Decades ago, the first thing you’d do in a new job was print out fresh business cards. They’d have your name, your phone number, and eventually, an email address.

These days, handing someone a physical business card may get you some strange looks. Even if you refuse to be separated from your cards, you can’t deny the modern importance of using the internet as your primary method of visibility and easiest point of contact. But do you need to go to the trouble of building yourself an entire website? 

Most professionals can simply look at what their coworkers are doing, but writers are such a varied group that it can be hard to know what the best practices are.

Creative or Copywriting?

If your goal is to be a professional creative writer, you don’t necessarily need a website yet. 

If you don’t have any published works and you want to get an agent, the only thing the agent will want to see is your manuscript. And if you’re submitting short stories to magazines, you’re better off polishing a brief paragraph outlining where you’ve already been published. Later on, if you get stories published in bigger outlets or you get an agent who sells your book to a publisher, you’ll likely need to build out a website with links to where readers can find your work, contact information, biography, and probably a few professional photos.

If you’re working on publishing your work independently, it’s a good idea to do that work before your book is out there in the world. Self-published authors sell themselves as much as their books, and you want to come out of the gate as polished as possible. Give your readers a singular place they can go for all the information about you, your book, and how to get it. 

As an independent writer, you should add a little more to your website than a traditionally published author. You don’t have a publisher making tour or publication date announcements for you, so make sure you have a page for news and keep it up to date. 

Where Do You Find Clients?

It might seem obvious that copywriters need to have a website, but that’s not necessarily true. As with everything, it depends on the kind of work you do. 

Many industries work on a word-of-mouth basis, and you’ll only get work by referral through someone who can pass along your direct information. If you’re too busy managing contacts to think about website templates, then it’s pretty clear you don’t need one. 

A lot of industries work purely off of social media. Creative industries often live on Instagram, even for the business end of their work. But more commonly, entire professional circles live only on LinkedIn. LinkedIn makes it easy to apply for jobs, list your references, and make your work history easy to find. 

Many writers who use LinkedIn as their home base come from in-house positions in those kinds of companies. A writer who used to work full-time at a marketing firm will probably stick to LinkedIn because they’re doing similar kinds of work with similar clients, just on a freelance basis. 

If that’s the case for you, then you need to give your LinkedIn as much attention as you do your spelling and grammar. Keep it up to date, fill out all your biographical information, and include a recent, professional photo. 

Keep Your Options Open

Depending on the service you use, a website isn’t always cheap to build and maintain. And even if you’re using preset templates and a minimal design, the time it takes to build a website is time you could be working on a paid project. 

It’s not worth it to make a website because you think you “have to.” But it is worth it to secure your domain name, just in case. 

Buying your domain name means that you own the rights to YourNameHere.com. You don’t have to do anything with it—there doesn’t even need to be a website attached to it. But if you own the rights to the domain, you’re set if you ever change your mind, and, more importantly, you prevent someone else from using it. 

For most people, the cost of your name as a web domain will cost you all of ten or twenty dollars a year. Little enough that even if you never use it, it’s not a waste of money to keep the option. If you have a relatively common name, you’ll really want to secure something you can use, otherwise if the time comes, you’ll be stuck representing yourself professionally with JohnSmithTheWriterInMontanaWithTheBlueGlasses.com.

Put Your Best Foot Forward

As using ChatGPT becomes increasingly ubiquitous, human writers have to work even harder to get other people to respect our talents. That doesn’t mean you have to run yourself ragged putting up your information on every platform imaginable. 

Instead consider what kind of work you do and where people look when they’re trying to find a writer to hire. Be specific about where your visibility will do the most for you, and then really make your website, profile page, or even your old-school business card really shine.

Chelsea Ennen is a writer living in Brooklyn with her husband and her dog. When not writing or reading, she is a fiber and textile artist who sews, knits, crochets, weaves, and spins.