So, I hope I'm not breaking any rules but this comes up now and then. Loads of new authors are realizing they need or should look into building themselves a social platform. That means a twitter, facebook, instagram, and a blog. Not all of us use these or even like social media. But.. it's a part of the business. I've been trying to figure out how to make a decent website to host my blog and turn it into a hub of my social activity online related directly to my writing and maybe find myself a small following. For a full year, the pro package is 50% off and comes to about 80$. I tried multiple hosts (ie: squarespace) and I found wix to be the best and most user friendly to customize and do whatever I wanted. So... yeah. Hopefully this helps someone.
Now that my second book is coming out I've been thinking a lot about getting an official website. This is definitely something to chew on.
You could just download some free wordpress templates and then buy a domain and an URL address. After that, it's just a matter of fiddling within wordpress, whose interface is all made for laymen anyway with a possibility for some coding and customisation through plugins. I'd just do that, personally. I have no idea what Wix is
I do agree with Mckk there, wordpress (and similar ones, like Joomla) is really useful for beginning websites. It does all depend on how advanced you want it, and I don't know what Wix allows. If you want a really advanced website with sales and stock and all kinds of things on the page itself (rather than a link to amazon), it is usually best to get a professional to do it for you.
I don't sell my own books so I wouldn't need an online marketplace or anything like that. I know that my experience is unusual, but back when I owned my own business a few years ago I tried to make a Wordpress website and I absolutely hated it. I got a refund from Go Daddy and wound up building the site with some ancient HTML/FTP freeware that was also a pain in the rear but not nearly as bad as Wordpress. Ironically I have a Wordpress blog, but I hardly use it as I can't figure out how to customize it so it looks decent. I know a lot of people love Wordpress though, so it's probably just me. I can't make heads or tails of GIMP either, even though a lot of folks find it easy to use. I'm fairly software savvy (I actually worked for a software company for a few years), but I get easily frustrated with non-intuitive interfaces or programs that require a lot of fiddling around with to get the hang of. I'm looking for simple drag and drop functionality, and also for the hosting/domain registration to be bundled in so I'm dealing with a single company. I'm not 100% sure but I think Wix has all of that.
I tried wordpress a long time ago. Couldn't figure it out as much as I would have liked to. And it comes with domain registration for free, SEO, tracking, and a bunch of other premium features. Wix is so simple. It's an easy editing interface where you can drag, drop, and add new pieces at will. It's literally so simple anyone could do it and you aren't limited by the shape of the template (Unlike SquareSpace that doesn't let you move anything just by dragging it and has a whole ton more menus to navigate)
Yeah, after digging around a bit I think the only thing I need to decide is if whether I'm ready to take my first step into having overhead costs associated with my writing. So far I've basically incurred zero costs personally, so everything I've actually made is pure profit. That business I owned drowned in overhead costs and never made a profit even in the in the 3 years I did it full time, so I'm just a wee bit gunshy even though Wix wouldn't dip into my profits hardly at all. But still - no ads, free hosting, free domain for the first year and a few other perks for 7 bucks a month? That's a pretty sweet deal. I paid a lot more than that for my old website, that's for sure.
If on a mac try Everweb. Simple to learn. I think you can download the program and mess around with it for free, at least it used to be that way. I think it is still $50-$100 a year.
That's the best part about going through SS or Wix or whatever. They let you demo out the full editor tools they have before you decide to buy. and 50-100 is a really good price.
Domain names are cheap. I've kept one for my book title and my pen name for a while now. Only $10/year with NameSilo to register a domain name. I haven't started building any web pages yet. Still working on the final editing which is going slower than I'd hoped but I'm pleased with the result.
I took the leap because the offer was about to expire. It’s official! The domain www.laurinkelly.com is mine! I’ll work on the site over the weekend and hopefully publish by Sunday night!
After spending just a few hours on my site last night it's almost ready to go! I've got a few more tweaks to do but @A.M.P. was right on the money - the Wix website builder is so intuitive and user friendly! I absolutely recommend.
The official Laurin Kelly author website is up and running! Can't believe what a piece of cake it was, comparatively speaking. https://www.laurinkelly.com
I need to get on with one myself. In the meantime ill pimp yours on my FB. It looks great by the way.
Congrats on the leap! And the landing. Looks good; professional with excellent content - an uncommon combination.
