Building Your Online Home

In today’s high-tech world, a writer’s presence online is the key that can potentially unlock publishing opportunities. And although it’s not an end in itself, it’s not only a start but the keystone in creating your online persona.

Your Web site will be a resource for your readers and the media that’s available at any time. Through it you’ll be able to showcase your work and the writing services you have to offer. Sounds great, huh? Unfortunately, too great.

As you use the Internet each day, you come upon and use a variety of Web sites, all with slick layout and striking images. So naturally when you imagine a Web site for yourself, you visualize one like those you see every day. What you don’t realize is that many of the sites on the Web have been designed by professional Web designers. Normally, sites like these can cost a $1,500 or much more to create, depending on the site’s complexity.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t have a site that reflects your style and shows off your writing to your advantage. Since you probably don’t have a lot of money to spend on your site, you have two options—using one of the free Web site services or building your site yourself.

Before you can think about building a Web site, you’ll need to purchase a domain name, the Web address of your site. What you choose for your domain name is important, as it will guide visitors to your site. As a writer whose name is associated with your product, it’s important that it contain your name. Also, you should purchase a .com address since that’s the most common and the one that most visitors will search for. However, if the .com version of your URL is already taken, you might consider adding the word “writer” after your name. As with Email addresses, any little change, even a number, will enable you to purchase the .com URL. Avoid buying the .net and .org extensions of your URL. Sellers tell you that if you don’t, someone could use your name and take away potential visitors from your site. Since your URL features your name, that’s unlikely, unless if very common.

Your domain name should cost no more than $20 a year. It’s registered with ICANN, the international organization that controls Web addresses. Once you purchase it, no one else can use it. You will have to renew it every year or for multiple years, but if you purchase it along with hosting services, you’ll usually get it for a substantial discount.

After purchasing a domain name, you’ll need to find a host for your site. GoDaddy.com is one of the largest and most dependable Web hosts. Don’t let the name fool you. The company offers all sorts of Web products and provides excellent service, as well as guaranteed uptime. An economy Windows-based site with 10 GB of space (more than you’ll ever need) costs about $7 a month. And the company periodically offers generous discounts.

If you’re not yet published, then you should consider one of the free hosting plans available on the Web. These free sites use shared URLs, so you won’t be able to use your own domain name. Instead, your name will become part of the host’s domain name. However, a free site will give you the opportunity to try out your Web content.  Unfortunately, all free Web services aren’t created equal. All use templates to create pages, but not all make it easy to transition to a paid site when you’re ready.

One of the most popular free services is Blogger, run by Google. Another is WordPress. Both were developed to service bloggers. Every single screen on the Internet is a Web page. An entire site is also referred to as a Web page. It’s a bit confusing. So if you start out doing a blog, you could potentially turn it into a site. GoDaddy includes WordPress as a product within its hosting package, so all you’d have to do is transfer the hosting to GoDaddy from the WordPress site. Blogger, on the other hand, cannot be transferred. Also, with free site services, you won’t be able to access Web site traffic statistics in order to see what’s working or not on your site.

However, don’t think because you have a free hosted site that no one will find you. If you promote your URL enough—even a shared one—they will. In the case of Web sites, patience is definitely a virtue.

The other option is to create your site from scratch without templates. While there are Web design programs available, all demand at least a basic level of computer expertise to fully customize your site—to decide fonts, colors, and layout. Customizing your site is critical for your long-term career planning. That leaves you in a catch-22 situation.

A compromise would be to sign up for GoDaddy’s “Web Site Tonight” package. You’ll pay a hosting fee, but you’ll also get templates to use to build your site. The service is limiting, however, and cannot be transferred to a regular hosting package. You’d have to begin all over again without the templates. But you may be able to create a business-like site if you use the templates and such wisely. Don’t kid yourself. It will never look like the slick sites you use every day.

Next Week: Designing Your Web Site

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Organizing for Success

You’re in the midst of a project and you need some information that you know you have in a file from a previous article. But try as you might, you just can’t put your hands on that file. After an hour or more looking for it, you become frustrated and give up. By now, the motivation you had to continue writing has passed, so you do something else. Annoying as this situation may be, it’s an all-to-common occurrence among writers. If you were better organized, perhaps this wouldn’t happen.

Even in today’s seemingly paperless world, writers usually amass a huge volume of paper files and books. Most like to have information at their fingertips. And while you can easily search for anything on the Internet, there are some offline sources that you’ve gathered that you prefer to use.

So how can you organize your writing office for the most efficiency which will eventually lead to more writing jobs. Having information at hand means that you can complete jobs faster and in the end increase your income.

To get organized, it’s best to start out with a plan. Think like a journalist. The key is the five W’s—who, what , when, where, and why—plus how. Answer these concretely to know what to keep and what to discard.

Naturally, you’ll want to keep a file on each article and story your write and several, if not a whole file box full, for each book. All those files will take up valuable space. If you don’t allow for them in your overall plan for your office, then you will be undermined later on.

Photos of home offices in magazines and on the Internet show perhaps one or two filing cabinets. That’s just unrealistic. While they may contain frequently used files, all the rest of the files must be hidden. In fact, you should consider a second storage area in your home for your archived files. These are all the ones from finished writing projects. While you may be lucky to have a basement, attic, or garage in which to store them, others living in smaller spaces may have to resort to offsite self-storage, which over time can be expensive.
                                       
You need to get organized from the start to increase productivity, but it’s never too late to start. Don’t try to do it all at once. Organize one part of your office at a time----books, files, research notes, photos, etc.

Let’s begin with files, both computer and paper. Start by finding the right containers. Filing cabinets work for files used often while cardboard filing boxes, sold at office-supply stores, work well for archived files. In the beginning, you’ll probably combine subjects in one box, but later on, you’ll need to divide boxes up by subject. Keep your system logical to make it easy to find what you want. Alphabetizing always helps.

Do the same with your computer files. Don’t follow Window’s or MAC’s plan and put all your files in one folder. Think of the folders in your computer the same way you think of those in your filing cabinets and boxes. In fact, you may want to create dividers for your paper files that match the names of the folders in your computer that contain related files.

A good way to ensure that you don’t lose any of your work is put install a second hard drive—or  have someone else do it for you. Another alternative is to use an external hard drive that connects to our computer via a USB cable. Either way, your files will be safe if your computer crashes. Unless your second hard drive, dedicated to your data, fails, your files will be safe because when a computer crashes, it’s the main drive that does so.

Next week, we’ll look at continuing the process, but before then, create a plan of organization and make an Organizing To-Do List.