WebSite website
July 9th, 2022
The problem with advice is for every recommendation you are given, someone will convincingly suggest something else. Similar to problem with the reviews of Amazon products. Whenever I look at an Amazon product, I look at the average of the reviews. Every product will have both 5 star and 1 star reviews which make you wonder if there are different versions of the product out there. My solution is to look the weight of where the reviews fall to make my final decision. The same is with advice on things like websites. Wix, Wordpress, or Squarespace all have tons of people who will rave about them and a few who will scare you witless. It is recommended to have an author website to impress a publishing company with your seriousness about marketing. But, which site makes the best option for me?
For blogging, Word Press has an excellent reputation, but the site is less intuitive. Wix is a very popular website builder and hosting company. They have an extensive infrastructure to support you and the creation of the websites are more drag-and-drop and resizing. They have tutorials to help you with that and there are innumerable informative tutorials on YouTube. For me, Wix was confusing which led me to my final choice of Squarespace. (As you might have guessed already!) Sometimes you just have to take a guess and a leap of faith.
I do suggest while you try to decide, build up a reserve of future blog posts to help fill your brand new site while you go thru the process. I have material to start with like this post. A small confession. I continued writing and used that as a justification to put off a decision. I finished my first draft of the third book of my trilogy and ran out of excuses. So that is why this will be out there on the web.
Unfortunately, choosing a website and a hosting solution is only the beginning. Your next task is to choose a website design, color scheme, name, domain name. After that simple project is finished, how are you going to pull traffic to your site with zero experience? I feel just like with writing, I'm going to be taking another leap into the unknown. To add more complexity, you need to understand Google search engine optimization or SEO. This will allow Google to find your site and increase your search ranking.
So while writing the books, I've been trying to learn about search ranking, website creation, and cover design. Oh, and develop a series of blogs to attract your attention. The good thing is all this may prevent dementia in my old age, but my brain may explode. And just to add to my burden, I have to learn to be entertaining as well.
All while waiting for my beta readers to give me feedback. If I get horrible feedback from my readers, then I know I will have to restart and put a hold on starting a website. So far, so good, but the third book needs to pass their muster.
In the meantime, I will keep working on creating web content, learning Scrivener and Scapple, and become a better writer. Perhaps even talk about helping people navigate the increasingly difficult world of medicine.
My trick to avoid being overwhelmed is to work on one of these topics every day. Then I feel I have accomplished something or learned a new skill to help move forward. I find the experience similar to college before the midterms or finals. You spend a whole year studying and then you have to cram all that knowledge into your brain for tests whose results determine where you might go in life. In those two weeks before your finals, I was overwhelmed, but kept plugging away. Eventually, things fell into place and made sense. I feel this situation is very similar, though I suspect my timeline will be a lot longer before I am comfortable and things fall into place. I will continue working on developing a plan for marketing while I anxiously wait for some feedback from my beta readers.
Say a little prayer for me.