3 Reasons Why Every Creator Would Want to Have a Website
A personal site provides advantages that other media sites can never offer
In this digital day and age, creators often make use of platforms like Vimeo, Behance, and WordPress, etc to share and showcase their works. These services provide a place to build a portfolio and network with the like-minded. Best of all, it can be completely free! So why should you even bother to create your website?
The following 3 reasons are drawn from my own experience. I have been in the creative industry for more than a decade and I never had my website until recently. What has changed?
1. Mark your Territory
It’s practical to have a permanent place for all your creative output. For a long time, I have been relying on Vimeo to store and show my videos. I take advantage of its neat layout and special features tailored for the video creators.
Some time ago, a company asked me to present some work that’s relevant to an upcoming project. After many years in hibernation, I logged back to Vimeo and found out that I have now exceeded their basic plan of storage by a whopping 290 percent. I needed to clear some files before I could make my page operate smoothly. I have nothing but praise for Vimeo. To be fair, I have like 14.5 GB of material at its site and I only used its free services.
This incident strikes me as a glaring example of how depending on others makes me involuntarily tied to their changes and some changes are deadly. Remember what happened with Myspace and Vine? Both are very successful services, yet fail to stay relevant or remain in the market.
A personal website makes us less sensitive to reversion from media platforms that we don’t like or agree with; On some occasions, it could save us from the disaster of migrating all our works from a provider that’s going down.
2. Grow your Skills
We can expand our skillset with the newfound space a website has given. While we create, we usually stick to our repertoire and we rarely go beyond that. For example, if you are a video person like me, you might focus on video as a means to communicate your ideas. It’s going to be different when you need to build your web pages, the level of involvement is greater than a profile page on some popular platforms.
Most media platforms offer some customization so their users can modify their profiles to show more personality and creativity. Nonetheless, to maintain the look and identity of the platform, there will always be limitations.
Owning a dot-com gives you the freedom to control every detail of that site. You are in charge of various aspects of it, like structure, content, design, and navigation, etc. Even if you have decided to hire someone to build the website for you, you still have to make the final decision on this project. You will be forced to step into areas that you don’t come across usually.
I consider myself quite visual, however, I have no idea what a favicon (favorite icon) is and how important it can be until I have my archicheung.com. I also picked up writing because I want to put in more content to enrich my site. Through writing, I join the Medium community and it is rewarding. There is a wide spectrum of activities that we can use to express ourselves. If you are creative, I think it will be enjoyable to dip into different areas of the field and broaden your repertoire.
3. Boost your Exposure
A website of your own increases the chance to meet your followers. You never know where and under what circumstance you will find the people that appreciate your work.
I haven’t received any strong impact from my site since I just started, yet the amazing story of the documentary film “Searching for Sugar Man” enlightened me. Director Malik Bendjelloul followed the story of Sixto Rodriguez, a singer-songwriter who found no success in his native land United States nevertheless became a music icon in South Africa. Rodriguez might have waited several decades before his music career is revived, his talent is just being overlooked but isn’t unrecognized.
That being said, making your work more accessible by putting it on your website, in addition to other media platforms, helps others to find you. It speeds up the waiting process and opens more doors for you. David Perell uses the term “Serendipity Vehicle” to describe this phenomenon.
By making it easy for people to find you online, you’ll create a vehicle for serendipity. Call on your vehicle when you want to manufacture serendipity, and you need some activation energy.
Every time we create something, it becomes some sort of engine/ vehicle that pushes us toward serendipity. People are going to search online for more information if they are interested in you, having a website increases the chance of you being seen and noticed. It is also the place to show your social media channels altogether.
Cherry on Top
To put a cherry on top of the listed reasons, it is easier and cheaper than ever to create your website now.
You don’t need to get technical if you don’t want to. You can have a decent website without knowing HTML, CSS, or coding. There are a bunch of software as a service (SAAS) tools out there like Wix, Squarespace, and WordPress for you to choose from. Each of these services provides more than enough ready-made website templates for you to revise if you don’t want to start from scratch. Earlier on, a client required me to update some content on Wix. Without any previous experience using this software, I was able to finish the job then go on to build my one-pager website within a week.
As for the cost, two things are essential for a website to be up and running — a domain name and website hosting. You can get a domain name address for under 10 US dollars annually. For web hosting, if you don’t mind having adverts on your site, free options are available.
Actionable Advice
A website isn’t only for big companies and well-known celebrities. Content creators can utilize the space it provided to increase their skillset and exposure.
Think of building your website as your next personal project. It is free to sign up for an account to use those website builders I have mentioned. Start fiddling around and in the process of doing so, you will gain something no matter what.
Last but not least, don’t discard media platforms because you own a website. We just added a useful tool in our toolbox, and every item in it has its strength and weakness.
