Many people get confused about the difference between a blog and a website.
Although there are similarities between the two, there are also some big differences as well.
If your goal is to make money online, it’s not necessarily easier with one or the other.
Whether you decide on a blog or a website, you will still need to learn how to get targeted traffic or you won’t make money… period.
I say this because blogs are generally cheaper and easier to setup than websites. And because of this, people often rush to setup a blog and then later discover it was not the best course of action and did not fit their needs.
So be sure you read this entire page so you can choose the best option for your needs.
A blog is a series of content (called “posts”) that are generally arranged by date with the most recent post displaying first. A lot of blogs also have the posts arranged by category for convenient browsing.
They offer comment forms at the end of each post which allow the readers to give the author feedback and interact with other readers.
Blogs (taken from the phrase “web logs”) were originally created for personal journaling. Now people use them in place of a website, or in some cases, they own both types.
Blogs are most effective when you write a topic that obligates you to write new content regularly. That’s why many of the news-oriented websites are moving toward blogs.
People who read blogs often use a functionality called RSS, which allows them to subscribe to your blog’s content with an RSS reader.
When they open up their reader, they can see the latest headlines from your blog at a quick glance. That’s why it’s very important you choose a topic where you can provide fresh content on a regular basis. Otherwise, people may discontinue reading your blog if they see you aren’t writing enough new content.
In order to create a blog you need to decide on a blogging platform. The two most common blog platforms are WordPress and Blogger.
Both platforms are free and provide user-friendly editors for you to publish your content. No programming or additional software is required.
If you do decide to go with a blog, I’d highly recommend that you register your own domain name and have a self-hosted blog rather than using a free blog hosting platform.
You want the address of your blog to be something like yoursite.com or blog.yoursite.com instead of yourblog.wordpress.com or yourblog.blogspot.com.
Similar to a blog, a website is a collection of content called web pages. Unlike a blog, the pages are not typically arranged by date.
With websites, you possess more control over your site’s layout because it’s easier to work directly with the code.
Now, of course, if you take the time to learn CSS, HTML, PHP, etc. you can change the layout of a blog as well. However, it’s not quite as straightforward since blogs are made up of many different files and the coding is much more complicated.
With a website, you can manage your entire design in a software program so editing the overall layout is much easier than managing the layout of a blog.
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Another difference between websites and blogs is how content is published. With blogs, the publishing functionality is built into the blogging platform so you do not need any additional tools to publish your site online.
For example, to publish your content from a WordPress blog, you would login to the WordPress admin panel and select “Publish”.
To publish content to a website you need an FTP program or web software that has a built-in FTP program.
Note: FTP stands for file transfer protocol and it’s just a simple program that moves your web pages from your computer to your website. FileZilla is a common FTP program and it’s free to download and use.
Don’t let the acronyms scare you. It’s really not all that difficult. In fact, many web hosts now have FTP programs bundled into your account so if you can publish your content right through their control panel area.
I usually urge people to use web software that has a built in FTP program. For example, I use Dreamweaver to create and manage some of my websites. I use design templates I find online and customized them in the software.
The great thing about Dreamweaver is you can publish your content to the web right from the software so you don’t need to download any additional FTP software or use your web host’s functionality to save files to the Web.
Dreamweaver can be bought on eBay for around $100 (Dreamweaver CS3 is my favorite, and it’s very easy to use). But if your on a budget, there are some good alternatives available to you. Nvu and Kompozer are both free. Of course you won’t get as many of the bells and whistles that you get with Dreamweaver, but they’re still very good options.
CoffeeCup is another great editor and it comes with some nice templates. At $50, it’s priced reasonably considering all it does. It also has a built-in FTP program so you can publish your pages to the web through the software.
No matter what software you choose, rest assured there are lots of free tutorials online that will help you become a pro with it.
You don’t need to use Web software to create a website. You can write your HTML from scratch using a basic text editor like NotePad or BBEdit.
Then you just save your pages to the Web using an FTP program or your web host’s control panel.
If you’re serious about learning how to code from scratch visit w3schools.com. They offer some of the best tutorials on HTML and CSS found on the internet.
There is no right or wrong answer to this question. Which one you start with depends on you. By the way people read blogs, it’s best to create a blog if you have lots of “newsy” and fresh information about a topic, and you are able to produce new content on a regular basis.
Websites tend to have more evergreen information and there is not as much pressure to keep writing new content all the time. The information on a website is much more static and often contains reference information that people want to bookmark and return to read occasionally.
Whatever you decide to do, I recommend starting with one or the other. Do not try to create both because you’ll be overwhelmed with trying to market them. Just do one thing at a time.
Although I don’t recommend starting off with both, here’s an example of why you might start with a website and then add a blog at a later time.
Let’s say you have a site about healthy eating for diabetics. It’s 100 pages of assorted tips on what kinds of foods you can eat. A lot of the information is evergreen and it’s a fantastic site for people to bookmark for future reference.
Now let’s suppose you want to start a section on this site where you announce a new recipe every week. Since you will be providing new information on a regular basis, this kind of content is best presented in a blog format because blogs show the most recent content first and organize the information by date and category.
Since blogs are setup to divide the content into categories, you could add categories to make surfing your blog easier (Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Desserts etc.) and post the recipes into the appropriate category.
Now that you have your healthy eating for diabetics site with its static, evergreen information and you can use your blog for your latest and greatest recipes. People can subscribe to your blog through RSS and they’ll be notified every time you add a brand new recipe.
I have both a blog and a website, but I created my website first. Once my website began drawing enough traffic, I used that traffic to promote my blog. So my blog is more of an extension to my regular website.
My blog allows me to discuss what’s on my mind regarding the topics of website creation and design, making money, home business etc. So I have branded my blog as sort of an extension of my main website.
Now before you rush off and create your own blog or website, leave us a comment first and share what you decided on and why.
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May 5th, 2010 
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