Indie Sustainability Ep. 06: Your Own Website

These days, social media is so dominant that the idea of an artist needing a personal website almost seems quaint and old fashioned. A lot of artists get their start on social media, and it’s a comfortable medium for a lot of us, so the temptation is to just sign right up for that new Instagram store or Linktree, and keep everything in one place. Some reasons to reconsider this:

Ownership and control

Every single thing you do on any social media platform, from Spotify to TikTok to Instagram to Twitch, is tracked and monetized by the platform. You do not own any of the content you post in these spaces. The platform is the product being sold here, not your work specifically on it!

There will be times when your interests and the interests of the platform will not align. And you want to have options when this happens. Instagram, for example, changes their feed algorithms constantly, attempting to optimize them to serve their own interests, not yours.

What happens when those changes result in potential fans being sent elsewhere and never even seeing the work that you do? Now all the time and work you’ve put into the platform is poof! Up in smoke. And you have no recourse; you are completely at the mercy of the platform with no visibility or control into how they’re making decisions as to who sees what.

Pretty much any social media platform could, at any point, decide to delete your account for any reason or no reason. If this happens and your entire business exists on that platform, how are you supposed to pay rent? How are you supposed to rebuild your business when your content assets are stuck in a deleted or locked account?

Social media has its place. But, you should be using social media to serve your interests, not being used by social media to serve the platform’s interests.

Do not become dependant on any platform. Be your own platform.

Staking your claim on a web property that is wholly yours, where you have complete control and you own the space, gives you this option. And it doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive!

For a lot of artists, a one page landing page with some great imagery, examples/links to your work, and a contact form is a great place to start.

Percentage cuts of revenue

Some of you may remember about 15 years ago, when everyone was all excited to sell their stuff on a new online store called Amazon, anticipating the wondrous and equitable “opportunities” that would exist there.

Any opportunity that’s aggressively controlling, takes big cuts of every sale you make, and fully dictates your ability to make a living, is no opportunity at all.

It’s great to be small! Don’t worry about selling to millions of people like Coca-Cola-you don’t need to sell on Amazon to be successful!

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Example: book sales. Every day I thank my lucky stars that I chose to release DIY Music: A Practical Field Guide myself, rather than publishing through the Amazon service.

It was more expensive up front to do this, and the publishing process was not convenient to navigate at all. But the tradeoff here is massive. Had I released through Amazon, it would have been a little easier. But, I would also have needed to sell 3-5 times the number of copies, just to break even. It’s very likely my book would have just gotten lost in a sea of other releases, and I’d be way in the hole forever. As an indie, you should never expect massive sales numbers. So, the amount you take home on each sale is really critical.

Keep in mind, any platform is not incentivized to promote your work specifically, unless you’re in the 1% of creatives getting million dollar book deals. Platforms all make their money on volume and variety of material, with quality of any individual product often being secondary (especially for the larger and more mass-market platforms).

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Real, honest connection with your true supporters, over sheer quantity of eyeballs.

Strategic, limited partnerships over trying to be everywhere and do everything.

These are the things that build sustainable creative careers over time.

You control where your work is, and how people can find it. Lean into that responsibility, instead of becoming dependant on any platform to do that work for you.