If you are a serious writer, you need a website!
If you are serious about your writing, even if in fact you are not, you need a web site. Let me repeat that - every writer needs a web site!
If you believe me then here are five very good reasons why:
1 Your web site can serve as your showcase and portfolio. It can include your biography, experience, and writing credits as well as copies of your work or better yet - links to your work published. So many queries are done electronically today and it much easier to simply include an url or editors for prospective clients to visit than to try to attach copies and / or a long list of urls on various locations.
2 Your web site can be your creative outlet. Perhaps your bread and butter is writing in the financial field but you really enjoy writing poetry about or fly fishing. Then you can publish those pieces on the web site to receive exposure or simply to reward yourself for a job well done. Who knows, you might even find yourself with some new assignments paying in these fields!
3 If you can demonstrate your expertise in your particular area or demonstration fields by the number of articles you have written in that area as well as any experience and / or education you may offer in this field. Offer your articles or putting a selection on your site your name will be linked with surrounding various key words that topic in the search engines.
4 For writers, your name is your brand and you need to have your name out there continuously and furthermore you need to have it connected with your areas of expertise. The essays and articles more you have published on the web then the more times your name gets out there for readers, customers, and editors. Owning your own web site (deannamascle.com for example) is like owning your own billboard on the Internet superhighway.
5 You can earn money with your own website and your writing even without getting paid by publications. Place Pay-Per-Click ads on your site or sign up for some affiliate programs to advertise on your site. Depending on the size of your site and attract the traffic you this may become a major new source of income for you!
I hope I have convinced you that a web site can be an asset to your writing career, but I must warn you that mastering web can be addictive to us very creative types. Do not let it overtake your writing time. Start simple and build out over time so you can work out a good balance between your writing and your chores webmaster.