Introduction: With the advancement of technology like WordPress, building your own website is pretty easy nowadays. It is often advisable to build a website using your name as the domain name and turn that website into your digital resume to accelerate your career development.
The followings are the top 10 reasons / benefits to build your own website in my own experience:
1. Searchability
Nowadays, prospective employers and recruitment agency take advantages of the internet to do the initial search for job applicants’ information. They want to know more about the applicants, their skills, passion and life. Having a great website will greatly increase the chance of being selected for an in-depth interview.
While searching for your name on search engines, your website appears on the top of the search result page. Getting to the number 1 or first page position speaks volume of your web skills (e.g. SEO, content strategy, etc.) and your knowledge about online reputation management, both are highly sought after skills for most employees in the 21st century.
2. Let Jobs Find You
3. Learn a New Trade by Doing
4. Show Your Passion with Your Blog Topics
Passion and knowledge are two pillars for you to succeed in your career. It is also the traits most sought after by employers. Your website provides the best platform for you to show would-be employers the topics that interest you. You can create your true brand through the topics you chose, the style of writing, the design and usability of the website. Though free hosted blogging platforms like Blogger.com and WordPress.com also provide you the same channel for free, your personalization options and control are often much limited. Your website and blog should show the best of you!5. Show Your Web Knowledge
Soon the date will come when not having web knowledge equals illiteracy. This century sees the growth of many digital natives. But there is a fine line between using the Web and understanding the Web. One has to get their hands dirty in order to know the intricacy of Website design and development. Many small and medium enterprises nowadays still lack the knowledge to build a great usable website and the skills to rank well on search engines. By having a professional personal website, you will stand out from the crowd of competing job applicants.6. Your Online Presence
As long as you allow search engines to index them, whatever you put up on the internet can be and will be seen by others. This allows you and your website to reach people you would otherwise not meet. After Google introduced Google Authorship and with subsequent optimization, only “authoritative” authors (authors with lots of popular posts in a specific topic) will have their photos shown up in the search snippets. Showing your author profile in Google gives your the credibility that you are an expert in the specific field.
7. Your Digital Resume
Many predict that the printed resume will be soon regarded as old fashioned and digital resume is the future. It is true that there are tons of online profiles like Twitter, Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn etc. you can create to assert your online presence. However, every one of them has their limitations on the format, amount of data, design, etc. Every profile may look similar too which makes it very difficult to stand out from the crowd. Have you noticed that nearly every one of them would allow you to add your own URL to the online profile? Building your own website circumvents the limitation. You can literally have it your way!
8. Your Digital Assets
Everything you write create values and they are here to stay (as long as you keep the website). You can also treat your website as a knowledge base that stores the knowledge you have acquired through the ages. What you have built belongs to you! One thing you might not know: your knowledge set is also of value to others! For example, if you have written a lot of valuable posts on your website and these articles rank well in search engines, chances are that you can earn handsomely through placing related advertisements in your website. (It is very difficult if not impossible to add advertisements to free blogging platforms.)
9. Manage Your Career as Entrepreneurs
Brands have values, big established brands carry great value. The most valuable brand in the world, Coca-cola, is valued at nearly $80,000 million. In fact, the concept of brand value also applies to individuals. The term “Careerpreneur” is used in the field of career to describe a professional who manages their career like an entrepreneur who always searches for the next big opportunity. Today, job security is virtually non-existent. In economic turmoils, large scale lay-off is everywhere. Building your online personal branding with your own website is the ultimate value you can carry with you. By constantly looking for new opportunities like further studies, new collaboration, side projects, your personal brand will be further enhanced. And before you know it, your hard-earned brand value might land you a great opportunity!
This naturally brings the following benefit:
10. New Career Direction
Countless people have found their new career with making profitable websites, the most successful ones being Pat Flynn who earns five figure online income monthly. More than 35% of Gen-Y’ers have started their own businesses on the side while having a full-time job in order to supplement the income. Everyone will tell you that earning online is very fulfilling because you can help others by providing valuable information and assistance to them, in return, you earn your living through advertisements or affiliate. You can begin your website as a side operation which involves only minimal risks as the cost is low (just the hosting and domain fee for starters) and you still have your full-time income. But once you become successful and the online income is enough to sustain your living, you can virtually quit your job.
Build Your Own Website Now
Search engines like Google place a lot of emphasis on the age of the website to assess whether the content is credible. It will take a while for the website you built to show up high in the search result pages but you will eventually ripe the fruit of your hard work. Build your own website now!
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