Building a Platform at Authory

It’s been one year since Exploring the History of Childhood and Play Through 50 Historic Treasures launched, and I have another book on the way. (More to come about The Glen Eyrie Story). With three books and several magazine articles under my belt, it’s time to solidify my author platform

I recently came across an online portfolio for journalists called Authory. This service will automatically back up articles published online, your work will always be available to readers. That feature alone persuaded me to sign up for a free trial. I used to write for a local magazine called The Colorado Collective and had several pieces in their online and print editions. On the Writing page of this website, I carefully linked to each of my articles on their site. Unfortunately, Colorado Collective folded last year and their website is no longer operational. My readers no longer had a way to access my work. As a freelance journalist, it’s important that I can quickly direct interested parties to my stories, and when their site went down I lost an important part of my online portfolio. Authory will prevent this from happening to me again. As long as I keep using Authory, they will automatically import all of my articles from any publication that I write for and back them up on their own website. If another publication goes under, I’ll have a place where my readers can access my work.

Signing up for Authory was easy and quick. I entered my name, the bylines that I write under, and the websites that carry my stories. Two days later, they had built my portfolio site. They found my articles for Springs Magazine quickly and arranged them on my personal Authory page. I can also manually add my articles that were in the print edition of Colorado Collective.

If you want an online portfolio and have zero experience with web design, Authory is an excellent option. They do all of the back end work to build your website and you don’t have to lift a finger, except to do add your own profile picture and choose your background image. I have a love/hate relationship with both Wix and Wordpress (the platforms that I use for Susan Fletcher Creative and Adventures in History respectively) and loath doing my own web design. I can do web design work… but I kind of hate it. Having Authory build a portfolio for me saved me hours of frustrating work with both Wix and Wordpress. Once Authory had my site ready, I uploaded a profile picture, wrote a short bio, and added my contact information. The process was quick and painless.

I’ve been using Authory for two weeks and so far I like it very much. Eric Hauch, the founder and CEO of Authory, has been extremely helpful and responsive to the questions that I had about the site, and he’s been checking up on me to make sure that everything is working correctly. Having a human connection to a platform that I’m using is a rare gem in the faceless world of the internet.

Lastly, the site allows me to create an Email list, and I plan on writing a newsletter soon to announce the release of The Glen Eyrie Story. Check out my site here. If you’d like to sign up for a free trial of Authory for ONE MONTH, you can use the invite code authory.com/SusanFletcher/invite?key=rGKGv.

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