[Laer Carroll]

Agonizing early about getting our stuff out to be seen by others is not a good idea. But it's never too early to think about it, and maybe to experiment a bit with creating your own personal web site.

I suggest you take a look at my site, found by clicking on my name to the upper left of this message. This is an example of what you can do to create a site that costs you no money, and is fairly easy to do.

Notice that it includes a blog - an online diary - but is also unlike most blogging platforms such as Google's Blogger (until recently the most popular platform).

My platform is Wordpress. It lets you have a blog but also lets you have static (unchanging) pages. These might contain stories, or a teaser for a book, or lots of other material such as a short bio.

A few other platforms let you have dynamic and static pages, but I selected mine after a lot of research. I'm a aerospace software and systems engineer whose specialties include web site design, creation, and maintenance, so you can be pretty sure that my choice is the best platform for most writers.

To find out more about Wordpress, and to see some outstanding examples of sites you might want to emulate, go to their home page (http://wordpress.com/).

[PeteMC]

That's a good website. When you say "free", I assume you at least had to purchase the domain name - what does a .com domain go for these days?

Also, do you have to pay for bandwidth etc or is it all funded by advertising?

[imaster]

That's a good website. When you say "free", I assume you at least had to purchase the domain name - what does a .com domain go for these days?

Also, do you have to pay for bandwidth etc or is it all funded by advertising?

If you´re in Europe, you can get cheap, full-traffic webhotel and domains from http://www.one.com. It´s about €35 a year (all included) and you can run Wordpress on it.

I´ve only bought .com-domains from swedish companies but they´re usually €10-€15 in set up and another €10-€15 per year.

EDIT: Not only if you´re in Europe, of course, but since the servers are in Denmark, I guess people from other locations might want to choose servers closer to their home. :)

[Holbrook]

That's a good website. When you say "free", I assume you at least had to purchase the domain name - what does a .com domain go for these days?

Also, do you have to pay for bandwidth etc or is it all funded by advertising?

1 & 1 internet charges about £12 for a domain name.

Edited;

[PeteMC]

Thanks folks - I think I'll look into setting something up soon.

For all that I work for the world's biggest technology company I am pretty clueless with this sort of thing (I'm an account manager, say no more... :) ) so I need something that's nice and easy to build a website with!

[Holbrook]

Don't know why I bother.....

[hippokrene]

You get what you pay for.

At least hire someone to design and set up the webpage.

[Window Bar]

Hiya Laer--

Very professional, well organized website. As an adjunct, we all might consider three other free sites (and I'm sure there are additional similar opportunities of which I am not aware).

1) AuthorsDen.com allows the author to organize his/her own material in an extremely easy fashion. You will be a subsite of theirs, but the hit count is marvelous. The point? Well, you can add click-to-buy links for your books and you can add hot links to your personal site. Both are valuable. AuthorsDen ranks so high with Google and Yahoo that the direct links to your own site will increase your rankings. Believe it or not, I get more hits at AD (after less than two hours work) than I do on my fairly elaborate personal site ... after some hundreds of hours of work.

2) FiledBy.com is similar to AuthorsDen, but not quite as simple to use. But it does allow the author to build a "community" of other authors, once again increasing exposure. And because it's a longtime standard among publishers and agents, many publishers require their authors to build a mini-site here.

3) Squidoo.com is a different concept altogether. Do you have a poem that you believe might interest someone? An article you've written, especially a "how-to" article? A short story that you don't mind giving away for free? Put these up on Squidoo, each on its own mini-site, called a "lens," and then hot-link it to your own site and to buy-now pages for your commercial works. Be sure to claim a copyright on whatever you publish.
Like the above two sites, Squidoo ranks quite high with the search engines, so whatever you publish with them has instant exposure. And, if your "lens" gets a lot of hits, Squidoo will share their ad revenues with you. Likewise if any particular ad they place on your lens creates any sales of ancillary products, you will share in Squidoo's affiliate marketer revenue stream.
As an example of a topic for a lens, I recently posted a new English translation of the World War II song Lili Marleen. The translation itself was done two years ago, simply because I disliked the bowdlerized Tommie Connor translation known as "Lily of the Lamp Post." As a musician, I longed for a version that evokes the yearning and sorrow of the original German. Well, within a day of posting my new lyrics, the hits started coming in. Apparently other singers also could use a stronger English version of Lili Marleen, the most popular soldier lament of all time. Of my six lenses, this one has been the surprise success.

*************

These three suggestions can be rolled into one, and represent examples of an attitude of commercial engagement within the new cyber-paradigm. As the virtual world expands exponentially, interconnectedness is the currency of the realm. We must still write quality books, poems, stories, song lyrics, music, articles, comic books, blogs, etc., in order to prosper ... but we must not hide while we do it.

-- WB

P.S. -- For those who choose to make social networking a part of their marketing plan, these three sites can be tailored to automatically plug into the social networking sites ... i.e.--blog posts and event announcements can instantly appear on your Facebook page.

P.P.S. -- If anyone here chooses to use the above suggestion, I would love to see what you've done ... especially on Squidoo. Go ahead and PM me.

[Sterling13]

Nice list windowbar... I'll definitely have to check those out.

I threw my website together using wordpress (you can look at my profile if you want to check it out). Reasonably proud of it. If you're going to use wordpress, the key is to find an easy to use, customizable, theme. Don't pick the first one that looks pretty - i made this mistake with my first setup. Don't get me wrong, it was a good look, but it did not do the things I needed it to do. I spent countless hours trying to force it. In the end, I downloaded a new theme that looked rather plain... But the customization available allowed me to turn it into what it is now (and rather easily).

For the domain name, I went to Godaddy.com. Something like $12 a year. So, not exactly free, but worth it just to have some pose to gather my "stuff".

[kcmay]

I just created a wordpress site today, and so far I'm impressed. It seems pretty easy to configure/customize. Thanks for the tip!