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Before you post anything else, you must follow some basic rules (and avoid certain pitfalls) in order to avoid getting yourself into hot water down the line.
Most Common Mistakes
Mistake #1: Posting unpublished work that’s fit for literary journals. We’ve written again and again about the issues surrounding previously published writing—warning authors that most literary magazine editors will automatically reject work that has been published anywhere online. If you plan to submit a short piece to a literary journal, err on the side of caution and don’t publish it online first.
Mistake #2: Poor formatting. These days, people are reading more and more online. We’re getting comfortable spending long hours at the computer. But if you post your story in light gray font on a dark gray background, potential readers will take one glance at your writing and look away.
Mistake #3: Jamming all excerpts and writing samples on one page. If your writing samples page is starting to get too long, break it up and spread it out over multiple pages.
Four Strategies To Make Your Online Writing Shine
If you want to have a reputation for being a professional writer, you must exhibit your writing online. The days of “optional” author websites are over. Here is your to-do list for publishing your writing on the Web:
1. Maintain an author website so that you have a central hub for your writing. Without a centralized, official author site, your writing will have no online storefront, which means potential readers will be scattered and distracted.
2. Link to other websites that have published your work. When you link to a reputable website that has published your writing, your authority goes up a notch. So rather than posting your work on your site, consider directing your readers (via the “open in a new window” technique) to the fancy-pants publishers who originally posted a work. When they read your published work in the context of its original publication, the effect can be powerful.
3. Post excerpts or pieces from already published work directly on your own site. If a work appeared in print and you can’t link to a place where readers can view it online, then go ahead and post the work on your own webpage. Want to increase your ROI (return on investment)? Put some social share buttons at the top of the excerpt so that visitors can Like and Share with friends.
4. Post “the right amount” of material. This is going to be different for every author. If you’re a book author who is looking for an agent, there is no reason to post your entire book online (unless you have launched a highly successful and intense social media campaign for a self-published book). In fact, most literary agents don’t want to see you posting your whole book online. You can include an invitation for agents to query you for more information about the project. The amount you post should be in keeping with your goals.
For short stories, poems, and essays, know when to stop. Featuring a handful of your best works (with full-length excerpts) is enough.
Blogs are meant to be a platform where you can share your thoughts and talents with the rest of world, you can use your blog to publish your poetry - unless you want to monetize it but if just sharing it is what you wish to do then by all means add the poetry there, as for fiction, yes there are many sites that publish fiction so you can also add the story there, to make it more convenient to the readers you can offer to have the story downloaded in mobile friendly formats and pdf.
Well you can but you need to follow the right steps at the right time. I agree with : Miloš Milosavljević, I a vouching him and following it would do no harm.
These are my tips. If you can buy a domain name, then that would be great. It is not necessary that you should use your name as the domain as you can also use keywords that closely matches what you publish.
Make the blog simple with the archives but also you should not be in a quick rich scheme i.e, do not publish all the articles at once. It will take few months to be established well and to start receiving regular traffic.
Make use of wordpress tools such as for SEO and other tools which will help Google and others to categorize your blog.
Majority was said by MILO, just be patient and all the best.
Copyright Material
When we think about a publishing material, the first doubt comes to our mind is "What if someone copied the material and published it with his/her name". Well, now it is safe to publish your material on any blog because as per American policies, now every word you write on the web is copyrighted by you, SO there is no permission necessary. The best blogs like, Wordpress, Blogspot, Hubpages etc are better.Reach the Right Audience
To reach the right audience, you need many tools like social media publishing by sharing your article on some social media spots, by tagging your article and use of keywords is necessary. for this purpose, kindly study some solid material about 'How to fetch traffic to a website'.
Yes for sure. You can send the invitations to your friends to visit your blog mentioning the details of the blog and ask them recommend to their friends, in return you can ask them comment their views as well. Thanks.
Yes You can do so and link it to your social network' page..
How long is your fiction? For poetry, yes you may post them on your web page. But for a fiction work, you better publish it as an e-book.
And if you want to hit the right audience, determine them first and foremost BEFORE attempting to write your story - it should come right at the planning stage.
