Do you want to know how to create an author website hassle-free?
Well, you have indeed landed at the right place.
I’m confident that you will have great insights into building an author website in a couple of minutes of reading this blog post.
Building an author website would be the first significant initiative you can do as a budding or an established author.
Nevertheless, there are times you might find it hard to make a decent number of sales from your book.
That is why learning how to create an author website can help you find your audience to sell your books and build a loyal fan base.
It is not just selling books but also building your brand, creating value for readers who would love to invest their time getting to know you and reading your books.
Affiliate Disclosure: This blog post contains affiliate links, and I receive a commission if you purchase through one of the links, at no additional cost to you.
Why having an Author Website is highly recommended?
You don’t own your audience on social media like Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin.
They can take down your profile anytime for any reason that we might have breached in their terms of service.
Once you have breached their terms of service, you can never get your account back in many circumstances.
Imagine the amount of hard work you’ve put in to gain a good number of followers, and suddenly all of them vanished.
It can be a daunting experience as of whole when you don’t own your audience.
It’s tough to sell your books on social media even if you are ready to spend the money on ads.
People on social media have different intentions for buying something from ads that are hard to convert into sales.
Whereas if you have a website, you have an audience compiled in your email list who are more likely to buy your books.
They buy from you because they trusted in you and had gained valuable information through your content.
So, I highly recommended you learn how to create an author website and launching it.
You Can Highlight Yourself As a Brand
Mention your reviews, endorsements, and achievements of you as an Author on your website.
Showcase yourself as an established Author by displaying mentions from famous people and websites.
So, people will know that you are a credible Author with a strong fan base.
Now, without further ado, let’s dive into the topic of how to create an author website.
How To Create an Author Website Hassle-Free [10 Steps]
1. Choose a Domain Name
First, decide on a domain name for your Author’s website.
It can be your pen name or your first and last name, which is recommended highly than choosing over random words.
You can purchase your domain name along with the hosting plan through Bluehost.
When you have your real name as a domain name, there is a significant benefit because your website would probably come at the top of search engine results, and people can easily find you.
Most of the time, when someone finds your book on Amazon or any other platform, they will try to know about the Author.
So, it would help if you learned how to create an author website and launch it.
Choose a .com domain because they are SEO friendly, and people can remember your domain name easily.
2. Get a Website Hosting
Website hosting and domain names are entirely different.
Domain names are like an address for people to find your website.
A website host is a place where all the data and files of your website are stored.
The web host manages all the vital parts of your website like loading time, backups, security, etc.
You don’t need to be tech-savvy to run your website. Everything is understandable, and you can contact your hosting provider if you have any issues.
The best part of learning how to create an author website is that more people will get to know you when your website goes live.
Every book reader always loves to know about the Author of the books they read.
They can be disappointed if they couldn’t find any information about you online.
That’s why I want you to build an Author website, so people can find and read all books written by you.
For hosting your website, I highly recommend you to go for Bluehost because they are very affordable.
Reasons Why I Highly Recommend You To Host Your Website Through Bluehost
- You get free caching, which helps your website to load faster.
- Bluehost is a WordPress recommended brand that shows it is trustworthy and reliable.
- You get a free CDN (Content Delivery Network), which is essential because when someone visits your website, the CDN will load your website from a server near your website visitor’s location.
- They have excellent customer support 24/7 to help you with any queries or issues with your website.
3. Install WordPress
WordPress is one of the most popular and reputable content management systems.
It powers more than 39% of the websites on the internet, which makes it trustworthy.
I highly recommend you launch your website on the WordPress platform, so running your Author’s website would be hassle-free.
Here is a very well-explained guide to installing WordPress on your website for many hosting providers.
Many web hosts like Bluehost come with a 1-click WordPress install, which makes our job easy.
WordPress has a simple user interface to manage all the functionalities of our website.
Use These WordPress Plugins For Various Website Functionalities
Yoast – Yoast helps you optimize your website and blog posts for search engine optimization, which is vital for your website.
Sucuri – This plugin helps your website prevent attacks, fix hacks, secure your website from brute force attacks, and keep your website safe from hackers.
Sassy Social Share – This is a plugin to add social share buttons at specific pages and at the end of every blog post. You can also decide which social share button to add.
MonsterInsights – You can use this plugin to set up Google Analytics on your WordPress website. It helps you track your website visitors, and they have many features for you to know a lot about your website.
Akismet – This plugin helps you prevent spam from your blog post comments and contact us form queries.
OptinMonster – This plugin helps you to convert your abandoning website visitors into email subscribers. They have drag and drop opt-in form builders to design attractive email opt-in forms.
WP Rocket – WP Rocket is a WordPress caching plugin that helps your website to load faster. This plugin is very user-friendly and has many powerful features for outstanding performance.
PushEngage – This plugin helps you send targeted messages and announcements to your website visitors, which can drastically increase your website traffic.
WPForms – This plugin helps you easily create contact forms, email subscription forms, and surveys with a drag and drop online form builder.
UpdraftPlus – This plugin helps your website with automatic backups, helping your website restore without any hassles.
4. Organize Your Author’s Website With The Following Menu Structure
You might have learned the essential things to know how to create an Author website. Here’s a brief guide to help you create navigational menus.
Suppose you are puzzled about what navigational menus you might need. Here are the following:
Home/Landing Page
A landing page is the most important page for your Author’s website.
You also need to have featured articles that you have written on this page.
Make sure you have a short Author Bio on this page, so people can get to know you.
This page should have an email opt-in section to collect the email ids of your website visitors.
You can design your home/landing page using Elementor Pro, which gives you more functionalities and features to format your page.
About/Author Bio
On this page, you should briefly outline your personal life, like who you are, and why you created this site, and about your books.
It would be essential to explain what people can expect and learn from your Author’s website.
Blog
On this page, you should be posting articles that are related to your books and writing.
This page would help you get visitors from organic searches and allow people to find your Author’s website.
Books
It would be best to show your books that you have written and links to purchase them on this page.
Writing Tools
Most people who follow specific Authors would always love to know what writing tools they use.
Please list all the writing tools you use, such as Grammarly, Evernote, Google Docs, Microsoft Word, etc. So it can help your readers and budding authors.
Newsletter
Have a newsletter page to collect emails from your visitors, followers, and fans who would love to read about your new book launch and blog posts that you publish on your site.
Contact
You should have a separate contact page with a contact form to contact you and let people know for what purposes they should contact you.
It would be best to mention whether people should contact you for advertising, guest posting, podcast interviews, collaborations, speaking opportunities, etc.
Also, add a link to your social media profiles so that your fans can follow you.
Use captcha on your contact form to prevent bots from sending your spam.
5. Choose a WordPress Theme
Your WordPress theme decides all the vital functions of your website.
You must go for a premium theme because if you face any issues or errors, they have a support team to resolve your issue.
Note: To customize some parts of your WordPress theme requires CSS and PHP knowledge.
You can still find codes online and use Code Snippets Plugin to add a code and customize a feature.
As for an Author’s website, I would recommend you to go for:
GeneratePress
Ever had the frustrating experience of visiting a website and having to wait for ages before it loads?GeneratePress is a lightweight theme that loads super fast and comes with some great features.
GeneratePress is the theme we are using, as a satisfied user, we highly recommend GeneratePress!
Divi
Divi is a WordPress theme that has many useful features, and it is very mobile and user-friendly.
They have hundreds of pre-built templates that can help you design an attractive website.
Divi is a must-have theme for any Author’s website, keeping in mind the powerful functionalities.
Astra Pro
Astra Pro is a lightweight and SEO-friendly theme.
This theme has a responsive design and impressive typography to make it look outstanding.
Astra Pro is perfect for Authors who need all the essential features with customizable settings and functions to efficiently build their website.
6. Get a Website Theme Builder
Flawless website design is the first impression that you show to your website visitors.
When you have a good website builder, you don’t have to hire a web designer.
I would recommend you to get Elementor Pro, which is a premium website builder.
Elementor Pro increases your website’s functionality, and they have more than 5 million installs and 3000 five star reviews on WordPress
They have over 50 plus widgets and 300 plus templates with simple drag and drop builder to design ourselves like a pro web designer.
Why Can’t I Use My WordPress Theme To Design My Website?
Customizing your WordPress theme requires PHP and CSS knowledge.
A website theme builder helps you design your website flawlessly without being tech-savvy.
You can customize your WordPress website with many powerful features, templates, and widgets.
Why Should You Go For Elementor Pro To Build Your Author’s Website?
- You can easily customize your header and footer.
- Design every part of your website without coding knowledge.
- To be precise, it is very much SEO and user-friendly.
- You can design amazing blog posts, contact forms, and pop-ups.
- They have endless layout and style options to design a beautiful website.
7. Four Author Websites You Can Refer To Design Yours
Check out these four author websites you can refer to collect ideas to design your Author’s website.
Navigate and check all the specific features like Email-Signup Forms, Navigational Menus, Header, Tagline, Reviews, and Social Media Links on these websites.
Also, find out at which part of the website they have added these features.
So it can help you decide to place them at appropriate places on your website.
Here’s The List of Four Author’s Website You Can Refer
You don’t need to have coding or designing skills to design your website.
When you come to your WordPress dashboard, everything would look understandable, and you can learn to design your website easily.
If you are still unsure about designing your website, you can hire someone from Upwork or Fiverr at an affordable rate.
Don’t have more than seven navigational menus on your website. Your website design should be very flawless with a great user experience.
What Important Factors Should You Focus On Your Website?
Compelling Call-to-Action
It will help you make conversions and get more book sales or email sign-ups if you have these call-to-action buttons or links while building your Author’s website.
Some examples of compelling call-to-action:
- Subscribe to my email list.
- Check out this article.
- Click here to try.
- Follow me on Twitter.
- Buy this book.
Great Formatting
You should have headings, sub-headings, images, and bullet-point lists in your blog posts to make them look appealing to your visitors.
Please don’t use multiple editors like WordPress and Elementor to draft and publish your blog post because your page may break.
Visually Appealing Design
A good website design and a simple user interface help your Author’s website look more professional and easy to navigate.
Divi theme helps you design an attractive website with its drag and drop builder and many powerful features to take your website design to the next level.
Single Niche Oriented
Once you have learned how to create an Author website and finally launched it, please don’t publish content on random topics.
Post content just about writing, authors, books, fiction, non-fiction, writing tools, courses, etc.
It will help search engines understand what your site is about and increase your site’s organic search rankings.
Reviews
Have a few reviews featured on your landing page and your books page who have bought your books.
Reviews will help your new visitors to know your credibility and will have a good impression of you.
It would also entice them to purchase your books and indeed help you make more book sales.
8. Install Google Analytics On Your WordPress Website
It would help you track your website visitors if you had the Google Analytics app installed on your phone.
Google Analytics is entirely free to use, and it helps you track all the vital statistics of your visitors.
It can help you tweak changes to make your user interface simpler and SEO-friendly.
Here’s a well-explained guide on How To Install Google Analytics on your WordPress Website.
Important Metrics To Track In Google Analytics
Number Of Users
This feature indicates the number of users who have visited your website in a specific timeframe, which you can track by days, weeks, and months.
Top Country By Users
This feature is an exciting part of metrics because you get to see from which country a specific user has visited your website, and you can track cities too.
Top Page Title By Pageviews
This feature indicates which page, blog post, or article a user has seen on your website. You will find which of your blog posts are getting a good amount of traffic.
Top Source By Users
This feature helps you track through which search engine or source a user has visited your website.
Top Event Action By Total Events
This feature helps you track all the links and call-to-action buttons that a user has clicked on your blog posts.
It would help you find which parts of your blog post would be best to place links.
Top Social Network By Users
This feature helps you track through which social network a user has visited your website like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.
So, you can focus on bringing traffic from a specific social network from where many visitors come.
Amount of Session Duration
This feature helps you track the amount of time a user has spent on your website.
It would help if you improved your user interface and user experience to make your visitors spend more time on your website.
Sign Up for Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools
Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools help you find errors on your website that might affect your SEO.
You can request to index your articles and remove any specific links of blog posts you have deleted.
It can help us to find keywords through which visitors are finding our website.
You can also find the impressions and clicks you get for a specific blog post on your website.
9. Get Semrush To Optimize Your Website For SEO
Ideal For: Authors who want to improve their search engine ranking and write SEO-optimized content for their website.
Semrush writing assistant gives you keyword suggestions to include in your content to improve your search engine optimization score.
This tool highlights your weak content areas, and you can optimize your content to improve readability and check your readability score to improve your writing.
A feature called topic research helps you research any topic in-depth and get content ideas for any subject.
Features
- Audit your website and get ideas to improve SEO performance.
- Discover all the best keywords to target and bring traffic to your site.
- Develop a robust content strategy with data-driven solutions.
- Access your content performance to identify areas of improvement.
- Track daily changes of your target keywords to check ranking position.
10. Build an Email List Through Your Website
Having an Email list can grow your book sales revenue in the long term.
You can quickly sell your books to your email list because they have subscribed with the intent to gain something valuable from you.
It can be a good book to recommend buying or some valuable blog post to read on your Author’s website.
You can try ConvertKit for your email marketing campaign because your email is most likely to be delivered directly into the inbox than the junk folder.
ConvertKit has many powerful features to sell a product to your audience successfully. It is also free to use up to 1000 subscribers.
Every email id is important to building your email list to build a loyal fan base who would love to buy and read your books.
Final Thoughts
You must have gained great insights on how to create an Author website through this article.
An Author’s website can help your fans to get to know you and make more book sales.
Start building an email list as soon as you launch your Author’s website to sell your books.
Check out my other article where I’ve written about: How Writers Make Money.