So you might be wondering if you're someone looking to just post on social media, like say, Instagram or YouTube, or if you're a small business trying to increase sales using these tools, why wouldn't you go straight for these networks and start there--why would you ever need a website?

There's a straightforward reason as to why this course starts with building a website (even just a quick & basic one) and that's because of all the platforms, from Facebook to Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, etc. a website is the only place on the internet that you can fully control and own.

In the, albeit unlikely, event that Twitter disappears tomorrow or the much more likely (and has already happened a couple of times) scenario that YouTube changes how it handles notifying your subscribers of new content (we'll get into this in a later lesson), you're sort of out of luck if you rely on these avenues for sales.

On the other hand, if you have a website that you can direct people to, you can, for example, put a piece of code to ask people for their email addresses for a weekly newsletter, direct people to follow you on other networks, have a shop where people can buy products or book your services, etc.

Don't worry, though. I'm sure the idea of building a website might seem daunting, but I promise by the end of this course, you will have a well-designed primary site. One that allows you to tell your story, give people a way to contact you, and it'll be way faster and easier than you think.

So, let's quickly talk about the first step with a website: a domain name (or the URL that people will type to get to your site). Click on the next lesson and we'll get that setup.