Building Your Website
Website Basics
- Free hosting services - This is the service you use that stores your website's information and gives you the www. address (your domain.) There are lots of free options out there, including blogger.com, weebly.com, tumblr.com. The downside to this is that your site's address will have the name of that site tagged at the end (ex: LauraLynnWatkins.blogger.com)
- Paid hosting services - If you want your own, custom .com address, you have to pay extra for it. One of the cheapest was to do this is GoDaddy.com. They offer basic hosting for around $15 a year (compared to many companies who charge $6-15+ per month, that's a steal!)
- Designing your site - You can use pre-made templates from the free sites mentioned above or have one made for you. My favorite free site to use is weebly.com because they offer a large variety of custom options and you can import the design to any domain for free.
- Content - Read more about what to include in my Effective Websites tutorial.
- 3rd party services vs. DIY - I won't lie, designing your website will take time and effort. As authors, we're busy people, and a lot of us don't have the time. You can do it yourself, using these tutorials or you can hire a 3rd party service to design it for you. I recommend Eden Literary. Their prices are very reasonable and their web designers know authors' needs, so they can create something amazing that is perfect for you.