Zen College Life

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Believe it or not, if you are able to read this you are savy enough to build a decent website.  And with the whole world turning to the internet, there is no good reason for you not to have a personal website.  It doesn’t have to be extravagant, but it should be clean and neat enough that when someone googles your name your website comes up first.  If you plan on being a professional in any field, or even if you’re just looking for a little extra motivation (like I am with my 6 pack experiment), a personal website is a great way to keep family and friends updated, as well as gain credibility in your respective fields.

With domain registration and web hosting so cheap, how can you afford not to be online, right?  ZenCollegeLife.com domain costs me 7 dollars per year, and hosting for all of my sites is about 7 dollars per month.  This may not be the biggest, best option, but it’s cheap and it works for now.  I’m generating more than enough to cover my costs from this site alone, anyways, and it helps me to improve my writing and creativity.

So with that in mind, here are a couple of great reasons to have your own website.

1. It is a 24 hr per day representation of you (like my IbrahimHusain.com)
2. it’s global, “world wide web”
3. it’s a great way to promote yourself, your organization, your business etc.
4. it’s not just for nerds anymore (or at least that’s what I tell myself)
5. you can build a community around your website (think ZenHabits.net with almost 80,000 subscribers)
6. you can share your professional knowledge, and give back to the open source online community
7. you can reach a specialized niche market world wide
8. you can say whatever you want (including things like “Sex and the City is a terrible, ridiculous show/movie that turns women’s brains into useless goo.”)
9. raise awareness, spread ideas, educate (Breast Cancer, World Hunger, etc…)
10. you can start a movement (like Kiva with the 3rd world microloans)
11. a website earns you credibility, makes you look bigger than in reality
12. it’s a great way to increase productivity
13. you can run online contests (many blogs do this to gain subscribers)
14. improve communication (the way I do this is with my contact page, which forwards straight to my email, without giving the writer my email address.)
15. it’s crazy fun
16. awesome personalized email addresses (for instance superman@ibrahimhusain.com, which isn’t actually real, but i could make it, and then I’d be even more awesome!)
17. a website is a great way to share your creativity with the world (i show off my graphic design HERE)
18. start an online business (You may not think of a blog as a business, but I make enough money to cover all of my web ventures, and maybe even a coffee or two just from this humble blog)
19. it gives you an edge over the competition (sure people can use linkedin, facebook, myspace, etc, but when you have a personalized website you are way better than they are. hehe)
20. it’s free pr
21. because people will look for you online
22. a website can save you time (business FAQ pages save companies from receiving endless calls)
23. it raises your awesome factor by at least 10 pts.

If you have any questions about building a website, hit me up on my CONTACT PAGE.
If you’d like to share your website leave a comment here.  As long as it isn’t inappropriate I’ll share it on the list below.  I’ll start it off with a couple of my sites/projects.

Site Share (my sites and ZCL reader’s sites)

• ZenCollegeLife.com (obviously…)
• IbrahimHusain.com
• Unassociated-Press.com
• BrainVault.net (request invites here)
• YouthPros.com (a youth education project I’ll get around to sooner or later)

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