Do Bloggers Need A Professional Writing Website?

We’re always hearing about the pros of having a dedicated portfolio-like website if you’re a writer. I never had one, but I was thinking about launching one right before I switched over to mainly FT blogging.

Pros we hear about pro-writing websites include things like:

• You can post clips on your site.
• You can post good client reviews (if you get them).
• You can advertise your services, yourself, your prices, and so on.
• Basically a professional website makes you a little more visible.

But what if you’re mainly a blogger? Do you still need a website. Maybe not. Here’s why I currently don’t have a professional website.

• I’m already out there. Fact; last week I get an email from a potential client. She didn’t find me from a personal website, she found me by doing a search for green bloggers. She found a lot (obviously) but after reading a bunch of us, decided she liked me best based on some post I wrote a while ago. A post, I might add, that I likely would not have included as a clip on a personal website. It was pretty cool, because it’s very rare someone contacts me for work (usually it’s me applying for gigs) but it also showed me that I’m out there, and that I can score jobs without the pro website.
• I already use my own blogs as a semi-form of me communication. What I mean by this is that I make sure to include my contact info on all my blogs. I have a dedicated page where I place my blog links, and as I change or update gigs, I keep it current. I don’t need to double this info on my own writer’s website. Kristen King has a writing blog (yeah you’ve heard of it – Inkthinker) that seems to double as her professional website. For example, her client review page is a great example of self-publicity worked into an already running blog.
• The only other form of writing I’m working on right now (besides blogs) are magazine queries and I can simply send clips to editors. I know, some people like clips online better, but it seems like a lot of work to create another website just to share some clips; at least, in my case it seems like overkill.
• Frankly keeping up another website sounds exhausting. It would be a lazy, dull as sin website I’m sure, because I can’t take handling another on my own.

All that said, while I’m absolutely sure that bloggers need to utilize social media to flourish, I’m not so sure we all need dedicated websites. Maybe I’ll change my mind in the future, maybe not, but right now I’m sitting on the don’t want or need a website side of the fence.

What do you think? As a blogger looking for work, do you feel like you need a dedicated website to promote yourself?