YOUR NAME IS THE BRAND. THE SITE SHOULD SAY SO.

They do different jobs and the profile cannot do this one. LinkedIn decides who sees you, shows a competitor's advert beside you, and gives you one layout that everybody else has. A site is the address you own, it can argue an offer at whatever length the offer needs, and it is the thing a journalist, a conference organiser or a publisher links to. The profile is how people find you and the site is where you convince them.

Four things, in this order: what you do and who for, said in one sentence a stranger understands; the proof, which is client names, results and words other people wrote about you; the offer, with a price or a range if you can bear it; and one obvious way to start a conversation. Everything else is optional. A long biography, a photograph of a handshake and a list of skills are what fill the space when those four are missing.

Yes, if you sell on who you are, and buy it even if you do not use it yet. Your name is what people type and what they remember, and a cleverly named studio of one is an extra thing you have to teach every person you meet. Where a separate brand earns its place is when you intend to hire, sell the business one day, or run several offers that have nothing to do with each other.

It is worth more, not less. A referral is somebody sending your name to a person who will look you up before they reply, and what they find decides whether the introduction survives. A site does not have to generate strangers to pay for itself. It has to stop the warm ones going cold, and it lets you charge properly, because the price is easier to say once when it is written down than out loud every time.

Only if you will write. An empty blog with three posts from two years ago is worse than no blog, because it dates the whole site. What almost always earns its place instead is a page for the work itself: the talks, the podcast appearances, the writing published elsewhere, the press. That gathers what you already do rather than committing you to a job you have not agreed to.

Yes, and if you have both they should not say the same thing. The personal one sells you, so it carries the speaking, the writing and the point of view. The company one sells the service, so it carries the offer, the process and the team. Where it goes wrong is two sites arguing for the same buyer, which splits your search results and makes both look thin.

A portfolio shows work and a personal website makes a case. That distinction matters most if you are a designer, a photographer or a writer, where the instinct is to lead with a grid of images and let the reader draw a conclusion. They usually do not. The work goes on the page, but it goes underneath a sentence saying what you want hiring for and above a way to ask.

It removes the reason not to book you. An organiser needs a biography, a headshot at the right size, a talk topic and previous appearances, and if those are scattered across three platforms somebody has to email you and wait. One page holding all of it, with the photograph downloadable, means they can put you on the list the same afternoon. Nobody can promise you a booking, and this is the part of it that is in your hands.