WHY GET A WEBSITE:
A lot of folks have been talking about getting screwed over by Webtoons. Or maybe you’re worried your huge platform you built on twitter is going to go to waste or suddenly get taken away from you. Possibly Instagram just randomly decided your content was too spicy and bam… there go your 180 thousand followers.
Folks, for that reason, you need a website. It won’t replace all that other stuff. Sadly we’re to the point where yer gonna HAVE to do that stuff too. But as someone who has been at this for 24 years, change is the only constant when it comes to 3rd party sites. They WILL upend your whole world without much notice and that’s all you can count on. For that reason you NEED a place where YOU control the terms and conditions and where your fans can find your work FOREVER. That way when Twitter is bought by a billionaire moron and suddenly everyone gets tired of it and moves to NEW APP X all your hard work won’t go down the drain because your audience was already coming to your domain name to get the good stuff anyway.
I CAN’T AFFORD IT:
Inevitably someone says “I can’t afford a website” and maybe you can’t! Hell I’ve been there. Just know that a website is dirt cheap compared to other business expenses. I pay about $120 USD a year. That’s 10 bucks a month (but I pay annually for it). If yer work ain’t drawing 10 bucks a month—No. You probably don’t need a website. You need to keep building your audience. When you are then able to easily afford a website–DO IT. Get it IMMEDIATELY. Start getting your audience used to going THERE for the good stuff. It WILL pay for itself in the long run.
WHAT AM I BUYING THEN:
When you ‘get a website’ you are buying a domain name (that is your site url like ravensdojo.com for instance) and you are paying for hosting services (that’s the cost of your host’s servers hosting the files that make up your website). These can be bought separately but are usually cheaper together. You can buy as many domain names as you want and point them to however many sites you make at your one host. That said each domain name will cost you and really in the end you only need ONE good domain name. It makes it easier on your audience that way. You can also JUST buy a domain name (no hosting) and redirect that url to whatever you want. This is a cheaper way to do it and just as valid. Even cinemassacre.com was just a url pointing to a linktree site at one point. There’s no wrong way to do this. Just find what works for your needs.
ARE THERE HIDDEN COSTS:
It’s possible if you are immensely popular you will have SO MUCH TRAFFIC that your server will say “whoa man… we gotta charge you some more.” But most beginners won’t have that issue. When it gets to that point there are services you can use for free (like cloudflare) that will reduce the toll on your server and thus save you any extra expense. Your host will help you out with that stuff if they’re a good host. Additionally you can (and many do) just repeat the content across many different sites. This is an ages old technique and it works. Folks call it Mirrors. I’m not a fan of it myself.. I want everyone to come to the one place to get my work, but whatever works for you. I got pals who fucking LOVE mirrors and mirror their work as many places as they can. It’s whatever you want, just know odds are this will never be a problem for you and if it DOES get to that level you’ll likely be making enough money to handle the expense.
Additionally you may end up paying for a theme or a plug in if you like it. I do. So that’s an extra cost.. but again you only have to take on what you want here. That’s all up to you and what you need.
WHAT TO USE FOR A WEBSITE / WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN A HOST:
Gonna bundle these together because there’s overlap here. So I’m speaking mostly to comic artists here, if you’re going to be at this for a long time you will probably generate TONS of comic pages and art. I’m nearly up to 3000 and that’s even with thousands of images taken down (because I just don’t like them anymore). When you start working with that much shit a CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM becomes a god send. You can make a website any number of different ways, but what you want is something to make it fast and easy to upload and manage. Me personally? I love wordpress. It’s not perfect by any means, but it is very easy to use, very fast, and very flexible. You can modify it with no code needed. If yer a code nerd though you can get under the hood and tinker with it too. WordPress can be as simple or complex as you choose to make it. Themes and Plug ins can modify the functionality of your website greatly. Many of those themes and plug ins are FREE, but you can also pay for some if you want extra horsepower or functionality. You can search for any of the thousands of free plugins and themes right through your wordpress dashboard. Plus when the time comes for you to set up your own patreon like set up where you are charging for content, word press has TONS of plug ins that offer that same functionality. WordPress is also typically mobile friendly without any extra work, which is again, a huge time saver (although that DOES depend on which theme you use). Again, no hard rules here, find what works for you–but wordpress works for me.
So along those lines, many MANY site hosts will offer you a ‘dashboard’ with various services you can access at NO EXTRA COST. WordPress IS one of the very common ‘one click installs’ that many hosts will offer. So you could technically buy your domain name and site from the same hosting service, log in to your dash board, do a 1 click install of WordPress and be up and running later that evening.
When you’re looking for what host to get, that’s the kind of stuff you want. 24/7 tech support to help you when your site has issues (because it will). And a dashboard full of little extra bells and whistles in case you want to take advantage of something like a 1 click install Word Press site.
WHAT DO I PERSONALLY USE—THE NITTY GRITTY:
-So for hosting and domain name I use:
hostgator.com They are cheap. Friendly. Have 24/7 support. They offered 1 click installs on Word Press too which sealed the deal. I’ve been with them for a few years now and am VERY happy. I got the cheapest hosting package they offer since my site doesn’t have heavy traffic usage AND I use cloudflare.com to help offset the traffic toll on the server anyway. The cloudflare service I use is the free package.
-For my website I use:
WordPress. I did a 1 click install on my host and just customized it to suit my needs. I don’t use the newest theme! I use WordPress 2016. I just like the older themes a bit better. Find the one that works for you, but know that you don’t have to pay to find a good theme. WordPress 2016 IS free.
-To present my comics on my site I use:
The default gallery functionality of wordpress works fine for me. I did get a simple “Lightbox” plug in (no extra cost). Here is the specific plug in page for Simple Lightbox. That makes the rest of the site go darker grey while people browse the comics, but other than that when you read my comic that is just the default gallery Word Press offers with no other tinkering!
CLICK HERE TO SEE HOW MY COMIC READS
-To set up a my subscriber service:
I charge folks for exclusive art and comics. I pay for the annual subscription to a 3rd party plug in called “Restrict Content Pro” (restrictcontentpro.com). This allows me to manage subscriptions, and restrict certain content to people at different subscription tiers just like Patreon does it. You may say.. why not use Patreon? Again, I’ve had several friends work very hard to build up their Patreon just to lose it all for silly reasons (one guy had a cartoon butt in his twitter header and lost his Patreon over THAT!). For that reason the $99 a year that restrict content pro costs me is well worth the piece of mind knowing that I won’t just wake up and have lost all my hard work.
-Restrict content pro processes payment through PAYPAL. Them I’m sure you know, but it also supports Stripe and many many other forms of payment.
-For comments on my website I use:
Disqus (Click here for Disqus) Disqus is free and offers a bit more moderation and functionality than the out of the box WordPress comment system. It’s not necessary but it’s a nice little extra for your users. They can use their one login on multiple sites so as a result many users like it. Plus it has upvoting and downvoting. Gifs. All kinds of nifty things. As a freebie I recommend it!
-For my website’s store front I use:
Gumroad. (click here for Gumroad) Gumroad is again free and very powerful. You could technically do all your subscriber content right through Gumroad if you wanted! It’s way more poweful than how I currently use it. But I just like how their site works and their staff is very friendly and fast so it’s a big win.
-Lastly for my video games I use:
Itch.io (click here for Itchio) Probably not something you need as it is basically just another store front, but this one is good for comics or video games (and especially video games) so I’m including it here as well. There is again, no extra expense for this past what they take from each sale.
IN CLOSING:
There you have it! That’s all the bells and whistles I use. My way is by no means THE only way to do it. In fact for many years I just did word press and set up ‘buy’ buttons with paypal. But this is where I’m at now with it and I’m happy with it. Making a website can be a lot of fucking work. When you get started it’s a hassle setting all this shit up. But once you get it up and running it’s something that fades into the background while you just make your comic. To me it is worth it’s weight in gold. I have had MANY MANY readers come back to me after being gone for a long time just because I’ve had the same url all these years and their book marks still worked. One reader told me he was tossing out a 15 year old lap top and was shocked to see not only was I still around but I was very active. So he started reading again! As time goes by the benefits will become very obvious. There are plenty of people who say you don’t need a website and it’s true they’re not the end all be all they used to be… but if you’re serious about making a home for your work on the internet I personally think it is better to have one even if all you think of it as is a safety net for your work should you lose your social media audience.
Drive your readers to your website. Put the best stuff on it. Let social media users feel like they’re getting scraps. The best investment is to invest in yourself.
Good luck and cheers!
-Raven