Social media companies love that you don't have a website

Please, keep sending them traffic for them to monetize

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Years ago, when I ran Noisecreep for AOL Music, we had the Deftones in for a studio interview.

My pal Gino DePinto took the photo below.

To set the mood, he brought along his CD boombox and put on the band’s debut album ‘Adrenaline’ (yes, this was before Spotify even rolled out in the U.S.).

After the shoot, vocalist Chino Moreno walked past the boombox and pretended to remove the CD and fling it away.

Nobody likes their early stuff, it seems.

What’s this got to do with you setting up a website for your work?

You probably still haven’t set up a website because you’re sure it won’t get 1,000 clicks a day (so what’s the point?), and getting 23 likes on Instagram is just easier (and makes Zuckerberg rich).

Better to skip the whole website thing until you’ve really made it.

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Now, I thought of putting together a list of 20 creative folks with their cool websites, but that’s like me putting together a list of 20 photographers and saying, “here, make your photos look like this.”

You’re the artist here, right? The writer? The poet? The instructor? The musician?

Years ago you closed your eyes and imagined your magic in the world.

You’ve created your artistic vision from nothing but imagination, refining your taste and becoming more comfortable with your creative output over the years. Decades.

Now, do that for your website.

Buy a domain at Hover (affiliate link), and try something fancy like Squarespace, Cargo, or Wix.

Just log in, make a free account, and mess around!

Try something weird like Straw. Make a simple one-page site with Carrd. Publish a Google Doc (or Slides) to the web, or a Miro board.

Grab some friends, learn some HTML, and upload your site to site44, Yay.boo or GitHub Pages.

Get together with a friend and build a website! COLLABORATE! Maybe hire or barter with someone to make it?!

Experiment! Play! Try things (you know, just like your art)!

Fill it with your bio, ideas, and videos. Include your wins, press hits, and the nice things people say about you.

“We post all our most interesting photos (on social media), the imagery that shows off our unique, creative spirit, the videos that capture our spontaneous, magical energy.

We won’t put any of those cool images on our website, then we complain that nobody goes to our website.”

You can still post all your work to YouTube and Spotify of course, for the D i S c O v E r Y, but once you have a direct connection with your fans, you can stop sending them to the food court at the mall - a world filled with distractions, cheap snacks, and flashing lights.

“When you drive someone to YOUR site, you control the branding, the vibe, the links, the experience.

When you drive someone to YouTube, your video is now competing with content that is algorithmically alluring to your fan!”

It’s standard practice to send out email newsletters with prominent links to watch videos on TikTok or YouTube, destinations owned by corporations that aim to show as many ads as possible.

They are optimized for this lone purpose, making sure your measly text link in the description or bio is obfuscated, as these companies don’t benefit when sending your fans to anything off-site.

Put your magical, delightful items on your own website. Let people discover you in a space that is purely your own, without hammering yourself into profile pages that just don’t fit right.

Is setting up a website easy? Heck no, but the art and magic you create isn’t easy either, and I believe that if you’ve come this far the hardest part of that equation is already done.

I’m Seth Werkheiser, and I’ll help you spend less time on social media, and make money with your email list in a non-creepy way.