Why I Built Brandidos: One Site for Your Personal Brand, Under Your Own Name

Five tools, five bills, one person

For years my online presence lived in five places: a portfolio host, a blog, a newsletter tool, a course platform and a booking page. Each had its own login, its own monthly bill, and most of them took a cut of every sale.

None of them talked to each other. A reader who found my blog had no clean path to my book or a paid call. I always had to send him away to other sites.

I've been building for the web since 2011, so I did the obvious developer thing. I built the one site I actually wanted. It's called Brandidos, and it's live at brandidos.me.

What Brandidos is

Brandidos is one site, under your own domain, for people whose name is the product: writers, designers, developers, consultants, coaches, teachers and freelancers.

You sign up and your site already exists, with pages and navigation in place. Then you add what you need:

• Show your work: portfolio, CV with one-click PDF, service pages, a dated timeline, your YouTube videos on your own pages
• Grow an audience: a real blog with categories and comments, and every new post emailed to subscribers
• Sell what you know: ebooks, downloads, video courses with certificates, recorded workshops, and cohort bootcamps with seat limits and waitlists
• Sell your time: paid 1:1 bookings with Zoom, Google Meet or Jitsi links sent to both sides
• Package it: bundles, memberships, and software sold with licence keys

That's fourteen features in total. You start with one and switch the rest on as you grow.

Core features

Here's what each feature does, and which plan it's on.

Your own domain (every plan, Free included)

If you're building a personal brand, you need your own domain. Your audience should find you at yourname.com. A profile on another platform can vanish with a policy change. A domain you own stays where you put it, and every link, subscriber and search result keeps pointing to you.

Brandidos lets you connect your domain on every plan, and it's served over HTTPS. If you don't have one yet, register it before you start. You can use a free brandidos.me address in the meantime.

Portfolio (every plan)

Show the work that wins you the next client. Each project gets a cover image, a description, dates and a link. Projects tie to the roles on your CV and appear on your home page.

CV (every plan)

Keep your experience, education, skills and projects in one place. Your CV shows on your site at a link you can share. Pick from several layouts and download it as a PDF in one click. Update it once and it's current everywhere.

Services (every plan)

Give each service you offer its own page, with what's included and how long it takes. The right clients reach out already knowing what they're buying. On Max, a service page can also take a paid "service call" booking.

Timeline (every plan)

Tell your story one date at a time: the first client, the talk, the launch. Entries carry photos and show newest first, as proof that you've been doing this for years.

Channel (every plan)

Bring your YouTube videos onto your own pages, with your latest video on your home page. People who come to watch stay to read, book and buy.

Rating & Reviews (every plan)

Buyers rate what they bought from a link in their receipt, and star ratings show on every product page. You approve each review before it appears, and you can feature your best ones as testimonials on your home page.

Blogging and newsletter (every plan)

A real blog with categories, comments and search-friendly pages. The rich editor handles code blocks, images and tables, so it works for technical writing too. Every new post is emailed to your subscribers, so you don't need a separate newsletter tool.

Book selling (Pro and up)

Publish your ebook and sell it from your own shelf. Buyers download the PDF the moment they pay. The book page shows the table of contents and reader reviews, and you can run coupons and launch prices. No store takes a cut.

Courses (Pro and up)

Turn your videos into a course with chapters and lessons. Each student's progress is saved, and they get a certificate when they finish. Payments go straight to your own gateway.

Workshops (Pro and up)

A single-session class with its own page, price and video. Use it for a focused topic or to sell the recording of a live event for years. Buyers watch from their account, and you can bundle the workshop with a course later.

Bootcamps (Pro and up)

Run multi-week cohorts with a weekly outline. Set a seat limit, an enrolment deadline and an early-bird price window. When a cohort sells out, a waitlist fills seats automatically if someone drops out.

Online Meetings (Max)

Sell an hour of your time, booked and paid in one go. You set weekly availability. Visitors pick a free slot, choose a meeting type and pay. A Zoom, Google Meet or Jitsi link reaches both of you automatically. There's no double booking, reminders go out on their own, and clients can reschedule themselves.

Digital Products (Max)

Sell templates, presets, code or any file in a zip. Upload it once, and every buyer gets a download link by email and in their account. You can set download limits and expiry dates, and issue licence keys for software you sell.

Bundles (Max)

Put a course, a book and a template together at one price, and show the saving next to it. Buyers get each item in their account exactly as if they had bought it alone. Refund the bundle once and everything in it is revoked.

Memberships and custom collections (Max)

A membership opens your whole catalogue for one price. Custom collections let you define your own product types when the built-in ones don't fit what you sell.

Themes and team (every plan)

Switch themes in one click. A theme changes the design only, and your posts, products, bookings and buyers stay exactly where they are. Invite team members with roles: an editor who only writes, someone who only handles bookings, or a full admin.

Four decisions I locked early

Every feature had to pass one test: does it keep the creator in control? Four decisions came out of that test.

1. Your domain, even on Free. Your site sits at your own name over HTTPS. Until you point a domain, you get a free brandidos.me address.
2. 0% Brandidos transaction fee. You connect your own Stripe, PayPal, 2Checkout, Safepay or bank transfer with receipt upload. The money goes straight to you, and I never hold your revenue. Your gateway's normal processing fees still apply.
3. Your audience is yours. Subscribers, buyers and enquiries come to you directly. No feed decides who sees your work today.
4. No lock-in. If you outgrow the hosted version, the Self-hosted plan moves your whole site, content and files to a server you own.

What I rejected: a marketplace where creators compete for traffic, and a revenue share on sales. Both would make money for me by taking control from you.

Pricing

You can stay on Free for as long as you like. Upgrade only when you want to sell, take bookings, or run it on your own server.

The 0% Brandidos fee applies on every plan.

Try it without signing up

There are 9 live demo sites on brandidos.me: a brand designer, a career coach, a developer, an author, a wedding photographer, a fitness coach, a psychologist, a chef and an interior architect.

Visit any of them as a visitor, or open the admin with the password demo1234 and change anything. Every demo resets on the hour. Payments, email and account settings are switched off.

When you're ready, start for free. No card is needed, and your site is live the minute you sign up.

I'd like your honest feedback. Is the pricing right? What's missing that would make you move from the tools you use now? Leave a comment or reach me through the contact page.