Faith in the Wrong Hands
Three years ago, while hoping to get some solid help in an area where I have always struggled as an author, marketing, I decided to seek the help of who I thought were experts in the field, and would undoubtedly help me achieve much more than I could on my own. So, I put my confidence in a Marketing agency. They suggested they could include a revamp of my author website as part of the deal. Beyond my better judgement, I thought ok, even though I liked my original website perhaps a revamp could make it look even better.
Gone Website Gone
Everything had started off alright, the price was reasonable to do the marketing along with a newly designed website. So I said yes. Nothing looked out of the ordinary. I was introduced to the team who would be working on the project for me. I filled out a few forms, provided the team with all my social media platform access, and they got to work.
Just my luck, the agency claimed to have had staff turnover, and the person who had designed my new site left the company, and of course did not do a back up of my original website. Neither did I, so there was no way to revert and I wasn’t keen on the newly designed website. I tried tweaking it myself, but they had built it using Elementor, which is a website building tool I wasn’t familiar with.
Without the know-how to make even small changes, I felt locked out of my own platform. I tried to work with the new person assigned to my site, but the process quickly became frustrating — long back-and-forths, misunderstandings, and a general sense that I had lost control over something that should have been mine to manage.
Back in Control
I spoke with my brother about my dilemma and he suggested that I learn Elementor and rebuild my website myself. It made sense to me. I thought of all the times before when I relied on even freelancers to redesign my website and whenever there was an issue I never knew how to fix any of it myself. I think the biggest awakening for me was after I sourced a freelancer to help me redesign my website after the agency disappointed me. I had provided this person with an example of another author’s website and asked that they create a site that looked as vibrant and colorful. They in turn created such a replica of that website, it was mindboggling. You would have thought I asked for them to create an identical website. So that too resulted in a lot of back and forth trying to get my website to an acceptable state. One thing that impressed me with what they told me though, was that I should change my password after they connected my email marketing account to the website. I did so. It made me consider how much of my personal details I had to hand over when I outsourced the design of my author website to others. This made me all the more driven to learn the tools and redesign my website myself.
Truthfully, trying to learn Elementor was a struggle. Somehow I just wasn’t getting it, and not quickly enough and I felt like I was getting nowhere. In the past, many years ago, I created blogging websites on my own using WordPress themes which were very easy and straightforward to follow. However, my author website was more detailed and required more than just following a simple WordPress theme.
I didn’t give up though. In understanding what Elementor was, which is a website building tool, where you are using building blocks, I decided to research what other options there were. I got lucky and stumbled on an option called Seedprod while looking into possibilities for putting my website in “maintenance mode”. I learned that Seedprod also had a drag and drop website builder function. There was still a learning curve as I had never used this tool before, and it took me some time to get comfortable with the navigation, but I was making good progress.
At one point, my youngsters asked why don’t I just use AI to generate a website for me. But as I argued, that would defeat the purpose of me taking back the control. Yes AI would perhaps be able to generate a website for me within minutes, but I would still need to give direction, and there would most likely still be need for heavily edit to get the site to reflect my own brand identity and taste. Furthermore, I have a level of skills set that gives me the basic foundation to be able to build what I want for myself, while protecting my personal and creative attributes. My bachelors degree was in Media and Communication, with a focus on social marketing, where I learnt desktop publishing. Over the years too, as a writer and author I already have photos and images and image mock up creation and other marketing tools, so why not utilise that skills set? Yes AI gives speed, but the independence, control and personal satisfaction I get to keep while building my website myself is priceless.
From Frustration to Freedom
Indeed, the process was slow and I had to start over maybe four different times as I worked with the Seedprod drag and drop builder, but in the end I am feeling really pleased and happy that not only do I now have a functional author website again, but one that I built myself. I learnt a lot in the process, and I got to utilise skills I didn’t get to use in some time.
Moreover, now I don’t feel stuck. For the longest while I felt inhibited with regards to doing my book marketing due to the absence of my author website, so now I feel like I can flow again and I can blog again, and that’s a great feeling.