When I first started out as a writer (and a reviewer, though that came later) I didn’t know anything about the internet at all. My career started the minute I stepped out into the world wide web.
Everything I have learned about websites, promotion, marketing, reviewing and SEO, I taught myself. I had no help from anyone. In fact, I actually enjoyed learning about things that I needed to know.
It does prove, however, that anyone can do it. I won’t say that old cliche, though: If I can do it, anyone can! It may seem rather a huge mountain to climb at the beginning but it does become easier, although you are continually learning all the time. I believe, that could be said about any job you do, however.
So, I had to learn how to set up a website, promote it as well as getting my name out into cyber space as the writer I professed to be. As a new writer, you are a unknown. You may think you’re good, your friends and family may do as well, but no one else does. So how do you convince everybody else that you are the next bestseller? Listed below are a few starters:
- You have to believe in yourself and your talents
- You have to be prepared to be critiqued, reviewed and ignored by anyone who counts.
- You have to be prepared to accept those critiques and reviews as well as the times that you don’t exist.
- You have to continue to write.
- You have to continue to try.
- You have to work every day.
- You have to continually submit to magazines, ezines and publishers. Don’t give up!
I know there are more and if you can think of any more, then please do leave a comment.
So how did I do it? And, how did I get on?
Tune into the next post
Let’s just say you have set up your own website either at your own domain or at free hosting. Your next step (aside from filling your website full of information and resources about you and what you do) is to promote.
You are aiming to promote your services as a writer as well as your website. Your website is designed to inform readers and prospective clients exactly where they can find you, contact you, read about you, find out everything about your services and examples of your work.
Traffic to your website is crucial to establishing your presence on the world wide web as a professional or amateur writer/author.
Without it, you cannot hope to gain a presence or a reputation. Even if you cannot set up a website, there are other options available to you. These can include:
- Weblogs or blogs
- A profile page on a social networking site detailing everything about you and what you do.
Whatever you decide to do or use, promotion is still crucial to your success. Promotion can be achieved by the use of meta tags, link building, interaction with your visitors, publishing your stories or individual pages about your interests or expertise, blog commenting, listing of your site in directories and the search engines, advertisements, Press releases, podcasts, videos uploaded to sites such as YouTube and many more.
All these methods and those that I haven’t mentioned will be featured over the coming months on In Your Own W-Rite.
Again if you have any tips that my readers would find useful, please do share them in the comments. I would love to feature them in my next post!


