Free Websites to Promote your Books or Writing

I guess I'm the list man, but I've put together another list of free websites that one can use to promote their books or writing. I still suggest you get your own domain name, but these are great for extra exposure and for getting more backlinks. Check them out...



Free Websites for Authors and Writers to Promote/Market Their Books and Writing Online

Thanks. That's an interesting list.

I think it's finally official - you ARE the list man! And, you are absolutely super to share all of your goodies with us.

Is that list to starboard or port, flash?

Wow,Flash! Who knew there were so many? You have really done a lot of research on this subject. Thank you for sharing it with us all.

Actually Lin, in space there is no starboard or port, simply "to infinity and beyond!"

Good one flash - I love it!

flashgordon wrote:

I guess I'm the list man, but I've put together another list of free websites that one can use to promote their books or writing. I still suggest you get your own domain name, but these are great for extra exposure and for getting more backlinks. Check them out...



Free Websites for Authors and Writers to Promote/Market Their Books and Writing Online

This list is mostly worthless because all I see is a list of webhosts and most of them are crappy free services. If you cant pay 5$/month for hosting a basic site somewhere, it probably indicates that you don't believe in what you do. There are absolutely no book related sites on that list.

You and I must be looking at different lists, because when I go through the lists that Flash put together there is a wealth of great resources there. Perhaps you need to dig a little deeper...you know before coming into a forum where we generally don't crap on each other and you decide to crap on someone.

Yeah I've seen his other lists and they are very useful but this particular one is a list of free webhosts unrelated to writing and free webhosts (except a few) are mostly bad propositions.

Actually, there are uses for these things. One would be a beginner to websiting getting their feet wet.

Another would be to get on ALL the free ones and link up to your main site and book listing, building an array of links for search engines.

Ooo. I like the way your think, lin.I have much more time than money, but unfortunately not enough time to be everywhere!! Some of those sites looked good to me, and I will try to squeeze some in.

lin wrote:

Actually, there are uses for these things. One would be a beginner to websiting getting their feet wet.

If you are really serious about getting a web presence, paying 5$/month (sometimes even less) for proper hosting should not be much at all. If you are trying to sell something (= your book), it looks cheap to host somewhere that puts ads/popups etc. on your site. Getting your feet wet is ok but free hosts for anything serious would be a no-no. That said there are a few free hosts that give you everything for free and the best example is this:
http://smallbusiness.officelive.com/

lin wrote:

Another would be to get on ALL the free ones and link up to your main site and book listing, building an array of links for search engines.

Those don't get you anything because for your site to gain a good search engine rank, you must get links from sites that have a good rank themselves. New sites on free hosts definitely will not have that and are generally a waste of time. You will get more hits to your site from a posting in this forum and other forums like this, put a link to your site in your signature everywhere you post, your email signature, post in newsgroups on social networking sites etc. and those links will have far more importance than links from free sites. Even if the pages of the forum/site do not have a high rank themselves, they are atleast sure to be visited.

Let me give you an example. I run a blog that has a google PR of 4. 4 is not that high but it is decent and people pay to get a link on my blog because it has a a decent rank. If the blog had no ranking, the link would be useless and nobody would be willing to pay for it. To get a higher PR, the site must be relevant to what is on there, linked from important relevant sites, be atleast a few years old amongst other things such as good bot friendly design.

Doing any of this is not easy for one site, so forget doing it on 10 or 20 sites that you create.

Those don't get you anything because for your site to gain a good search engine rank, you must get links from sites that have a good rank themselves.

A gross oversimplification of how SEO works on search engine alogrithms.

In fact ALL links are good to some extent. Even links which have very low appeal to search engines (like the one at the bottom of your post) create a glimmer of light around the target site.


I wouldn't want to go on host that only charged $5 a month, frankly. But, that's a $70 hit on your credit card, plus a much greater learning curve to set up. There are people who would rather fool around on 50megs first.

Actually, I'd tell most newbie/technophobes not to even worry about a website, especially for a couple of books. You just don't need all that space and geegaws.
You can get a free blog space..something even top authors use, and use that as the main drive to your sales point. Which can be a simple paypal button, an eBay store, or the buypoint on amazon or B&N or the publsher's site.

There is almost nothing that an autor, especially a new one, can do with a website that they can't do of a blog site.

lin wrote:

A gross oversimplification of how SEO works on search engine alogrithms.

In fact ALL links are good to some extent. Even links which have very low appeal to search engines (like the one at the bottom of your post) create a glimmer of light around the target site.

I wouldn't want to go on host that only charged $5 a month, frankly. But, that's a $70 hit on your credit card, plus a much greater learning curve to set up. There are people who would rather fool around on 50megs first.

There is almost nothing that an autor, especially a new one, can do with a website that they can't do of a blog site.

I totally agree that's why I recommend - Get your hosting account, The host will give you a free domain (atleast good ones do) and do all the setup for you, click on fantastico, install wordpress and you're ready to go. Then if you hit it big, all you need is to hire someone to make a custom wordpress theme and all your content stays and you have a fancy website. Nobody needs to know that it is a blog in disguise

I've been hosting three of my sites at a webhost that charges 3$/month (it is 5 now for new customers but my plan hasn't changed) and I used to host ibookdb on that same host in the same plan for the first year and had minimal issues if any until ibookdb really started growing. The rest of my sites are still on the cheap host (two blogs and one other site that I am working on). In fact I would highly recommend going with a 5$/month host as compared to a free host.

The free blogging sites (blogger, wordpress.com etc.) are nice as compared to free hosts because of the social aspect, friends etc. but there is nothing like having your own domain name and hosting your site there. I think some of these blog sites offer the ability to have your own domain point there - that might be a good middle ground.

Also I pointed out myself earlier that these little links that I post in my sig etc. are in forums/social networking sites etc. which may have low ranking but are seen by people. An unknown site on a free host is seen by almost nobody. The link my be useless for SEO but it does drive visitors and finally the whole point of all this is to get visitors, right.

60$/year is not too much. If a web presence is important for an author/book and the author is not willing to shell out a measly 60 bucks, that says a lot about the faith they have in their book. As for the learning curve, it is better to learn to do one site right than have 10 link farms sitting somewhere isn't it? It's like starting a new business, you might not break even for while.

but there is nothing like having your own domain name and hosting your site there.

Well, there might be things like it, but the point is it isn't really necessary. No need for somevbody without experience in website creation to go throught the shopping (some of the most blind shopping in the world) for registrar and host server (who might or might not have fanastico, by the way, and not always possible to know going in)

It's hard to really articulate much advantage of having one's own domain compared to having site traffic.

Furthermore, it's getting pretty tough to get the domain you want. Much easier to get them at blogger or blogspot or whatever.
Again, you see plenty of big name writers with professionally maintained sites using bigwriter.blogarino.com for their blogs.

There are MANY other reasons why free web hosting can be helpful. Storing backup files, hanging images to link to, adding to the link cloud.

This list is a resource that people can use as they see fit, I'd say. Just as they might choose to quickly set up a free, hassle-free blog site rather than monkey around with domains.

What you are doing, it's well to keep in mind, is quite a different purpose from what an author of one or a few books is trying to accomplish.

Also, they might not be trying to move a novel. Maybe they have a non-fiction book in a nice, discrete niche. In which case a whole different set of motivations and rules apply. I have a couple of websites in niche markets that come up on Google front page. And what often comes up is not just the target site, but a couple of the free-hosted sites I used earlier or for various purposes in the promo. So many three of the top ten Google items lead to me.

There is more than one way to skin these cats.

As mentioned in these posts, there are several reasons to use these free websites.

1) for link building (even a page rank 0 site adds credit)
2) to put your writing online for random reasons
3) to build part of your online "platform"
4) to have a place to mess around with web coding
5) to place your thoughts, photos, ideas, etc.
6) for niche marketing
7) for backing up your files
etc.

I'm just trying to help our fellow writers and authors with resources for making their work known.