'I've been told for years I need my own website. So I gave my side hustle a serious upgrade.'

I have been told for many years that I should have my own website. My husband has suggested it to me, colleagues have advised me, friends have asked me why I haven’t got one and to be totally honest it all just seemed a bit too much like hard work.   

I already work full time as the host of Mamamia’s news podcast The Quicky. I’m a mum, wife, friend and I have a side hustle as a voice over artist, who has time to sit down and design a whole website?

But then we all got 2020’d and while we went through homeschooling and mask wearing and restrictions easing and cracking down, we all had to reassess our situations.

One thing this past year has made abundantly clear, is that the side hustle can be so much more than just a hobby. It can be a life saver, a financial safety net and *gasp* could even turn into a full-time thing eventually, making us less reliant on the jobs many lost or were stood down from during lockdown.

But aside from having social media pages, our side hustles don’t often get the individual love that having your own website can give. A place where you aren’t restricted by the rules and regulations of promoting your gig because it’s 100 per cent the ‘you’ show.

So here we go 2021, I’m coming at you with my very own website. At the very least, it will stop all the people in my life from bloody hassling me about it.

OK, so where do we start? I need a domain name.

1. The domain name.

Claire’s VOs? Voiceovers with Claire? Claire Murphy Voice Over Artist? No, let’s keep it simple and try for www.clairemurphy.com.au. I logged onto the GoDaddy website and did a domain name search to see if it was available and then sat with crossed fingers until… BOOM! I’m in business.

And if I want the option, I can also grab the .com domain name or make it .sydney or .melbourne to be super specific and protect my brand name. Nice!

2. The design.

All right, so we have a domain name now I’m going to look at how this thing is going to look. To start with, using the free GoDaddy Websites + Marketing Tool, I choose a title for the page 'Claire Murphy Voice Over Artist’ and it imports that info into a template.

Now, to make it truly my own. From here you can choose a theme from a long list of options that change the flow of the home page from where the pictures sit to where the text goes and the colour scheme.

It's kinda...fun making a website?

From here I started playing around with the colour scheme and font sizes. It was quite easy to navigate, there are clear buttons down the right side where you can make these changes just click on the part of the page you want to update. For example, click on the picture and it gives you an option to replace it.

3. The page sections.

From there, it was a case of going down each page section by section and either removing it because it wasn’t needed or adding sections that I wanted.

I changed the product store to my audio demo page. Here I added sections for audio and video. This was super easy and I just had to load in embed codes from SoundCloud and grab the URLs from my YouTube channel where I already had content. The page already had the layout for me and it inserted, easy as!

Easy.

I went through my socials to find photos relevant to my career like awards nights and shots of microphones that I like, and added them to a photo gallery too.

4. The marketing tools.

A choice pic to start my gallery.

At this stage I’m not sure how to work out my professional email but I love the idea of responding to enquiries with [email protected] so I think I may need to call customer service. They’re open 24/7 so it doesn't matter if it’s 10pm when I get to this, someone's going to be there to answer my call if I need help.

So I called the customer care centre and spoke to a gorgeous New Yorker based in Arizona called Jason who explained the packages to me that included hosting, my professional email, my domain name, SSL certificate and something that I didn’t consider... Marketing!

For $156 I chose a package that got me my professional email and domain name free for the first year, which will only cost $95 and $20 per annum to renew in the future. GoDaddy will host my website for the next 12 months and I have access to the marketing SEO (search engine optimisation) tools to better market my site. That means I can put in the keywords that I think people will search to find people like me so they are more likely to find me.

So now I’m ready to press publish… and… here… I… go!

Guys, I’m officially on the internet!!! This is really real now, I legit have my own website and it looks professional as hell.

And it's live! Image: Supplied.

So why is now the best time to get your website up and running and turn that side hustle into a dream business reality? Here are three very good reasons:

1. GoDaddy is offering Mamamia readers 30 per cent off at checkout for whatever services you choose. Use this exclusive code: MAMAMIAGD

2. Your business deserves all the attention and success after everything we’ve been through this year and a website is a damn fine way of making yourself seen.

3. Because 2021 is going to be the year our side hustles really take off because we refuse, let me repeat that a little louder for those in the back, we REFUSE to let 2021 catch us off guard like 2020 did. We’re taking the time now while we can to prepare ourselves and we are coming at the New Year fully armed and ready for action. 

Good luck, hustlers, happy web designing. Oh and if you need a voice over artist, you know where to find me!

Visit GoDaddy now to kick your 2021 dreams into gear.

Offer available on new purchases only, see terms on site.