Book Marketing For Authors Blog 66- WordPress Websites

WordPress Websites

 

The really cool thing about creating a WordPress website for us self-publishing indie authors is that many times these websites are free. Keeping our overhead low through getting some free stuff will help our authorpreneurship business become successful. And it will also leave us with more options to run our business how we want to.

Although the website may be free, we shouldn’t go with their free domain. We need to get our own domain, which is going to cost us some money. But, this is money well spent, though. When we look at our website, it shouldn’t say wordpress.com at the end of it. We want it to say our name or our brand instead. For example, my free WordPress website has a domain name of www.DanBlanchard.net, and then I have another one based on my brand named www.GranddaddysSecrets.com.

This is way better than it saying wordpress.com. Wouldn’t you agree?

If you’re still not sure about what the problem is, then how about this? When your domain says someone else’s name besides your own, or it says wordpress.com, you are not allowed to make any money there. Our own domain will cost us a few bucks a month, but I think you’ll agree that it’s worth it to make some money, right?

Another thing we authorpreneurs often do is ignore search engine optimization (SE0) for our websites. Hey, listen, I get it. I know SEO with its 200+ rules is a pain in the butt. But… this ain’t no Field of Dreams, buddy. You can build it, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to come… Got it. Building it doesn’t mean they’re going to come. We authorpreneurs have to develop it and then direct people to it so they can see something that we’ve done that is truly amazing.

Hey, I get it that we just want to write. But, if we just solely write, then we’re only writers. If we’re going to become successful authorpreneurs, then we need to run this as a business. And every company has advertising, so consider the SEO part of our advertising. Following a few simple SEO rules will help people find our websites.

The bigger we get, the more of a target we’re going to become. When we become one of the influencers in our niche with lots of traffic going through our website, sadly, someone will want to hack into our site and destroy everything. We should back our website up, so when that day comes, we don’t lose everything we put on our website.

There is a plug-in from our website that we can use to back it up. It’s not the best thing in the world, but it’s enough for now, and it’s free. Now, if we want to be more sophisticated and protect ourselves, even more, we’ll back it up somewhere other than our website. Some hackers who hack into our site will actually be sophisticated enough to hack into our back up if it’s on our website and ruin that one as well.

A safer way is to use something like Updraft, where they have a plug-in we could use to back up our website off of our website. This way, if we get hacked, we have a backup of our virtual real estate on the other side of town. If one burns down. It’s highly unlikely the fire will spread all the way across town to burn down our backup virtual real estate way over there.

Next, beware of the fly-by-night hosting companies out there. If it sounds super cheap and maybe too good to be true, then it probably is. So make sure you always use reputable hosting services.

Here is a list of 10 reputable hosting services:

  1. Bluehost
  2. HostGator
  3. InMotion Hosting
  4. Hostinger
  5. GoDaddy
  6. Tsohost
  7. Wix
  8. SiteGround
  9. Hostwinds
  10. Weebly

So, there you have it, folks, Build a solid and economical website. Know some SEO and takes some steps to protect your site against hackers. I know it sounds like a lot, but we are no longer just writers, we are thriving authorpreneurs. And that’s what we do.

*Check out the free video lesson on this chapter!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hxGikhs7WY&list=PL_-39bUXJitwL8cHUpiZ5mO0-JJuaPOVl&index=67