Additional Tips on Domains | Example Free Sites
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Social media will have you convinced that nobody cares about the things you care about. You will have hundreds of contacts, but get maybe one or two likes a week. It gives you the illusion that you have lots of people following your content, but most people on your list will hardly see that you are posting anything for days or weeks.
Unless you are paying them, very few people will even see your posts most of the time. Someone would have to purposefully search for you and go to your profile to see more than maybe one of your posts every third or fourth time they visit.
A few years ago, I found myself in a precarious position. I had spent some years building a business selling art and mystical items here and there. I did spellwork too for patrons sporadically, but most of my workings were for friends and family.
In the course of the business beginning to grow though, I first found out there was a Pagan community who needed me. Then the sector of the Pagan community who needed me formed into an ile. One day I became the king of this ile and then we had to keep up a schedule. So the business took a back seat. Again, the spellwork for patrons became more sporadic, but a growing number of patrons needed more than this. They needed someone who was consistently observant, accessible, Queer, and in one of the historical territories of Kemet.
Now I’m not just private appointment clergy. I’m community clergy. Everything I make goes to feeding my family, my ile, and the deities. Not that I had any dreams of being a millionaire, but at this point I couldn’t horde wealth even if I wanted to. There is too much to do with any money that I receive. However, I had done all this work to build a web presence. So here I am out here looking around wondering what to do with it.
Well, uplift my community of course.
Just when that was about to gain steam, I got some chastisement from my ile’s Queen about taking care of myself. So I went ahead and did the knee replacements and dental work I had been delaying. When I came back, the bad situation of people becoming overly dependent on social media was even worse. It was like nobody remembered how to build a website, and most never bothered to try.
People were getting sabotaged and shut down left and right. This “platform” or that was having issues. I winced a lot in the course of reading post after post of my people complaining about being “censored” because some place or another shut their account down. Then there was the problem of sharing space with nazis and the incredibly stupid, posers spreading misinformation about Africa and African spirituality, and scam artists. To make matters worse, the scammers make more money and can afford to buy ads.
So here I am, ready to help the real African spiritual people promote their services and nobody remembers how to even start. The only advice they are given is “build a social media page” and post to it, but that is the same thing the scammers are going. I’m going to tell you how to beat them. Better, I’ll tell you how I beat them; why you are here and not one of their sites.
1. Have an Actual Website
The hosting service this site lives on and many others now offer hosting and a domain with Control Panel, SSL, and WordPress pre-installed or easily installed for under $50 per month. Hostinger, one of the best in my opinion, is offering 20% off their already good deal. AQhost also has very easy and inexpensive hosting. If you don’t know how to set it up, then hire me or someone else to do it. It is worth it. Setting up a site for the first time and making sure everything works as it should is many hours of work. It took many more hours to learn how to do. It will cost you between $500 and $1000 depending on what kind of features and design you want, but that will be a one time thing. Once you have it set up, you can log in and manage it the same as you would on WordPress.com but you will have many more options.
If you absolutely can’t build your own site and don’t know anyone who can build it for you for a reasonable price, you can opt for WordPress.com, Blogger, or another blog site with paid options, but then take the paid options. Otherwise your site will be mostly invisible or lost in the crowd unless you are very lucky. You need your own domain. Also, remember that even if you have your own domain, on a “platform” if someone gets offended, you can still get kicked off. If you do animal sacrifice or there might be some nudity, it could be an issue.
If you’re not quite ready to take the step to total web independence, there are now some community options. I offer them at WitchUniversity.net and will begin to set up a hosting option at Orisha.me as well. I may start doing this with more of my domains. Getting hosted on a domain within your own community offers you automatic visibility, tech support, and the assurance that you’re not going to get kicked off for existing as an African person. It’s a good stable home or an intermediate step before you’re ready to branch out to your own domain.
