Hi I just read your article on building an author's website and it had lots of great information. I'd like to suggest signing up with www.ezinearticles.com/ as a way to promote your site. I have nothing to do with the site but have done articles there.

you sign up and can write on anything but I have just discovered the book review area. You are allowed to put 3 links into your articles. I use one to my health site in my bio and usually do an article that relates to something on my site. You write them for free but it gets your link out there and provides incoming links to your site which is important to search engines. People also read your articles/reviews and can visit your site if interested.

I built my site through Homestead.com which is pretty easy to use. I had no experience before, just a couple of friends mentoring me on the internet to help me along.

you gave me an idea too. I am working on a book right now so should build a page for it. It takes a few weeks sometimes for search engines to get to scanning your site.

Hope that helps.
Joan in Texas

I'm so glad you enjoyed the article. There are many ways to get yourself and information about your site out there, and creating content - whether it is on your own site, or on other sites linking back to yours - is one of the best ways to promote yourself.

Do be aware though that having many copies of the same content all over the place dilutes the value of that content to the search engines. Wherever possible try to produce new articles if you're writing for both your own site and other article content sites.

Elle - What a great article! Thank you. I have poshed around the idea of a website off and on. I even took several classes in HTML and Front Page as well as Cascading Web Pages and while it's not the hardest thing to learn, I found something out.

I DON'T WANT TO MAKE WEB PAGES.

I WANT TO BE A WRITER.

I have found some great places that take the hurt out of the fall.

Joan - I liked the site you gave the link to as well.

HAPPY FRIDAY!
Chel

Glad you liked the site, Chel. I agree Elle, you do need original content as search engines DO NOT like duplicated material.

What I do for my site is maybe do several pages for my site on a topic and then write a general type article for ezines about the topic and direct the link back to my site for more information.

I imagine that there are several writers forums where you could sign up with your website in the sig.

All this website marketing takes lots of time! I agree the time might be better spent writing unless marketing a website is something you want to do. I write for my website so I incorporate the writing and the marketing for the same purpose.

I think the real purpose of an author's page tho is give people someplace to go to find out more about you or to purchase your book, like if you were selling a product. They would probably know about your and your book first and then look you up, rather than just coming across you in the internet and deciding to buy your book, if that makes sense.

Thanks for reading

You're right too, Joan - it is way too easy to get caught up in promoting and branding yourself on the Internet, and next thing you know you're spending hours networking, marketing, writing articles, reading up unrelated stuff, and you're NOT writing your novel. I know that's exactly what's happened as soon as I start getting cranky and frustrated - it's time to stop tweaking the website and open Word again. (My problem is the left brain side of me just loves playing with code )

Balance and time management - *sigh*

Do you remember the good old days when all we had to do was change a ribbon on a typewriter. Then, we had to plug the typewriter in -- we all know where we have gone from there. I am older and remember copies made with carbon and life without spellcheck. Now the internet has given us even more reason not to write. LOL!

Yet, it's a good tool. However, I often find myself spending hours visiting sites that talk about writing and are full of articles about writing and before you know it, my writing space of time is over.

Chel

Ah, now, making best use of our writing time! That's a toughie at the moment ... grr. lol

I know what you mean Cel. Those were something else and then remember graduating from them to the Brother Word Processor which was a typewriter but it had that little L.E.D. screen that you could type to see it and then spell check it, then hit a button and it would type it out on paper.

You could also save your work with a floppy disk. Man, that was state of the art for writers then. lol.

I agree, the internet has in many ways made it harder to stick to a writing schedule! I get off on researching topics, visiting forums, etc and not writing like I should.

I can remember when I was in college I wrote my papers on a typewriter and going back and making corrections was a BIG deal. I love spell check!

One good thing about the internet is the fact that you can do so much by email now and pick up writing assignments anywhere in the country. It's a boon to those of us who aren't in our 30's anymore-no one knows how old you are when you apply for an assignment-lol.

Joan