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How I Developed A Strong Online Presence To Build My Dream Career

How I Developed A Strong Online Presence To Build My Dream Career — Jeff On The Road — https://unsplash.com/photos/Z3ownETsdNQ

This article is sponsored by GoDaddy — all opinions mentioned in this article remain mine.

Early days of my online presence

How I Developed A Strong Online Presence To Build My Dream Career — Jeff On The Road — https://unsplash.com/photos/SYTO3xs06fU
How I Developed A Strong Online Presence To Build My Dream Career — Jeff On The Road — https://unsplash.com/photos/SYTO3xs06fU

I’m not sure many people younger than me can say this, but to this day, I still remember the first time we got Internet at my parent’s home — it was in the middle of the summer of 2000 and I was just about to start high school in the upcoming months.

Being a very curious kid, I quickly grew an obsession with everything Internet. I understood how important it was to be on the internet.

I tried things and jumped on trends and new networks as soon as they were out. From ICQ to mIRC and MSN Messenger — during the Web 1.0 era — I loved being online and communicating with people from all around the globe.

Years later, when MySpace came out, it suddenly clicked for me: having an online presence was now easier than ever and seemed also very important. I spent hours and hours doing basic HTML to make my profile look somewhat pleasant to the eye.

How I Developed A Strong Online Presence To Build My Dream Career — Jeff On The Road — https://unsplash.com/photos/Skf7HxARcoc
How I Developed A Strong Online Presence To Build My Dream Career — Jeff On The Road — https://unsplash.com/photos/Skf7HxARcoc

After the MySpace era faded out, I still needed something to get an online presence. That’s when I jumped on the Tumblr train and got my first blog ever in 2007 — back when I was studying architecture in college. Little did I know back then that I’d be blogging for a living 11 years later. That’s when I officially started to get a sustained online presence — by putting my student work out there on the world wide web and slowly building my presence online.

This all brings us to today where I can earn a living from clients that found me online — and that is mainly due to the fact I’ve been building my online presence for years now.


Importance of an online presence

Back in the good old phone book days, everyone — individuals as well as businesses — needed to have their name in it so people could reach them — it also helped businesses get a presence. Nowadays, this presence has turned into having a website, being active on social media and building communities.

Why is it important to have an online presence?

There are many reasons to have an online presence but the main one for me is to showcase yourself to the world by being referenced online. Whether you’re a business owner or an individual, it will definitely come handy at some point. Imagine you’re looking for a new job and you want to stand out from the email or paper resume crowd — you could build a hub-type of website, showcasing your best work from the past few years and feature your social media links so your potential employer have a better idea of who you are. In many fields now, it’s even a basic requirement to have a website.

As a business owner, it’s definitely crucial for your business to be successful to have at least a landing page website — where your customers can find basic information. It will drive a new source of potential customers to your services or products.


How to develop a solid internet presence?

The very first thing I did to build my online presence was to buy an URL. This part might be confusing to many. Back 11 years ago, when I bought my first URL, I went to GoDaddy.com to see if it was available and then proceeded to buy http://dezjeff.com — which I still use to this day.

From this day, every time I had to buy an URL, I went back to GoDaddy.com, so when I decided to launch my blog — JeffOnTheRoad.com — I immediately went to GoDaddy and bought the URL.

After you went ahead and bought your URL, it’s now time to find a good host — I knew I needed a solid host for my CMS and my many photos — after browsing through the different options, it immediately brought me back to GoDaddy because they had the best value for my money for the options I was looking for — such as rapidity, storage space and more.

When you have your URL and your host, it’s now time to develop and maintain your online presence through good SEO, updating regularly and building an online community around your website.

How I Developed A Strong Online Presence To Build My Dream Career — Jeff On The Road — https://unsplash.com/photos/TFATaOllUC8
How I Developed A Strong Online Presence To Build My Dream Career — Jeff On The Road — https://unsplash.com/photos/TFATaOllUC8

One stop shop

If you’re new to all of this, you might have been really confused when I mentioned host, SEO, etc.

That’s why many platforms — like GoDaddy — offer a one stop shop kind of deal to build your online presence in the most seamless and easy way.

In under an hour with GoDaddy Website Builder, you’ll be ready to go with your own URL, a nice looking website and you won’t have to worry about SEO or hosting your website.

Have a look at what you can do on Laurent Duvernay-Tarif’s Tourneur des bois website — he used GoDaddy Website Builder to build the entirety of his website to sell his hand-turned wooden bowls online.


Additional ressources

Choosing the right domain name

To verify the overall performance of your website on the world wide web

Where I found the theme for my own blog

Understanding SEO 

The plugin I use to send my photos from Lightroom directly to my blog


This article is sponsored by GoDaddy — all opinions mentioned in this article remain mine.


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