I completed my quest to find a FREE place to park my clips with Contently. I am not entirely impressed with its overall look. This is simply because it is laid out as a page of mostly black and white text in grid form. It’s not spectacular. However, due to current time and budget constraints, I am fine with it.
I lamented to a writer friend that I wanted a new place to post my clips. The great thing about Contently is that it didn’t take me that long to post most of my work on it considering I had all my work backed up in Dropbox. My friend told me I should just put up a website, like a HeatherLarson.com or something. I’d have to get a domain name, deal with some hosting provider’s CMS, take time uploading and categorizing dozens of writing clips…I just don’t have time. (Fun fact: HeatherLarson.com is usually not available, one time I could have gotten it for the bargain price of $700 so I said, “forget it!”)
But I did find something awesome!
I’m not sure how I found it, but About.me is amazing. See the photo of me to the right along with quick bio information and chiclets for all my social media accounts? I didn’t do that. About.me has a WordPress widget that loaded all of that in for me in a minute. It looks slick and professional. You get a set of FREE Moo cards too. I ordered some and only had to pay for $5.50 for shipping. Even the cheapest set of business cards I ever ordered through those online sites cost me at least $10-15. We’ll see how they look when they arrive. But this About.me profile has me very impressed so far. It lists all my pertinent info and current photos. Want to know my Facebook and Twitter addresses? They are there. So is my TrustCloud Score, which sounds dorky like Klout is. But I actually like TrustCloud because it shows I’ve been on social networking sites since before they were cool — and I am good at it too.
The point is you don’t have to spend a ton of money to have a “website.” You don’t need to spend a fortune in time and money on creating your online presence. And you must have an online presence today. All those business cards I have bought before? I never once gave them all out before the information on them was outdated. I’m not buying a domain and paying a monthly fee for something like my awesome About.me profile. I used to pay a monthly fee to have what About.me provides for free!
I almost feel like a sucker now. I wish this stuff had been around in 2006 when I started freelancing full time from my apartment on a prayer and a shoestring.
Writer Heather Larson 