Marketing begins now, at the very start of your publishing efforts, and your website is the foundation of that marketing effort.

Your website is a storefront and a scrapbook, a place to attract, inform, connect, collect, and communicate. Your website is “You-Central.”

Prerequisites

By now you're pretty sure where you fit in the marketplace; if not, the Research Your Way to a Best Seller course will help you figure that out.

You need to know what's common in the branding of books like yours. Readers subconsciously know what the kind of books they like to read look like. You don't want to stray too far outside those rules.

These are details like book size, colors, fonts, graphics, photography, word count, even pricing, titles, and subtitles.

I hope you've also been connecting with early readers and getting their feedback. This is covered in the course on How to Recruit Critique Partners and Early Readers. It's nice to have a support group to take a look at your site to let you know if it works for them.

If you want to upgrade to access these courses - or better yet, the Publishing Freedom course bundle - which contains these two great courses and much more, please let me know and I'll give you a coupon code. Just email me at [email protected].

Here's what we'll cover:

Your domain name

Branding! Are you kidding? Your name is your biggest brand so don't be shy. Get your name. I'll show you how.

Web hosting

A web hosting company handles all the geeky tech stuff for you so you can build your website. You'll learn how to choose one.

Website building

Your web hosting company may have WordPress theme builder service built in. Mine does. You can choose one of their themes to start off, just because it's easy, or upload a premium theme. You'll learn where to purchase premium themes and how to hire a professional if you need to so that your website markets you and your writing.

Your blog

Your blog, which is connected to your website is a great place to communicate with your readers. A regularly-updated blog can help you get discovered by people who use Google and other search engines to find answers or entertainment. Your blog is an extension of your website. There's no need to choose a separate blogging service.

Your email marketing list

The most important function of your website and blog is to create personal connection with readers by getting them to hand over their email address. When they give you their email address, they have given you permission to contact them directly.

Whatever you put on your website, make sure to place your email newsletter signup form at the top right of your web pages, because this is where people expect it to be.

The lead magnet

Website visitors are tired of being sold to, so entice them with an “ethical bribe.” This could be a free story, tip sheet, or anything you can think of that has informational or entertainment value to your audience.

Easy, but maybe a little tedious

This module will hopefully take the mystery out of creating a website, blog, and email marketing newsletter so you can get started or improve the site you have today. There are several solutions including one that takes about one hour to build. I'm not kidding.