Website vs. Blog
It became necessary for me to compare a Website to a blog because many people get confused sometimes whether to go for website or create a blog. Now read the comparisons below, hopefully it will help you in your decision making. But in truth, both have their advantages and if you could, go for both.
Blogs are cheap to create
For the reason that all fingers are not equal, the first advantage of a blog compared to a website is that it is cheap to create. With $20 (max.) you could have a hosted Wordpress blog while it is a different matter entirely with a website. And if you can not afford $20 for a domain and hosting service you could of course start with a free hosting service though it is not the best, but you could start with it and not spend a dime. You can get a good free hosting service from blogger, owned by google. Using blogger you could even have your blog tied to Google adsense account. That way you get your hosting service for free and also make money. Cool right? I thought so too.
Blogs are cheap to maintain
Since creating a blog doesn’t in all cases require you having a skill, virtually anyone can start and run a blog, but a website you have to have HTML and web design skill.
The simplicity of creating a blog has resulted in the more than 28million blogs available online today (in just 5 years) and the number increases everyday, as thousands of people who never could have afford a website are now settling for blogs.
Blogs are easy to update
To make a post on a blog all you do is go to the back office of your blog, write your content and click on publish and in minutes your post will be visible to everyone online who visits your blog to read. In the case of a static website, to upload an article you first have to open your editor, which is either a Frontpage or a Dreamweaver, write your article, update page properties, before you could upload the page using FTP software. Depending on the techniques you applied, it could take months before your website is indexed by google.
Blogs allow a written text, audio and video. And you can have it online in a matter of minutes where it takes hours to update a static website. You may have to spend some money every time you want to make an update if you do not have the skill to manage a static website.
Blogs organizes itself
Blogs automatically organizes its content by date and category. And with a blog built in search, readers and search engine spiders can easily run a search on your blog and find what they are looking for. For a static website you have to personally organize its pages.
Blogs could be Ping
Blogs could be ‘pinged’ so google is alerted whenever you post fresh content and visit your blog to index it. Though this is also available in static website but you will spend more time than is necessary to should it be a blog on Search Engine Optimization (SEO), to have the website show up in search results.
Search Engines Love Blogs
Search Engines love blogs because of it regular fresh content, since that is what readers search for online and search engines would not make millions if readers do not get fresh regular contents to read. And so blogs tend to get indexed easily and in time than a static website.
Search engines also push blogs higher up in search displays than static website just for it fresh content. Static website though could contain some articles but they are mainly designed to promote products and services .And might not be updated for months. And most website designers are mostly concerned about the appearance of their website rather than the content in them and maximizing Search Engine Optimization to get traffic.
Blogs allow readers to freely express themselves through Comment Feed
The Comment Feed in blogs creates a forum for people to express themselves in an informal way and interact with others hence building strong relationship and trust between you and your readers. And that is the essence of blogging because once they trust you, you become real to them as a professional in your field. So later in future when you suggest or offer them any relevant product (s) for sale, you will have large numbers patronizing you. Which at the end of the day is the reason why we blog or at least why most of us blog – Advertise and make money. A static website does not allow this, when and if it does, discussions are usually very formal.
But to get readers to comment, you have to regularly provide what they could comment on which is valuable content.
Blogging requires time since you will have to update your blog regularly with relevant content, but compared to maintaining a static website, you will find blogging a better option.
Blogging has come to stay, it has been around for 5 years now and with the way the online world presently works, a blog is too beneficial to be kicked to the curb.
With the above clear comparisons, I would advice that it is good to have a website and a blog, if you don’t already have a website, but you are planning to design one, design it and incorporate your blog to it. But when you have to make a choice between a website and a blog, I’ll suggest you start with a blog as you could build credibility faster with it than with a website. Though what should actually determine which to go for, is what you plan to do online.
Do not consider a blog if you can not provide contents for it. If you want a blog but can not keep up with writing blog posts, you can freelance it to freelancers. In that case you should be ready to spend some money.
To set up a professional and profitable blog, I recommend Atomic Blogging 3.0 by Alvin Phang at: http://tinyurl.com/n2pnvp
Writing and Publishing Your First Blog Entry
The content of your blog is an important factor in gaining traffic and acquiring a target audience. Publishing your first Article or item is a great milestone in your blogging career. Fortunately, there are several basic guidelines, which can make your content more effective to your audience, adored by the search engines and respected by the world of blogging.
Publishing an Effective Content
First of all, keep in mind that communication is the key. More so, your communication must be authentic. The time when you publish your content is also the time when you let your true self surface. Blogs are personal in nature and communication is the key to being personal. The fact that each blog is unique because each writer is unique is enough for you to not to worry about future similarities with other blog entries. Keep in mind that whatever topic you are
blogging about you must incorporate your personality with your writing.
In order to create a loyal target audience, it is important for the visitors to trust you and relate to you. It does not necessarily entail that they know about your personal details but you must connect with your audience in an authentic manner.
After establishing your communication with your audience, the content must also be credible. The blog must have authenticity even though credibility takes a lot of time to build.
The moment you begin publishing your content, which is of high value and useful to the readers, you also start establishing your authority. There will come a time when your readers ask you for advice or seek for your opinion; this is the time when you have achieved some kind of credibility and you must use this to build your reputation as a blogger.
The Blogger’s Block
Blogging is writing but uses a different medium. There are several methods to fight blogger’s block. Always remember that your blog software exists to serve you and not to frighten you. You do not have to try blogging carrying the idea that you have prolific writing skills, or a journalism degree. The fact is that you have something to say and you want others to hear it. However, if you are feeling stuck on an idea, there are several suggestions that you can apply when creating the content for your blog.
Firstly, you can try visiting other blogs. Visit those blogs that interest you and pick ideas and topics from those blogs that might be worth blogging about but keep in mind the relevance of the topic and your readership. You can also syndicate your news updates. You can do this by subscribing to news services online because they allow you to save time on searching using keywords. This is most useful for bloggers.
How To Know If You Should Start A Blog
It is believed by most experts that blogging is a financial mistake for most small businesses. Blogs are best used for news-oriented sites, or sites that feature “the latest” or “the thought of the day.”However, blogging can also be a strong “add-on” to a successful, profitable website. For this reason, we will examine how to look at blogging vs having a website and how to know if you should start a blog.Several companies offer blogging software, and Blogger is probably the most widely used free blogging platform available. Blogger, owned by Google, allows you to set up a blog quickly using its design templates. Other widely used blogging software include WordPress and TypePad.Blogs must be updated frequently — several times a week, if not daily or even several times a day — in order to hold readers’ attention. Bloggers must scrupulously adhere to the golden rule of blogging: “Thou must update frequently.” It is a time-consuming process because people who read blogs expect a certain amount of fresh content on a regular basis — at a minimum, weekly — preferably several times a week. This is not true of a theme-based website.Blogging should definitely be used in combination with other marketing methods and not in isolation. They should NOT be used to build career momentum because they are not right for everyone — especially if you don’t have a strong viewpoint or valuable information to share. Blog posts, in contrast to conventional websites, do not have a specific order. The software lacks what businesses do need to actually make money (which is the ultimate goal). They interlink to each other with gusto, creating what they call “the blogosphere. Ultimately, they merely keep adding new posts, one after another, without editing out the old and without pulling related posts together into cohesive and fresh articles whereas, theme-based content sites develop and update the content into more complete, useful, cohesive articles called “web pages.” Bloggers rave about how blogs are “more dynamic” and “promote conversations,” but many prominent bloggers turn commenting off! This communication medium is heavily covered by both online and offline media because they “get” the concept. Bloggers, of course, form part of the online media and is actually for a very small percent of the population. It has become very popular in the last few years and even the most non-technical of netpreneur are now using a blog to promote their businesses. Blogs have come a long way in a very short time, but again, they’re not for everyone. A lot of people don’t want to read their own company blogs. It has to fit into the corporate culture. Blogs about your company and your products may sound interesting to you, but people rarely tune into a “commercial” blog unless there is additional information of real value. Blogging may not be suitable for all small businesses, say blogging experts in a New York Times report. However, they do provide a simple way for family and friends to stay connected from different parts of the world by sharing stories, photos, videos and more.
Learn How to Blog Profitably -part 2
So You Want to Create Blog!
Learn How to Blog Free, What Blogging Tools You Need Part 2-TheIMReporter
The first article of this series we focused on the first step to creating a successful blog or mini site specifically your target market or niche market identification.
After you have determined what niche or target market you will be focusing on you will now need to create a website drive traffic to is and capitalize on it.
Niche Marketers routinely choose blogs as their preferred marketing platform because they are extremely easy to use can be easily maintained updated quickly and not as technically involved as a traditional website. A blog’s structure by nature is search engine friendly which means better SEO results. Additionally third party plug ins can be easily added.
You can go about creating a successful blog using various blogging tools. The particular blog that you choose to set up should clearly reflect your knowledge of your niche market and what they are looking for. While there are various methods we will cover some of the more important ones such as free traffic generation and incorporating a affiliate program so that you can monetize and generate revenue.
Effective Marketing calls for simplicity that is visually and aesthetically sound. You may like one thing but that does not mean the rest of the world will like it as well. You need to ensure that your blog is visually sound.
A aesthetically and visually pleasing blog by the way it is arranged and and looks will make for a better viewing pleasure for your visitors. It also needs to be arranged in a way that maximizes all the content you create so that you maintain your readers attention and focusing the most attention on your affiliate program.
There are a few ways you want to do this:
1.Make sure that the theme of your blog utilizes primarily a white background and has black text. Keep it simple. This advice is often ignored and offers you an opportunity to capitalize. The easiest reading for the eyes is black on white. By using other color schemes the readers eyes can get tired quickly and makes it harder to maintain concentration.
2.Pages that are absolute musts on your site are an About Us page, A Contacts Page and a Privacy Policy Page. When Google’s Crawler Bot crawls your site these critical components are indicators of a serious, non spammy, quality site. Additionally you want to have an archives page (easily achieved by the SRG Clean Archives plug in if you use Wordpress), so as not to have your archives taking up valuable room in your blog sidebar.
3.When you are deciding on a theme for your blog or mini site you want to keep clean and neat. A busy page with a lot going usually leads the reader to click off. You content should be clearly identifiable and your sidebar navigation should also be clearly identifiable. If your reader is coming from a search engine, they should be able to quickly identify where they need to click to get their information. One of the best rules of thumb is the less the better in terms of features on your blog.
Once you have an aesthetically pleasing blog, you need some reader pleasing content.
The assumption has been made that you have lasered in on the product you are going to promote. The next step after defining your target market and identifying your niche is to select the product that you will promote. This is how you will earn your money.
Once you have selected your product you now need to spend your time creating content that the people in your niche market will consider resourceful, helpful and valuable and then use that created content to drive your new website visitors to the affiliate page and start making some money!
By now you you should have some keywords selected that are relevant to your niche that are uncompetitive with reference to how many pages you have optimized for the search engines.
Where you’d ideally start your content creation is by writing an article on this uncompetitive term, posting it on your site and getting it ranked in the search engines. From here, you can develop as much content on search phrases from your niche, as you desire (remember you got those phrases from a tool like the Word tracker keyword tool) in order to increase traffic to your site.
For more information on this topic and other ways to increase your success with Internet Marketing and blogging go to
The IM Reporter-Blogging
