In today’s age of social media platforms, mobile apps for everything, and selling platforms like Etsy or Amazon, you may be asking yourself, “Do I need a website?”

Regardless of whether you are an entrepreneur, a social media star, a podcaster, a hobbyist, an MLM expert, an author, a freelancer, or anything else… The answer is a resounding… YES!

In virtually all circumstances you absolutely need to have your own website on your own hosting account. In this article I’m going to cover some of the reasons why options like social media, mobile apps, and selling platforms aren’t good enough.

 

Do I Need a Website?

First off, imagine that you live in a rural area with no public transportation, and nothing is close to you. Not your work, not a store… Nothing. But the company you work for offers you a company car. Does that mean you shouldn’t have a car that you personally own as well?

What if your company…

… decides to take the car away?
… starts charging you an enormous amount for each mile that you drive?
… says you can only drive to and from certain locations when you’re using the car?
… switches to a first-come, first-serve “pool” system that could result in you not have a car at all on a given week?

Wouldn’t it just be better to have your own car, even if your company let’s you use one too?

The exact same thing is true with your website. Social media platforms, mobile apps, and selling platforms are great, but when you own your own website, nobody can take that away from you or limit how you use it. Not Facebook, not Amazon, not Snapchat.

 

Do I Need a Website? – Social Media

Let’s look a little deeper at why social media platforms are not a good substitute for a website.

Anyone that has been using social media for business for more than a few years knows the pain of “Facebook just changed…” or “Instagram just changed…” or something similar.

When Facebook first started all posts on your wall showed up in chronological order. If someone was your “fan”, they would see your posts. End of story. Fast forward to today when people that “like” your page have to do a multi-click process in order to actually see your posts, and Facebook makes its own determination about what you should and shouldn’t see and in what order it appears.

Many companies that used to thrive on Facebook have since had to drastically change their method of marketing because of the changes that Facebook has made.

And I’m not trying to pick on Facebook. These changes now apply to almost all social platforms, and will be applied in the near future to the rest, because denying businesses the ability to have fans see their posts forces business to buy ads, and that is how social media platforms make their money (well, one of the ways).

When you own your own website, you get to dictate what gets shown and when it happens. End of story.

 

Do I Need a Website? – Mobile Apps

It’s true that mobile is taking over the world. Right now about 60% of all internet traffic is done on mobile devices and that number is only going to continue to grow. But do mobile apps, such as Snapchat or Instagram, really offer you the flexibility to sell products and market to your customers the way you want?

The simple answer is “no”.

Let’s say you’re an Instagram influencer and you make most of your money from paid “shout-outs” or product placement. In this instance you really don’t need a website… Right?

Wrong.

What if Instagram changes your ability to do shout-outs or product placement because they want those companies to buy real Instagram ads that they can profit from?

Or what if you decide it’s time to sell a product of your own? Instagram doesn’t offer a “store” feature so you will need to send your customers somewhere to buy the product.

Even if your entire business is done on a mobile app platform, you still need a place that is truly your own.

 

Do I Need a Website? – Selling platforms

Remember when you were a kid and you did something wrong? Did your parent or guardian just throw you out and never let you return? Almost certainly they didn’t (and if they did I’m really sorry for bringing up that painful memory). In most cases, you received a reasonable punishment and moved on.

The same is true with selling platforms, but sometimes it’s not true.

I’ve heard many a horror story from people that made one unintentional mistake and had their entire profile on the platform shut down for it. All their hard work, all their reviews, all their reputation, gone in an instant because the platform didn’t like something they did.

If you don’t believe me, just try searching online for people whose eBay businesses went belly-up because PayPal didn’t like something they did.

When you have your own website you can dictate what happens on it and nobody can suddenly just shut it down for no reason. Even if you really piss off your hosting company and they decide to shut down your account, you can just seamlessly move to another hosting company and it will be like nothing happened at all.

 

The Exception

So, there is one instance when I believe you don’t need to have a website: Testing an MVP.

For those of you that don’t know, an MVP is a “minimum viable product”. Whenever you start a new business endeavour, regardless of what it is, you should put together an MVP to test the idea and make sure that it is actually something that somebody wants.

Let’s say you’re interested in selling a cool astrological calendar that you created. You have no idea if anyone would even buy it, but you think it’s possible. So instead of producing 1000 calendars, or creating a website, you should just create a couple and see if you can sell them.

This is where some of these other options are a better choice.

First you could hop on social media and present the idea to your friends/followers to see if any of them say they would buy it. I’d call this a 1st-level MVP.

If you get a bunch of people saying “yes”, then go to a 2nd-level MVP and ask that they actually open their wallets and pay for one as a “pre-order”.

Assuming that works, and to make sure those weren’t well-intentioned “pity” purchases, you can step it up to a 3rd-level MVP and open an account on a selling platform such as Etsy to try and sell the product to the entire world.

If you don’t get the sales you were hoping for, and decide to scrap the project, then you can do so without having put the time and energy into a website.

However, if you are getting good sales, then the exception is gone and you really need a website so that you can get purchases on your own outside of the selling platform as well as to start building your online brand into an eventual world-dominating empire!

 

A Final Thought: Email Addresses

I won’t go into great detail here, but one of the greatest parts about having your own website is that you can actively collect contact information for your customers and prospective customers so that you can communicate with them as you see fit.

All of the other platforms get to dictate how and when you can directly communicate with someone (especially when you want to directly communicate to everyone at once), so creating your own list gives you an insane amount of power that you just can’t get anywhere else.

 

Conclusion

While it’s not necessary to have your own website while testing a business idea, the second that you get some traction then you really need to cut all of the puppet strings and build your “home” on the web that allows you to have full control of everything that happens.

Social media platforms, mobile apps, and selling platforms are all fantastic tools to be used for your business, but they should never be the “hub” of your business or online project.