Basic Author Website Setup

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I recently finished my latest Grok topic: the basic setup for an author website. It was a broad topic, but here are the main notes and recommendations Grok provided.

The Most Important Thing When Starting an Author Website

The single most important thing is building an email list.

Set up an automated opt-in form that collects readers’ email addresses. Social media platforms can disappear, ban your account, or become restricted in your country — but your mailing list will always belong to you.

Because of that, your email list should be your top priority from the very beginning.

Btw, here is my mailing list setup: Sign up and get a free book

Start With a Free Website

There’s no need to spend a lot of money right away. You can even start with a free website or blog on platforms like:

  1. Carrd.co
  2. WordPress.com

You should also add Google Analytics (free) to track visitors and site performance. Here is a tutorial about that:

Buy Your First Website

The first thing worth spending money on is your own domain name. Ideally, use: YourAuthorName.com

You can redirect the domain to your free website at first. If you can afford hosting, buy the domain directly through your hosting provider.

Use Your Author Name

Stick with your real author name instead of keyword-heavy domains. Readers searching for you online will usually type your name, not something like: SciFiStoriesAboutRobots.com

Using YourName.com is the standard and most professional approach.

Use a .com Domain

The internet’s primary language is English, and .com domains still carry the most authority and recognition. If possible, secure: YourName.com

Only consider alternatives like .net if the .com version is unavailable.

Which Hosting Service Should You Use?

According to Grok, Hostinger currently offers one of the most competitive beginner-friendly hosting plans.

Use WordPress

WordPress has its flaws, but it’s still the easiest CMS for beginners to set up and manage. Benefits include:

  • A huge library of free themes
  • Thousands of plugins
  • Beginner-friendly customization
  • Strong long-term flexibility

Starting with WordPress is usually the best choice.

Essential Pages for Your Website

Your website should include:

  • Home
  • Books
  • About
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Newsletter / Mailing List Signup

Learn From Successful Authors

It’s smart to study what successful authors are already doing. Grok recommends looking at these author websites for inspiration:

  1. The Creative Penn
  2. Mark Dawson
  3. David Gaughran
  4. Seth Ring
  5. H.M. Clarke
  6. Hugh Howey
  7. Lindsay Buroker

What to Analyze on Other Author Websites

Email List Strategy

  • Do they offer a freebie?
  • Where is the opt-in form placed?
  • How often do they promote the newsletter?

Book Pages

  • How are the books presented?
  • What makes the sales page effective?

Blog

  • How often do they publish?
  • What topics and categories do they cover?

About Page

  • Structure
  • Author photo
  • Personal story or career timeline

Footer

  • Social media links
  • Disclaimer
  • Terms of Service
  • Contact information

Goals for Your First Year

  1. Build a professional website with an email list
  2. Grow your list to 500 subscribers
  3. Create dedicated book pages
  4. Drive organic traffic through quality blog content
  5. Build community through your About page, contact form, and social media integration

That said, 500 subscribers is an ambitious goal. If you’re starting from zero, even reaching 50 subscribers in your first year can already be a solid achievement.

Improving Your Website Over Time

Personal vs. Corporate Branding

Stay personal. Being yourself is one of the biggest advantages you have as an indie author. Don’t only write about writing — occasionally share your hobbies, interests, and parts of your personal life.

Even George R. R. Martin writes about football from time to time.

Create a Personal Design

Make your website feel authentic by:

  • Using real photos instead of stock or AI-generated images
  • Writing in first person
  • Using a conversational tone
  • Choosing a simple, clean theme
  • Sharing honest updates and thoughts through your blog

Authenticity matters more than perfection.

Creating Better Book Pages

Your book pages should include:

  • The book cover
  • A short 100-word blurb
  • One-click retailer buttons (Amazon, Kobo, etc.)
  • A few strong reviews (2–3 are enough)

You can also offer sample chapters through your mailing list. Feature your newest releases prominently and create a general reading order page for your catalog.

Examples of Strong Book Pages

  1. Rainbow Rowell
  2. Seth Ring
  3. Joanna Penn
  4. Mark Dawson
  5. Nita Prose

Use Affiliate Links

You can add affiliate links for your books or recommended resources on Amazon. Readers pay nothing extra, but you earn a small commission — creating an additional income stream.

About Page Tips

You do not need a professional photo. If you can afford one, great. If not, even a simple smartphone selfie is better than having no photo at all. Readers want to know who you are. Your About page should include:

  • Your personal story
  • Why you write
  • What you enjoy reading
  • A mailing list signup link (Example: “Sign up for updates, giveaways, and new releases.”)

Add a “New Here?” Page

As your website grows, create a dedicated “New Here?” or “Start Here” page. This helps new visitors quickly understand:

  • Who you are
  • What you write
  • Which books to start with

Create a Resources Page

A resources page can include:

  • Writing tools you use
  • Marketing resources
  • Recommended books
  • Authors and websites you like

This can help readers while also generating affiliate income and improving SEO.

Social Media Links

Add clean, visible social media icons. At minimum, place them on:

  • Your About page
  • Your sidebar (if your theme includes one)

Terms of Service and Disclaimers

You need both. Here’s a free Terms of Service generator: Termly Terms of Service Generator

Important: Amazon affiliate disclaimers must appear on every page containing affiliate links, or you risk violating Amazon’s guidelines.

Blogging on Your Website

Blogging is still valuable. According to Grok, blogging is far from dead. Social media should ideally direct readers back to your website, where you publish weekly or bi-weekly articles.

What Should You Blog About?

Specific topics:

  • Your writing process
  • Upcoming releases
  • Writing tips
  • Personal updates
  • Behind-the-scenes insights
  • Meetups and conventions
  • Marketing experiments

General topics you can always write about:

  • Your daily writing routine
  • Progress reports
  • Craft lessons
  • Books you’ve read
  • Publishing experiments

Publishing Excerpts From Your Books

Be careful with Amazon Kindle Unlimited rules. If your book is enrolled in Kindle Unlimited, you generally cannot publish the same content elsewhere online. However, you can publish:

  • Side stories
  • Character backstories
  • Deleted scenes
  • Editing breakdowns
  • Explanations of creative decisions

Publishing Short Stories on Your Website

Standalone short stories can work as free “entry points” into your work. If readers enjoy a free story, they may become paying readers later.

Blogging Best Practices

  • Write longer articles (1,000–1,500 words) for guides
  • Publish shorter opinion posts and updates regularly
  • Link directly to your website instead of using Linktree whenever possible

Technical Setup

Some advice on blog-tech:

Getting Indexed by Google

  1. Set up Google Search Console
  2. Create and submit your XML sitemap
  3. Use the URL Inspection Tool to request indexing
  4. Make sure robots.txt allows crawling and remove accidental noindex tags
  5. Publish fresh, original content regularly

This video shows you the basic process:

Improving Website Speed

  • Test your site using Google PageSpeed Insights
  • Compress images using (here is a free compressor: CompressJPEG)
  • Enable browser caching and a CDN
  • Minify CSS and JavaScript files
  • Upgrade to faster hosting if necessary
  • Enable lazy loading for images

Useful WordPress Plugins

  • Yoast SEO — on-page SEO optimization
  • Elementor (Free) — landing page builder
  • Contact Form 7 — contact forms
  • Jetpack — security and statistics
  • Smush — image compression
  • MailPoet — newsletter signup forms

You can install all of these directly through the WordPress plugin search bar.

To Conclude

This is the basics of starting your own author website – according to Grok. If you go through it step by step, you will have set up a good indie author website within a couple of weeks. Once set up, you can finally focus on the fun part again: Writing!

Comment Settings Have Changed on This Site

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I’ve already written about the spammers this site has attracted. Most of them try to promote online casino nonsense. Lately, I’ve been busy deleting their comments every single day.

To prevent their comments from appearing even for a second, I’ve changed the comment settings. If you’re new to this site and leave a comment, it now needs to be approved manually before it becomes visible. Once you’ve had an approved comment, future comments will no longer require moderation, as the system remembers previously approved users.

Until now, all comments were set to auto-approve — a decision I made to create the best possible user experience. In hindsight, that decision was a bit naive. The internet is full of scammers using automated bot accounts to spread spam. To keep this site clean, I had to adjust the settings.

My apologies to everyone who visits and simply wants to comment in good faith.

Unfortunately, this is just the reality of the internet today.

The Importance of Having a Routine

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Yesterday, I didn’t post on my blog. I had the time, I had a stable internet connection, and I even had plenty of ideas saved in my swipe file. Yet I still didn’t write anything. The simple reason is… I forgot.

I recently moved. In my new place, I have a bigger basement for my training equipment, which means I no longer need to go to the gym. I can simply work out at home. Since the move, I haven’t missed a single day of training. I think it’s because it’s so easy to walk down a few stairs and start exercising that it quickly became a routine.

That’s the same way I also approach writing.

Some people aim for a certain word count each week. Others write six days in a row and take Sunday off. Some crazy authors can sit down only when inspiration strikes, then not write again for days or even weeks. Whatever works for you is great — stick with it.

But for me, I have to write every day to make it a habit. If I miss a single day, it becomes harder to start again the next day. So if I want to make my life easier, I simply shouldn’t skip a day.

For blogging, I need to create a routine as well. Otherwise, I might forget to write — and once I miss a day, it becomes harder to begin the next post.

Before going to bed, I usually watch some sports. While watching a Super Bowl rerun, seeing the Mavs miss the playoffs, or witnessing my favorite soccer club, Borussia Dortmund, being beaten by Bayern Munich yet again, I can easily write one of my short 30-minute blog posts.

Once the routine is established, daily blogging should become effortless — just like everything else I do as part of my daily routine.

Blogging for Authors (Book Marketing 1)

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Yes, blogging isn’t what it used to be. I started my first German blog 15 years ago, and it took me three months to reach 1,000 regular monthly readers as there was basically no competition in my niche. Those days are over.

There are now more than 600 million blogs worldwide—70 million on WordPress alone. Social media took over around 10 years ago, and AI could be the next challenge for traditional blogging.

Yet, blogging still makes sense for authors—for many reasons:

1. It’s cost-efficient

I don’t have much money to invest in book marketing currently, so I’m always looking for cheap (or free) methods. You can create a free blog on WordPress today, and even owning your own domain with a starter hosting plan doesn’t cost much. Blogging is one of the most affordable ways to reach readers for indie authors.

2. Blogs bring readers

Fewer and fewer people are reading books nowadays. But those who enjoy reading blogs are often more interested in books than the average social media user. A blog automatically attracts an audience that is more likely to check out your books than your X or Instagram followers.

3. You are the brand

The internet isn’t just about finding information anymore. Information is everywhere—copied, summarized, and repeated. The internet is about personalities.

If you want to lose weight, you’ll find millions of websites about it. But you read the one where the author shares their personal journey. You start liking that person, following their writing—and eventually, you buy their book—not because the information is unique, but because you like them.

A blog lets you build your brand. It shows people who you are and why they should read your books instead of the thousands published every year.

4. Writing practice

Writers write. If you don’t write regularly, you’re not really a writer.

A blog gives you a reason to write consistently. Daily blog posts are perfect practice: readers are more forgiving of small mistakes in a blog than in a novel. Make your mistakes on your blog so you can learn from them for your next book.

5. Turn readers into fans

I give away all of my books for free to some degree. If you don’t want to pay, that’s fine, just take the stories at no cost. I do that because I believe in the long game. Selling a $10 book today might earn money now—but will it make money for me in the future?

If I give you a free book through Amazon that links back to my blog, you might become a lifelong follower. Over time, you might share links, write book reviews, or recommend my work to friends. All of this leads to more visibility, engagement, and ultimately, sales over a lifetime.

6. You need a headquarter

I’ve published five books already. In ten years, I might have at least thirty—and if we count short stories, it could easily exceed a hundred.

With so much content out there, new readers will ask: Where should I start?
My website answers that question. It’s my central hub, not Amazon, YouTube, X, or Google. I decide where to guide my audience on this blog. No other place online gives any of us that level of control.

7. Make additional money with links

I often link to useful resources. If a product has value and has made my work or life easier, why not share it with readers?

Affiliate links can generate extra income without costing your readers anything. Of course, never link to low-value products—it destroys trust. But recommending something genuinely useful benefits everyone: your readers get a helpful resource, the producer gets customers, and you earn a share at no extra cost for your audience. Everyone wins.

Start a blog now

Blogging isn’t dead—at least not for authors. It remains one of the best and cost-effective ways to reach readers, build your brand, and practice your craft.

What I’m Going to Blog About in 2026

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I’m going to stick with daily blogging. It’s fun, it helps me collect my thoughts, and it keeps me accountable.

What it doesn’t do—at least not very well—is increase blog traffic. As expected, the traffic spike I saw last month was mostly caused by scammers adding my site to their bot comment databases. I receive plenty of suspicious emails and replys about AI tools I should “recommend” to my readers, as well as automation services that promise to send me traffic and make me famous as easily as snapping a finger.

It’s all nonsense.

Real traffic is probably only about a third of what I saw last month.

Still, I’ll continue writing daily, as I enjoy daily tasks. Establishing a routine is basically half the battle. And blogging is a mostly free way to market my books—even if, for now, I’m only marketing them to a handful of regular readers.

Topics I’ll Write About Next Year

I’ll stick to the topics I’ve already started:

  • Blogging basics
  • SEO basics
  • Movie and TV show reviews
  • My author project

I’ll also publish regular updates on my goals for 2026:

  • Writing 12 books in 12 weeks (expect weekly updates)
  • Reading 52 books in 52 weeks, with a weekly book review
  • Monthly “Author in Progress” reports, sharing all my numbers in real time

In addition, I want to share my experiences with freelancing. I’ve been doing it for over a decade, and during that time I’ve had to reinvent myself more than once. For example, I used to make most of my income as a translator in the beginning. Around three to four years ago, translation work dropped by about 95%, largely due to ChatGPT and other AI tools. Still, the core principles of freelancing remain the same.

Adding Images and Graphics

In general, I need to think more about adding graphics and photos. I’m a writer first, so the text should always be the main focus. But an image here and a graphic there can make longer pieces easier to digest and give readers a much-needed break from pure text.

Tracking

In my report posts, I want to expand what I track. Especially with writing, it could be interesting to see how many words I can produce in a given amount of time. How long does it take to edit a 60,000-word book? How long does translating that same book take?

These are interesting questions to answer.

I’d also love to include numbers for book sales and Amazon KENP (Kindle Unlimited page reads). But to be honest, I’m not selling many copies right now, and there are usually only a handful of KENP readers each month.

So there isn’t much to report yet. If that ever changes, I’ll add it to the reports.