what you don't need if you're a writer counting your pennies is yet another monthly expense; yet you want and possibly need an author website. A dedicated website establishes your bona fides. You're not someone who published a one-off book, but a career writer. And a plethora of sites, marketing and otherwise, include that little space for typing in your website address. A website signals that you're serious about what you do, and that others should take you seriously, too.

I'll be honest ~ my site gets a middling number of visitors, and a lot of them aren't potential book buyers. I'm told that many "visitors" are actually bots originating in other countries, such as China. The good news is, these visits boost your website rankings. Sure, they're annoying to find on your analytics page when you're hoping for real human visits, but they're not going to harm your site. And I do get my fair share of solicitors who reach out via my contact form, but as long as I don't click on any links (trust me; I don't), many of them are kind of entertaining.

After I published my first novel, I decided I needed a website, and I went with Wix because I'd seen it advertised on TV and the price seemed reasonable. I should have researched web hosting sites, but being incredibly naive and clueless, I simply went with it. And I liked it at first. I'd gone with the basic plan, which cost around $15.00 a month at the time. It gave me enough features, plus I could attach it to a custom domain (instead of "wix.apriltompkins.com" or however the company configures it). Face it; a custom domain is much more professional-looking. 

The trouble came when I tried to write or edit text. The site was unbelievably sluggish. I've mentioned before that I could type out a sentence, leave to eat lunch, then come back to find it was finally finishing up displaying the text. And reconfiguring/rearranging elements was frustrating. It never worked the first time, or the second time; possibly the sixth time.

Finally, I'd had enough. Then I did do some research, but I found that most hosting sites were cost prohibitive (bearing in mind that I was/am poor). I'd used Blogger for years for my music blog, but I didn't want my author site to look like a blog, with no page headers and a long list of gadgets in the side margin. I wanted it to look like an actual website. I found an article online with step-by-step instructions for turning a Blogger blog into a website, and it turned out to be easy. That page no longer seems to exist, but here's a video tutorial. You'll want to remove a lot of elements, such as the time/date stamp and other default gadgets (blog archive, featured post, AdSense, etc.) that clearly represent a flat-out blog. With my site, the only indication of that is at the very bottom: "© Michelle. Picture Window theme. Theme images by tillsonburg. Powered by Blogger" 

My only problem was with good old Wix again. I tried to get my domain transferred to my new site, but Wix was either pissed about my imminent departure or too dumb to accomplish that task. That's why my site is a dot net instead of dot com. I had a dot com name, but Wix decided to hoard it. I purchased a new domain from Google (now Squarespace), so in total, I pay $12.00 per year for my website.

I'll be the first to admit that my author site is not fancy ~ no animation or floating images ~ but it does the job and quite nicely for a free site. I still haven't figured out a way to add social media buttons to it; I think some HTML is required and that acronym makes me shudder. I can never get it embedded in the right spot.

UPDATE: Create you social media buttons here for free or a donation. And if your site is created with Blogger, just add the HTML gadget and paste in the code. (Whew!)

Yes, there's a bit of effort involved with turning Blogger into a website, and it seems that most authors I've recommended it to would rather pay for something ready-made. You go, girl (or guy)! I'm aiming for those who, like me, have to watch their finances carefully. 

Too, I enjoy playing around with design and I'm pretty big on DIY, which is one of the main reasons I'm a self-publisher. I like being in charge of my own career. 

Blogger is an option. There are a lot of web hosting sites, which I won't bother to list, but here is a ranking. Since I've never used any of them, I can't vouch for their efficacy. You know what's best for you. I'm just here to tell you what works for me.