Updating Your Writing Website - How To Keep Your Writers Website FRESH!

So you’ve gotten to the point where you’ve created your own website in order to help your writing career.  You may have already gotten some good work out of the website or maybe you have some potential contracts in sight. 

The topic to be addressed here is how important it is for a writer’s website to be updated regularly.  First, a bit about the word regularly.  This does not mean everyday.  Unless you’ve been writing full time for the past ten years, you won’t have enough quality material to keep your website updated with fresh content every for more than a couple weeks at most. 

Instead, try to update your website every couple weeks, at the least every month.  Why?  Because the internet is all about providing fresh content, and internet writing is no different. 

If a potential client goes to your website and sees that it hasn’t been updated in a long time, then that client will start to wonder, “What has this person been doing?  Are they still up to the work or have they become complacent?”  What you want that potential client to think every time that they visit your site is that you are a hard-worker who is continually producing quality material. 

As for how you update the site, there are a few things to consider. 

First of all, if your work gets accepted for publication, make sure to mention it.  Once you have confirmation from the publisher, put it up there, even if you don’t have a fixed date. 

Second, make sure to keep your samples fresh.  If your work is based on timely events, don’t have samples dealing with events that happened a year or two ago, try to keep it as up to date as possible.  Of course, if that older work netted you some sort of prize or award, the time restriction doesn’t apply.  In fact, work of yours that has won recognition should be highlighted on the first page of the website. 

One last thing, if you are devoted to keeping your site up to date, that will keep you writing material even during slow periods.  This will keep your skills sharp and style up to date.