It seems like every comedian I speak to is unhappy with their website. Either, they don’t have an “official” site at all because they can’t afford to get one built, or their “web guy” has been working on building their site for a year, or their site is impossible for them to update on their own so it still features that big coffee house gig they had scheduled back in 2007.
But the reality is that even with little to no budget, you are able to have a decent looking and functional personal website. Here’s five easy ways you can do it:
Use An About.Me Page
About.me describes itself as a “custom splash page and personal analytics dashboard,” which is really just a fancy and intimidating way of saying it’s a free template that lets you create a one page site about yourself. It’s super easy to use – just upload a picture and fill in your relevant information – and you’ll have a professional looking site up in no time.
But what’s really great about About.me is that it incorporates icons for your Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, blog, and whatever other accounts you may have where you’re creating content. So with a click of a button, people can see in a pop-up window whatever you’re posting on those sites. Plus, About.me also provides you with statistics about how many people are visiting your site for those of you that care.
Here’s a few examples of what some About.me pages look like: Sam Adams, Lindsay Campbell, Howard Lindzon, Julia Allison.
(NOTE: About.me is so new that it’s in private beta right now so you have to apply for an account, but you’ll likely get one within a couple weeks.)
Redirect Your Personal Website Domain To Facebook
Here’s a simple way to give yourself a better website – let Facebook build it for you. Assuming you’ve bought your own domain name, just redirect that domain to point to your Facebook page. For no cost, it allows you to use all of Facebook’s tools and lets people connect with you easily while still getting the benefits of being able to just tell people to go to YourName.com to find you. You could also do the same thing with your YouTube channel, Tumblr, WordPress, or Blogger blog depending on your needs.
Find A Designer On 99 Designs
If you’ve got a little bit of cash to spend, I highly recommend going to 99 Designs to find somebody to build you a custom website. 99 Designs describes itself as “crowdsourced creative design,” which basically means that they have a community of designers who regularly compete to get your business. On their web design page, they explain that for $499 you can get lots of different professional designers offering their services based on your specific requests. You simply view all the samples you get and then choose the person that you best suits your taste.
Don’t Have A Website, Have A Newsletter
Depending on what your goals are, you may not necessarily need a full website. You might be better served with a newsletter that allows you to capture people’s email addresses and update them whenever you have something you want to promote. There’s several ways to run a newsletter, but one extremely simple one I’ve come across recently is called Tiny Letter.
For zero cost, you can set up your own newsletter through Tiny Letter to get you started.