If you are a Canadian alternative poet, you need to be on the internet. If you don't know why, click here.
This little introduction is for the computer illiterates among us (like me) and assumes that you have a limited budget (like me).
There are a number of ways to establish a presence on the internet:
1. a social networking site
2. a blog
3. a free web hosting service
4. a professionally designed and hosted website
5. Wikipedia and Canadawiki
6. professional organizations
1. probably the easiest way to get out there is a social networking site like myspace or facebook. These sites let you create a profile, join groups that share your interests and build a list of "friends" with whom you can share as much or as little about yourself as you want. They are free, although you will have to put up with a flurry of annoying advertisements. How effective they are for self-promotion depends on how much time you are willing to invest. Probably not the best place to post a serious biography and bibliography. Search engines, like Google, will not find information buired in social networking profiles.
bill bissett's myspace profile is an example of a social networking site used to promote a poet's work.
2. a blog is another quick and easy way to get your own site on the internet. A blog is like an electronic diary. If you are skillful enough you can manage it like a mini-website. There are even some online literary magazines that post work as a blog (Hammered Out is an example).
There are a number of sites that offer free blogging services, probably the most popular is Google's Blogger.
If all you want to do it post a bio, an artist's statement, a bibliography and some sample work, a blog is a good, simple, low maintenance way to go.
Search engines, like Google, are not good at finding information in blogs.
rob mclennan's blog is an example of effective use of a blog as a promotional tool.
3. for your own personal website, there are a number of sites offering free web services. Usually the basic site is free and is cluttered by advertising; to use any of the advanced features, you have to pay. Weebly offers free websites (without ads) and was rated the Number 1 website for 2007 by Time Magazine. Freewebs offers both free and paid premium services. The premium services start at $100 US per year (there are no additional sign-in or set-up fees). Yahoo Geocities and Tripod also offer free website hosting.
If you want your own domain name, you have to pay for that too. For example, if you get a free site from Freewebs and call it Dog's Breakfast, you domain name will be www.freewebs.dogsbreakfast.com. If you pay for your own domain name, you can call your site www.dogsbreakfast.com (or anything else you want). If you pay for the premium services with Freewebs, you can register your domain through them for $20 US a year. Most other free web hosting sites offer a similar service. So the total bill for a website for a year is $120, or $10 a month.
Many of the free services, like Freewebs, offer a selection of ready-made templates so you don't have to know anything about computer programming to set up or manage your site, although if you are skilled enough you can modify the template or create your own. Search engines, like Google, are good at finding information in personal websites.
4. a professionally designed and hosted web site is so expensive that I am not even going to go into it here.
5. Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia. You can create an entry on yourself (or a fellow poet) on Wikipedia for free. They do have some scholarly restrictions to prevent people, especially rock bands, from using the site for self-promotion, but if you have some credentials as a writer, you can post a biography and bibliography. (Sharon Harris, for example has one book published and has her own Wikipedia entry.) One of the things that legitimizes an entry for the editors is how many categories the article can connect to. Orphan articles with no categories are often deleted. (I have added a few articles to Wikipedia and, personally, found it very confusing to use. It's not too difficult to manage once you figure it out, but all the help menus are in 'wiki' language and you have to learn 'wiki' in order to become proficient in managing articles.)
There is also Canadawiki, a Canadian version of Wikipedia, although at this point they only have active articles on bill bissett and Leonard Cohen (without bibliographies).
Wikipedia interfaces well with search engines, such as Google. You will probably notice that when you do an internet search, the Wikipedia entry is usually in the top ten searches.
6. Professional organizations, such as the League of Canadian Poets, post biographies and bibliographies of their members on their websites. There are many regional organizations for writers that do the same, such as the Manitoba Author Publication Index, Quebec Writers Federation, and the Writers Federation of Nova Scotia. The "online guide to writing in canada" invites submissions to their Canadian Authors Index; if you are a published writer (not self-published), they will add your biography to their index. Some libraries have a 'local authors' section on their sites. With a little research you may find an appropriate home for your bibliography. Hit and miss with search engines, such as Google.
So that's it, basically. There is no reason not to be out there on the internet. Visit the Bibliographies page for alternative poets who already have a web presence. Have fun!