Yesterday, I talked to my sister about how it was such a great idea for her to launch a proper website for her book blog. Prior to that, like many Ukrainian book bloggers, she had a community on the messenger app Telegram, but we’ve always been talking about her moving to somewhere more serious.
I have had this website for only a few months, even though I’ve been on the blogging scene for probably over a decade. Until now, I’ve only ever used free platforms such as Blogger or the .com version of WordPress. I’ve loved the experience, but it always felt like not enough. So at some point, I’ve decided to pull the trigger and buy a hosting plan. Now, I’ve also added a UA subdomain to this blog, where I repost some of the posts from my old WordPress blog that I loved dearly and abandoned for personal reasons, despite having excellent organic traffic without really trying.
Another time, my sister told me about a fellow book blogger who was told to launch a personal website, but refused. Apparently, he thought that having accounts on Goodreads and Telegram was enough. But here’s the thing with just having a social media account and treating it like a blog (it’s not). You don’t really own it. You can’t take all your content and easily move it to a different hosting without suffering some loss in traffic and engagement. And not to mention that every other day, the government is talking about blocking Telegram or any other controversial social media platform. It’s already happened to VK, and since 2022, to pretty much any website in the .ru domain region. Similar things are happening to a certain degree, pretty much worldwide. There’s nothing you can do about it. It’s politics.
Just some of the benefits of having a self-hosted website are pretty evident:
- It’s your personal brand
- You can use it as a portfolio
- There are more options for monetisation
- It’s good for SEO
- You can design it any way you like
It’s like you’re telling the world that you are really that serious about what you’re doing. It’s not just a hobby. You’re building a brand. This is what you do. This is who you are.
I might be a bit dramatic when it comes to blogging. It comes with the territory if, like me, you’ve been blogging since a very young age. And I always have this lingering feeling that I could’ve done more. My old blog deserved more.
You can’t turn back time, but you can always start over. Or just start a blog! Launch a website! Show the world your art or craft, your excellent career achievements, dreams and aspirations.
In a world where we are being constantly fed content by an algorithm, having a regular website is quite refreshing. Let’s do more of that.
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