A Website for Your Channel

Why a channel needs a website

Not every channel needs one. But a website helps if any of these sound like you:

• Sponsors and press keep asking for a media kit or a short bio.
• You sell something, like merch, plans, a course or a book.
• You want an email list that isn't tied to any platform.
• You want one link that gathers everything in one place.

The site bot

Building a website through a bot is one of the bigger jobs in this book, and how it works depends on what you build the site with. Some people use a website builder.

The preview rule

This rule is the most important one in the chapter. Every change gets a preview first.

Buying a domain

A domain is your website's address, like patchandmend.com. You usually buy one for a yearly fee from a company called a registrar.

The pages, built

Here's how the first build might go for Patch and Mend.

Keeping it current

Here's where the bot really pays off. Most creator websites go stale because nobody updates them.

The media kit

Sponsors and press often ask for a media kit. That's a short document or page about your channel: what it covers, who watches, how big it is and how to get in touch.

An email list

A website is a good home for an email list. People sign up, and you send them a message every so often, like a monthly roundup of new videos.

Selling things

If you sell anything through your site, the bot can help with product pages and descriptions. But payments, prices and anything to do with money stay with you.

Walkthrough: the weekly site update

• A new video is published.
• The site bot updates the home page draft with the new video's title, thumbnail and link.
• It checks every link on the site.
• It sends a preview link and a short note: "Home page updated with the chair video. All links working. One old link to a sponsor page now goes to a 404, suggest removing it."

What went wrong: the mobile menu

The first preview looked great on a laptop. On a phone, the menu covered half the home page and couldn't be closed.

A worked example: the media kit page

When a tool company asked Patch and Mend for a media kit, the owner had nothing ready. They asked the site bot to build a page.