The software is the easy part. Readers who keep coming back are the hard part, and they are built slowly. Here are the steps in the order that actually works.
1. Decide what your place is about
Narrow beats broad. "I write fiction" is too broad to give anyone a reason to come; "detective novellas set in a provincial town, a chapter a week" already is one. You can widen later, but you can't make a place your own if no one feels it is theirs.
2. Find your first ten readers before the machine
If ten people wouldn't follow you there today, the technical side can wait. They can come from a newsletter, a group you already run, your earlier publications. Ten devoted readers make a community; a thousand curious visitors don't.
3. Choose where it will live
Your place is created in the control panel, and access to the panel is a subscription from a regional representative. What to take depends on what you are building: Start is one page or subdomain; Standard is one domain with a site and a blog on it; Creative is several domains under one panel — a book here, a magazine there, a forum on its own. An installation of the platform of your own is the Platform Server tier, which is for organisations. What each tier includes is in the Editions section.
There are no sums on this site: the regional representative publishes the prices — in Russia that is qwetru.ru. Hosting is paid for separately, to the company you choose yourself. If there is no representative for your language yet, write to us: contact form.
4. Put the first chapter there first
An empty place doesn't invite anyone. A book is a container and chapters are entries inside it; each has its own address and its own place in the table of contents. Before you call readers, publish enough for a person to understand what the place is: the start of the book or a few blog posts, a page about yourself, the rules. You needn't think about SEO separately: speed, structure and the technical side are already done by the platform.
5. Write the rules down in advance
What is allowed and what isn't, who decides, and what happens if someone breaks them. This includes whether to charge a symbolic fee for the right to comment: reading is free with you either way, but a fee often proves the best filter against trolls and bots. The decision is yours, not the platform's.
6. Be there
For the first months you are the metronome: you publish, reply, welcome. This part can't be handed to a program. If you can't keep up the publishing rhythm, content studios, among the platform's partners, can take on texts and sections on a regular basis. The AI assistant in the panel helps with drafts and a publishing plan, but the author remains you. An audience builds over months, not weeks: whoever promises it faster is either mistaken or counting on you not checking.
7. Money comes last
Once readers appear, add the ad block — it is built in the same panel, and you can look for advertisers yourself or through an advertising studio. Whatever your site earns is yours: nobody takes a cut. What you pay for is something else: the panel subscription to the regional representative, hosting to the company you chose, and a studio's work if someone else builds this for you. Working on money before the community exists is the commonest way to lose it.
If you'd rather not deal with the technical side
Partner studios will build the page structure, dress it in your own style and take on the texts — details are on the Partner With Us page. You can also do it yourself: the panel and templates are the same either way.
Still have questions
- Getting Started FAQ — first steps on the platform;
- Pricing FAQ — what is free and what is paid;
- Publishing and Readers FAQ — books, blogs and building an audience.