Do I really need a website?

“Do I really need a website?”

Yes. It’s 2025.

But you might be thinking ‘website’ means a blog, a store, a calendar of all the events you’re attending… It can be all of those things, and more - but it absolutely does not have to be.

If you’re just starting out, it’s a billboard. A place to say ‘Here I am, and here’s what I do’.

Yes, you can do all of that with a Linktree page, or a Twitter/X profile, or Facebook… But a website is yours. Whatever your views on social media (or the people who own the platforms), there will come a day when you’re no longer using one or more of them any more. Remember all those bands saying ‘check out our MySpace page?’ No? Then you’re probably a lot younger than me.

But imagine this - your books come out with links in the back to follow you on some wonderful new social media platform… which dies within the year. Now you’ve got people either looking for you on a dead site or unable to find you at all. Or you point people to Amazon to buy the next book in the series, but eventually prefer people to buy the books elsewhere.

Your website is yours. That address (assuming you keep renewing it) will always work, always be up to date, and can send people off to whatever other platform you frequent.

But we need to start small. Stake that claim, reserve your little corner, and make it start working for you.

It's not going to be hard. I'm going to make this as easy to follow as it can be. If it's particularly difficult to do, or if it's difficult to update, that's going to add friction to the process. When that happens you're not going to update it. It's going to fall out of date quickly and no one's going to look at it, so what's the point? You want something that's nice and quick and easy and simple. 

I’m not going to tie you into any single provider for the same reason as I don't want you just using Facebook or Twitter or YouTube or whomever else. If you're stuck on one provider and they ever decide that you're not worth the effort then you've got a huge amount of work to do. This way, you've got as much flexibility as possible, but without adding too much complexity. 

Don’t forget you can always make changes later. This isn't the final form of your website. This is just what your website looks like today. We’re setting a low goal, making something quick, easy, good looking, and it won’t take us long at all.