Having a Personal Website Is NOT Important
But something else is
My Medium friends can read this story over there as well.
Brought to you by WriteStack* – the #1 Substack add-on for anyone who wants to take their Substack o the next level
Most of us grew up with this idea that a “real” online presence starts with a personal website. I did.
Preferably hand-coded with a half broken CSS file. Or at least something on WordPress, with three plugins we don’t understand. Done both. A lot.
A personal website seems to be the thing for anyone who wanted to look serious online. Writers, designers, founders, everyone.
We still see the same energy today.
People treat personal sites like a big deal. The place that proves we exist.
And sure, having one is cool. A portfolio can be fun. A WordPress blog can be helpful. A landing page can make us feel like we have our life sorted. We don’t.
But the thing people actually need is something much simpler.
Something almost boring.
The real deal
A custom domain.
Not a full website. Not a 25-page template. Not a pixel-perfect personal brand kit. A plain, simple, ownable domain. Ourname.com. Or ourbrand.io. Or whatever fits our vibe.
That’s the part that actually matters.
Because a personal website can die, get dusty, get hacked, get abandoned, get ugly, or get forgotten. A domain sticks with us.
And here’s where the misunderstanding starts. When people talk about a “personal website,” they often mean a domain plus a website plus some sort of publishing system glued together.
But all these pieces are separate. And they should be. The website is optional. The domain is not, in my eyes.
Platforms
We’ve seen this happen.
Someone writes on Substack for a year, then think they need a website. Someone else launches a side project, gets overwhelmed trying to build a site, and gives up entirely. Or they try to be everywhere at once, building a homepage, a blog, a wiki, a portfolio, a directory of all their social links.
Meanwhile, the easiest solution has always been there.
Just own the name.
That domain becomes our long term anchor. Platforms come and go. Writing shifts. Business models change. Algorithms get weird. But the domain belongs to us. It can point anywhere. It can move with us. It keeps our identity intact when the platforms shift beneath our feet.
Moving
Take Substack.
If we connect a domain, we do a little thing that will eventually outlive whatever newsletter trend is happening.
If Substack changes something in 2027, we just switch the DNS. Our readers still find us under the same name. Same domain. Same links.
Medium lets us set a canonical link so we avoid any duplicate content. That canonical points back to something we own when we have a custom domain. Even better, Medium is also connected to a custom domain.
If Medium went away, we still control where things go next.
It’s the same for Gumroad. Or Ghost. Or Beehiiv. Or even a Notion page.
Perks
There are also some SEO perks that are way more useful than people think.
Search engines care about consistency, clarity, and trust. A domain we’ve owned for years carries authority. It might not have the same domain authority as a large platform domain has. But it will grow. And that growth is ours.
Ourname.substack.com is fine. Ourname.com is better. Even if it still points to Substack.
The domain collects history. Backlinks. Mentions. Google index age. Even platform transitions benefit from it because we’re not resetting our online identity each time we move.
Domains are low effort
People obsess over their website design, but almost nobody notices or cares.
Meanwhile, only few people obsesses over their domain, yet that’s the thing everyone interacts with first.
We type it. We search it. We click it. It’s the spine of the whole online identity.
And it doesn’t require maintenance. Or design refreshes. Or theme updates. Or plugins.
Domains are low effort, high leverage. Websites are high effort, medium leverage, and often low reward.
There’s also this psychological advantage. When we know we own our name, we write and build with a different level of calm.
We don’t feel stuck on a platform. We don’t feel trapped by someone else’s rules. We don’t feel like our identity dissolves the moment we switch providers. At least, that’s how I feel.
It’s future proofing. It makes practical sense.
Think about the number of creators who grew huge on platforms they didn’t own, only for those platforms to change the rules. YouTube tweaks monetization. Instagram buries reach. Medium changes recommendations. Substack experiments. Gumroad raises fees. It’s all happened.
But if everything we do is tied back to our domain name, we can switch platforms. Everything else is optional.
Websites are decoration
Ironically, this approach also makes personal websites more fun later.
Websites feel like creative playgrounds again. Optional, flexible, tool-like.
The domain is the foundation.
If someone forced me to choose between the fanciest personal website on earth or a plain domain with nothing but DNS records, I’d pick the domain.
The website is decoration. The domain is identity.
The Bottom Line
A personal website is a nice-to-have.
A custom domain is a must-have.
That’s my opinion.
The site can change, break, vanish, or get replaced. The domain stays with us, carries our identity across platforms, anchors our SEO, and gives us long term stability that no single platform can.
If we want to future-proof anything, start with the name. The rest is optional.
Brought to you by WriteStack* – the #1 Substack add-on for anyone who wants to take their Substack o the next level
Myname.com is owned by someone else and would cost a fortune to buy. I bought myname.net instead. Is there another extension that would be better?
Hey Burk, yes I have my custom domain (thebananastand.co) but I've linked Substack to a subdomain (sub.) I wanted to do that so I could also use it for Medium in the future (med., already linked) and also a Wordpress site (www., already linked). Just in case the future makes Substack a less-viable discovery platform. And I write my articles in G Docs, so I always have the original text somewhere that (I hope) is safe enough.