Own Your Words.
It’s a simple idea, but what does it mean?
It means, quite simply, that if your words, your creations, are on a site you don’t own, then you aren’t in control.
The website you trust with your words could put up a paywall tomorrow morning, cutting off your audience.
Or they could go bankrupt, or get hacked, or just deleted because a billionaire has a sulk.
So you need to own your words. Or your audio podcast. Or your photos and videos and drawings, and every other work you created.
You need to own your words. And that begins with owning your own website.
Ownership isn’t free.
You can probably pick up a dot.com or dot.ie for a few euro (though if money’s no object, some domain pricetags can run to thousands). Hosting starts around a tenner a year, but can cost more if your site gets a lot of traffic, and maybe up to €50 for https.
Themes, content management systems, newsletter platforms and the like can also push up costs, but if you can invest the time to learn, there’s usually an open source alternative.
And ultimately, it’s worth it to own your own words.
