Get Your Own Domain — And Use It

Published on: Dec 4, 2009 @ 11:28

Most authors understand by now that they should have their own websites (although I was staggered to learn that Linda Howard does not, not even an official one put up by her publishers, for heaven’s sake).   Having your own website is basic, almost built into the genes of most authors by now.

But it still shocks me the number of authors that try to cut corners on the process.  They go for the Weebly sites, or the Google freebies sites, and end up with a web address that looks something like “http://www.authorname.weebly.com”   Or if they’re using a blog, they go for the “http://myname.wordpress.com” or “http://myname.blogspot.com” URL.

I don’t know about you, but that just makes me cringe.  It looks cheap, nasty and lazy.  But let’s sweep the name-calling off the table and get down to the real damage such an URL really causes:

1)  It limits your design.  There’s only so much you can do with the 1,001 templates they offer, and none of them look all that fabulous.

2)  If you ever want to move your site, for whatever reason, all the time you have spent marketing your website to all the author-interest groups out there will have been wasted, because those links are now duds.  Do you remember every site, person, fan, media representative you’ve ever given your website address to?  Are you going to follow up with them and tell them your new site address?  Think they’re going to faithfully change their information?  Do you, when someone says they’ve changed their URL?  Of course not!  And Weebly, et al, don’t put forwarding links on their free sites.

Case in point:  I was talking to a blog owner of a very high ranking blog who has been assiduously marketing her blog for about four years.  She’s doing fabuously well, and even making money off her blog.  But she hasn’t bought a domain name for it.  She’s using the plain generic blog name she was given when she registered it with the blog service.  (So it has the blog service name in it)  And she hates the blog service.  She desperately wants to move over to one of the other blog services, and she can’t, because the URL will change. If she had bought her own domain, four years ago, she could move to her preferred blogging software and transfer the domain, and the primary URL and none the permanent post URLs would change.  No one would notice a thing.

3)  By not using your own domain, you’re missing out on a chance to brand yourself every time your quote your website in emails, on stationary, business cards, etc.

Every time someone looks at your domain, it’s a mental impression of your name.  That’s branding at work.

4)  Your domain is shorter than the generic domains and looks neater.

5)  If you don’t buy your domain now, and you become (or already are) a huge success, you may find a speculator has already bought it and you can only acquire it at an inflated price, later.

This happens far more often than you may realize.  Anyone is free to regiser a domain whether it’s “theirs” or not.  They only have to pay for it and it’s legally theirs.  It only costs about $10US, depending on where you register it.  As soon as you become a “name” some smart thinker might realize you haven’t already secured your domain, and jump in there before you do.   And don’t settle for www.yourname.org or www.yourname.net.  The www.yourname.com domains are far more valuable than any of the alternatives, because most people automatically put the “dot com” at the end without thinking and will mistype any other extension, and thus not find your website if you have a dot-net or dot-org website.

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There are blog and site hosting services out there that will let you register your domain and provide hosting services for as little as $2US a month, for both.  There really is no excuse for not having your own domain, when so much is impacted by it.

First appeared on Bootstrap Bookmarketing Coop.