Why would a person want a website?

Some of us want more than a long string of babble posts with pics of the kids, m'dear

Seriouslier speakin' one has much more control over organization as well as content, and the possibility of faster loading pages with cleaner code is a big plus in my view. But I will be speaking pure Geek in another minute so I'd better shut up.

Buying your own space allows you to do what you want with the site itself. Like Matera said, many people, especially authors want more than rambling posts. Many authors now have their own sites that showcase their work plus a blog. It makes interaction with the author viable instead of just a website. Space is relatively cheap, though, and if you know even nominal code, you can get a decent looking site up and running in no time.

The thing is, I can understand paying for a site with a purpose, to sell something, an extensive fansite or something like that but people buy space for some of the most random reasons and I wonder why they waste the money doing it.

It can also be a matter of looking more professional. Imagine a law firm trying to attract customers through a blog on blogger... Imagine a professional photographer trying to sell their photographs through flickr... Imagine a major marketing company trying to sell their advertising abilities through youtube... I don't think I'm the only one who thinks it don't work. It just doesn't lend a professional image. Same as using a gmail address or hotmail address for doing business.

By putting it on your own domain, it can appear much more professional, in addition to having much more control over the code, the appearance, the layout, the software, and so on. By hosting it on your own domain, you have your email address at your own domain, which, again, appears much more professional.

I can see that there's a place for the free websites, but personally, I don't use them myself. Mostly for the control side of things. I can set things up however I want rather than the way some other company tells me I have to according to their rules.

nancy sv said:

Why would someone want their own website?

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Speaking for myself?

Nobody can tell you what to say.

If I put a blog post on blogspot.com and someone gets their knickers in a twist over it, they can go complain and blogspot can tell me to take it down. If I say no, they can take it down for me, and if I complain they can terminate my account.

But I own my server, so nobody can tell me what to put on it. I lease space in a building with a fat backbone connection, and they have zero authority over what I say. All they can legally do is say "you can't use our pipe anymore", and I go pick up my server and move it to someone else's pipe.

The customers I have on that server value the power we give them. Say what you like; do what you like; we will exert no more control over your activity than the law requires. There are two rules: no warez, no porn. That's it. Beyond that, anything goes.

We don't make much, because this isn't really our day job. We pull in roughly $1,500 a year, which is just about what it costs to lease the rack space. But a free dedicated server is nothing to sneeze at.

For your purposes, you might not need it. But for ME---well, I have a whole subweb of pages that readers expect. For example.

1. Each series has a page with jpegs of the covers with a short blurb about the plot. If you click on the cover, you get:

2. The individual page of that book with a longer blurb. There you'll find links to:

3. A sample chapter of the book
4. A page of independent reviews of the book

So, we have more than a dozen books out now. Each book has three pages, for 36 pages.

We plan to write more books.

No blog site, or free site, will do that. In fact, we've been looking at designers to revamp the site (no pun intended...) and so far, we're looking at about 50 pages (minimum) for the things we want to do---with the attendant cost of that (think the $3-5K range.)

Sigh... Maybe I'll do it myself over a long weekend.

Hey Cathy, have you checked out Stone Creek Media? They do a lot of sites for writers and I love their stuff. They did a presentation at my RWA chapter last year, and seemed like great people. I remember their pricing as quite reasonable. I almost went with them, then decided to have fun and do my own!

Anyway, to answer the OP, a web denotes professionalism and flexibility to expand like others have stated here. I'd pay for a web vs a free blog any day of the week.

L M Ashton said:

It can also be a matter of looking more professional.

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What she said.

I have a blog, but it's only a part of my website, which also allows readers to read an excerpt of my book, look at the soundtrack, visit the characters' favorite websites, download wallpapers for their computer, etc. Eventually I will have more content besides (icons, more excerpts, more soundtracks, PDFs of the first few chapters of the books for download, short stories, etc.) Why wouldn't I want to take advantage of all those avenues and offer my readers as much as I can?

Technological flexibility.

Being a programmer, I can do whatever I want with my own webspace.

And I can still land a decent URL even today in this age of shameless cyber-squatting.

Websites give you flexibility to do and say whatever you want, and yeah, to look professional. With blogspot, MySpace, etc, you're constrained by them, even if you change the templates.

Plus it's just cool to have your own domain name. It's about real estate, instead of renting some unit at a cheap motel.

nancy sv said:

Why would someone want their own website?

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There are probably many different answers to this question. My novel is in high school reading programs so for me it was a place for students to find answers to their questions when doing book reports on my novel.
Linnea

nancy sv said:

We are quitting our jobs and would like to make a bit of money. My husband is thinking of setting up basic websites for people in order to get a few expenses covered.

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Unless your husband creates websites every day for work, I'm not sure why it would be a good idea.

For a start, he is going to be competing price-wise with every kid with a laptop. Not to mention the entire of India and most of Bangladesh who can create websites for pennies.

The advantage that your husband DOES have over the others is that he is local and available .. but that advantage goes out the window if he is about to set off on a huge trip straight after he does the work !

Why would you hire someone to setup a website who not only doesn't setup websites for a living but is about to be totally unavailable for a year travellling ?

If he wants some extra money, why doesn't he just keep his existing job a bit longer?

Mac

Some things you don't get with a simple blog site: forms, online store, real traffic analysis, freedom to put text where you want it (instead of just bumping yesterday's words with today's words), any real interaction with data ...

A blog site is just a heap. MySpace pages are just endless streams of crud with a few standardized features, often with blaring layouts that make everything unreadable. A real website can be exactly the set of tools you need it to be.

Free sites:

Free sites aren't exactly free. They come with hidden costs. When I had a site on a free host a number of years ago, it had, of course, advertising I couldn't control on it.

It also was down a lot. When the site is down, people can't access it. The paid hosting site has never been down. One of the other free hosts had a ridiculously low bandwith set so when the site exceeded the bandwidth, it would shut down for an hour (I believe this was a method of forcing people to upgrade to the paid for versions of the free site).

Service was always bad on the free sites too. If I ran into a legitimate problem, it would take twenty emails to maybe resolve it--each time with a different person who would give me the standard boilerplate of what to do, and I'd have to explain all over again that didn't fix the problem.

Blogs:

They actually consume more time than a Web site. If you don't do a blog regularly, you're not going to get return visits, and coming up with a new subject every few days gets harder and harder. Writing each entry is time consuming. My time was better served doing fiction writing.

I agree with the control of content issues, and the flexibility that having an independent website can bring. Blogs and social networking sites can be just as useful, however, if they are used properly and professionally (not always an easy task). For example, you can disallow comments on a blog or moderate them carefully to prevent spam and such.

For me, the big thing is ease. When I want to send an editor to my website for online clips or my resume, it's much easier and more professional to have a URL with my name rather than one that is a longer string with the host's name and subdomains. I also want to be able to control any ads on my site (none on my professional site), and furthermore, make money with those ads if I choose to (new websites coming in a few months where I'll be doing that), rather than letting that money go back to the host.

Hi Nancy, as Mac H. said above, I wouldn't recommend it unless your husband is really a pro at designing websites. There's a lot of work involved in learning the code and it's tough to get paid fairly for your time unless you have a degree and experience to justify it.

And Mac had another good point-website design isn't just about setting up the site and then you're done. Usually whoever sets up your site would also do the maintenance for you. Since you are going on your big trip, he won't be around to do that. The assumption is that if he's being paid to set up the website, it's because whoever is paying him does not have the know-how to do that themselves, so they most likely won't be able to change anything that needs to be changed or fix anything in the code that has issues.

Good luck with everything! I wish I had some suggestions for quick ways to make money until you go on your trip. Sorry!

dreamsofnever said:

Hi Nancy, as Mac H. said above, I wouldn't recommend it unless your husband is really a pro at designing websites. There's a lot of work involved in learning the code and it's tough to get paid fairly for your time unless you have a degree and experience to justify it.

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That's not necessarily true. Experience counts in web design much more than degrees. The majority of web folks I know are self taught. That's the brilliance of the web. Degrees only count if you want to do Microsoft web design which is a pain and should be ignored throughly. (hates teh aspess), but you can be entirely self taught and make quite a bit. (I am an example of that).

And Mac had another good point-website design isn't just about setting up the site and then you're done. Usually whoever sets up your site would also do the maintenance for you. Since you are going on your big trip, he won't be around to do that. The assumption is that if he's being paid to set up the website, it's because whoever is paying him does not have the know-how to do that themselves, so they most likely won't be able to change anything that needs to be changed or fix anything in the code that has issues.

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Again not always true. Strive to set up websites that are easily updated. Use CMS utilities. Be upfront about charging them for maintenance. The trip will put a damper on things unless you research web connections for it...but you can update from anywhere in the world.

nancy sv said:

With all the free programs out there - blogspot and flicker and all that - why would anyone want their own website?

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Ego.

cuz you can have Paypal on it.

For all the reasons listed above, I don't think there's any shortage of people who want their own website. It's an eventual goal of mine (an author's site, once I have a novel published), though in the meantime I use those free sites to my advantage.

Oh! And best of luck and blessings on your trip, Nancy!

I think that blogs and websites both have their place. I have a hobby website about Disney Cruise Line that gets a ton of traffic, so having a "real" website gives me and my husband more control of the content, layout, etc. I also have a couple of business sites, as I think that a website looks more professional for certain types of businesses (e.g. my counseling practice and my travel agency).

But I also have a blog as my own personal therapy. It's only made up of essays, and I write it mainly for myself even tho' it's developed a good following. I guess it's sort of like the difference between a handwritten letter vs. one that is typewritten on letterhead, if that makes sense.