Do you need to buy your own author domain name?

For many writers, having an author domain name is a nice idea, but not essential. Like owning a brand new Mac so you can use Vellum. Or talking about your books on The Graham Norton Show.

And in the early days of your career, you want to bootstrap things as much as possible.

But.

You’re in this for the long haul, right?

‘Free’ can only take you so far, especially if you want to make a career out of writing.

So do you need an author domain name, or can you get away with a free alternative?

A proper author domain name looks more professional.

Say you’re an agent. Which author will you take more seriously?

www.raymondburgess.com or manicpixiedreamgirl.wordpress.com?

Exactly. Appearances are absolutely everything and you rarely get a second go at a first impression.

But Icy! What if I have raymondburgess.wordpress.com? Doesn’t that count?

Not really. I can see why you’d think it would. But you’ve still built your empire on someone else’s land. If WordPress goes away, so does your domain.

But you can host a URL with any hosting provider you like. I’m onto my third. It’s cool.

You can claim your name before someone else does.

It’s early days. You don’t know if you’ll even succeed at this publishing thing.

So you just keep using unicorn-queen.wordpress.com as a domain. It’s free, and free is good, yes?

Sometimes. Just not here. Because what are you going to do if your first book ends up being a runaway hit?

There’s nothing stopping a sneaky so-and-so from registering your-name.com. Sure, you might be able to buy the .net, or .co.uk, but you wanted the .com.

If you bought it yourself, you don’t have a problem.

Though your author domain name doesn’t have to just be your name.

I’m pretty lucky. There’s only one Icy Sedgwick.

I’m like Highlander. There can be only one.

But if your name is a little more common, you might struggle to get the .com as it stands.

That’s okay. Consider adding author to the start of your name, like authorkristenlamb.com. Or add books to the end, like sachablackbooks.com.

That way, readers know exactly what they’re getting when they come to your site. It’s a huge part of your branding. And branding is everything when it comes to marketing your work.

If branding confuses you, sign up below for my free 5-day email course on getting clear on your author brand.

Your domain name offers so much more than just web space.

I highly recommend having a self-hosted website. There are many reasons, which I’ll explain in a future post.

But you might not want to spend $10.95 every month for hosting like I do.

You can forward your author domain name to point something else. Maybe the landing page for your mailing list. How about your Twitter account? Or your Amazon Author page?

You can set up Google Apps on it and land yourfirstname@firstnamelastname.com for emails. It looks a lot more professional than joebloggs1969@hotmail.com.

Even if you never become a professional author, that could be an amazing help to future job applications.

And domain names are part of your investment in your career.

It’s a simple fact that you can’t get away with doing everything for free. I use Dreamhost (affiliate link) and I pay $10.95 for my .com domains. That sum is renewed annually.

So that’s 91c a month. That’s about 75p here in the UK.

Ask yourself; what can you actually buy for 75p a month?

And if you do any hobbies, you’ll probably spend money on them. There’s yarn for knitting, paints for artistic endeavours, or even new shin-pads if you play football.

So why wouldn’t you invest 75p a month in a URL?

Plus writing isn’t your hobby. It’s something you want to make money from. That means investment.

But can’t I just transfer to a paid domain name once I’ve started making money?

You could. But if you have any followers through your free domain, it can be difficult – if not impossible – to transfer them over.

And if you haven’t been building a mailing list, you’ve got no way of letting them know you’ve moved.

I used to have a sub-domain to host my writer blog, which was on Blogger. Hey, don’t judge – I didn’t know any better three years ago. But then I installed self-hosted WordPress and moved my blog there. Sure, I put up a post telling visitors I’d moved and giving the new address, but it was hard to update my RSS feed.

And who uses RSS now anyway?

Some of those readers came with me because we had a relationship on Twitter or Facebook. But I know I lost readers by moving.

Don’t be like me.

Your author domain name is the easiest investment you can make in your career as a professional writer. And if you manage to land yourname.com, you can always use it for something else if you decide writing isn’t for you.

But I want to know what you think! Do you have your own URL? If not, why not? Let me know in the comments below!