Welcome to a new feature on the blog — Freelance Writing Success Tips. I was planning to debut this feature in January to kick off the new year, but I just discovered a great resource for freelance writers and I couldn’t wait to share it.
I know many writers who are agonizing over how to get a Web site and blog up, so they can start promoting their writing services in social media, and have a place to organize their clips to show prospective clients.
For a down-and-dirty Web site, I used to recommend taking control of your free ZoomInfo profile. I limped along on that for a couple of years back in 2005-6. But now I found something that’s even better — not free, but insanely cheap. And it’s got blogging!
If you join the National Association of Independent Writers and Editors (NAIWE), you get a personal Web site with a WordPress blog already installed!
I joined NAIWE for other reasons, since I already have a site — to meet other writers, learn, network, and promote my eBooks and Webinars to other writers. I’ve been getting their newsletter for a long time, and knew NAIWE would offer me solid opportunities to grow my writing business.
But I just put my NAIWE site up, because I thought, “Why not?” and I can report it’s terrific. Take a quick WordPress tutorial online, and you’re ready to roll. Or don’t even bother — it’s a pretty intuitive tool you can fake your way through, especially if you’ve ever used any other blogging program.
It didn’t take me an hour to organize my stuff. And now I have another place to post about my most recent Make a Living Writing blog posts. It even puts your desired site name first in the URL.
I’ve left my NAIWE site barebones because I’m just using it to point to my caroltice.com site, but you could easily use their WordPress platform to create a beautiful, fully-fleshed-out site.
Of course, joining NAIWE has many other benefits, too — member discounts and free teleclasses, community, a resource library, and more. Membership used to be $149, but they have it on sale recently at just $99. That’s right — a hosted WordPress site for under $100 a year, plus tons of other support for your writing career. Call me crazy, but I think that has to be the best Web site deal for writers anywhere. Now that I’m handling some hosting issues for this blog on my own, I can really see the advantage of having an organization behind you to manage administrative issues.
How have you handled your Writer Web site? If you know of other useful resources for putting up a cheap writer Web site, leave a comment and let me know. If you join and get a NAIWE site, let me know too! (Discloure: I am proud to be a NAIWE affiliate. Click these links and I will get a commission. Won’t cost you more.)
