A lot of writers start out blogging on Livejournal, Blogger, and similar freebie sites. This is fine when you’re chatting with friends, family, and your writing buddies, but when you’re ready to publish your first book, it’s time to get a real website (and ideally start blogging there instead of having your words spread all over cyberspace!).

A real website is one that’s hosted on your web hosting space and is located at yourname.com or some .com of your choosing. This looks professional, and it gives you room to grow and expand.

If you have your own domain name (that’s the .com thingie) and your own hosting space, you can do anything you want (i.e. add a store to sell your books/ebooks directly from your site, add a forum for your fans, add a blog with no restrictions as to the content, etc. etc. etc.). More, you know you’ll never have to worry about being at some other company’s whims (I don’t know about you, but I stopped reading Livejournal blogs altogether when they added those annoying interstitial ads — you don’t want fans coming to your site and leaving for a reason like that!).

Don’t worry. Starting your own site doesn’t need to be painful, and it doesn’t need to cost much either. You also don’t need to be a web designer or hire one. (At the most, if you’re not tech savvy, you might pay someone for an hour’s work for the initial setup).

The method I’m going to walk you through is the one I used for my fantasy author blog and for numerous other sites in the past.

How to Set Up Your Official Author Website and Blog (on the cheap)

Step 1: Buy Web Hosting

I used to break this article down into more steps, suggesting you purchase a domain name at one place, web hosting at another, and then install WordPress (free blogging software that you can use to build your whole site) on your own.

Then I realized one of the web hosts I’ve been using for years will register your domain name for you for free when you buy a web hosting package. And they have one-click WordPress installation (forums and shopping carts too), so basically you can get it all done in one place. Oh, and they’re affordable, too, at $7 a month (well under $100 a year, which, I believe, is a very reasonable investment, especially considering how much some people end up paying for websites — thousands of dollars isn’t uncommon, and that doesn’t even include monthly hosting fees).

The host I’m talking about is BlueHost. They’ve been in the business for years and specialize in affordable hosting with no restrictions on bandwidth and storage space.

You can sign up here, or just look around and check them out. (Note, that’s an affiliate link, and if you do sign up for a hosting package, I’ll make a little money. I have a couple of links like that around the site, but I only recommend services I use myself and like.)

Step 2: Choose Your Domain Name

As I mentioned, you get a free domain name with BlueHost. As an author, the most obvious choice is your own name (or whatever pen name you might be using). If you have a common name, yourname.com might not be available.  You might need to make it yournamegenrebooks.com (janedoemysterynovels.com) or some such. Sticking those keywords in might even help you with search engine optimization down the road (we’ll talk about what exactly that is in a future post).

Don’t get crazy with length though. You want your fans to be able to remember your web address. (Of course, some of us weren’t blessed with easy-to-spell names, but that’s the way it goes.)

If you can’t get a dot-com version of your domain name, you can also try dot-net. I’d avoid the weirder, less common extensions, as people tend not to remember them.

Sometimes domain name registrars will try to up-sell you into buying the .NET, .ORG, and who knows .WTF versions of your name as well. You just need the one domain name. This will become your permanent web address, and all your link building efforts can go into promoting it.

Step 3: Install Blogging Software

Now that you have your own web hosting space and your very cool and official-sounding web address, it’s time to put your blog on your site. (I do recommend starting a blog on your own site, even if you already have a Blogger, Livejournal, etc. one just because having WordPress on your own site offers a lot more versatility. Thousands of developers are out there making free WordPress plug-ins that do handy things such as…

  • creating tracking links (you can tell how many people are clicking your book links, for example)
  • automatically optimizing your blog posts for the search engines
  • adding social media tags so people can easily tweet/facebook/email/etc. your posts
  • adding a contact form
  • nuking spam
  • adding related articles to the bottom of each post (helps keep people on your site longer)

In addition to versatility, a blog on your site will just look more professional than a Blogger one. Also, it means there’s only one web address you need to promote, not two.

Okay, you’re sold, you say?

If you use BlueHost, there’s a one-click WordPress installation. If you need further help with setup (such as for customizing it), you can get the help of a techy friend or hire someone through a freelancer site. You’ll probably get a ton of offers if you post a job on Odesk, offering $50 or $100 (depending on how much you want done).

If you decide to choose another host, you can still use WordPress. The installation instructions are here (no matter which host you use, WordPress is completely free). You can also find tons of free WordPress “themes” (These are the designs or layouts. I’ve linked to some, but you can find an insane number by Googling “free WordPress themes” too), so there’s no need to hire a designer to make you an author site unless you really want to (someday I might spend the money to have a cool “fantasy” theme custom-made, but I’ve been using a free one since I got started, and it’s worked just dandy).

When you install WordPress, you have the option of having the blog show up as the first page of your site or having a static page with a link to your blog in the header. Either could work for an author. I have the most recent blog posts as my entry page, but I’ve seen lots of authors who want their books taking up most of the real estate on the front of their sites.

Step 4: Start Adding Content to Your Site

At this point, all the funky tech stuff is done. It might take a little while for you to familiarize yourself with the WordPress dashboard, but it’s not much more complicated than Blogger and those other sites (actually, it may be simpler).

Whew, I’ve thrown a lot at you here. To sum up:

Step 1: Grab some web hosting (cost ~ $7/mo)

Step 2: Choose your domain name (cost ~ free through my host or $12 at a domain registrar)

Step 3: Install your WordPress blog (free unless you need help with the customization, then $50 to $100 for someone you can find through Odesk, or ask a tech-savvy friend to help you out — bribes with baked goods work well)

Total annual cost for a professional author website and blog?

Less than $100 a year.

Note: I deduct domain registration and web hosting as a business expense on my taxes. Check with your tax adviser, of course, but this is pretty standard stuff, and as long as you’re making some money with your business (selling your books!), you should be sitting pretty when tax time comes.

Related Posts: