Blog or Regular Website
Many starters who are planning to earn money on the internet, think on where should they start. Whether they should create a blog or should go for a regular website. Both of these types have their own pros and cons. But what is the biggest difference in them.
In my opinion, there are two major differences.
First, its easier to get traffic to a blog as compared to a regular websites. This is due to the pinging facility of the blog softwares (like Wordpress) which pings various search engines and other ‘blog post accumulator’ websites. This brings “some” traffic to your blog even if you don’t have a single back-link pointing to it. This facility is not there in the case of a website. You need to have back-links to your site so that search engines can find you and rank you appropriately.
The second difference is that that you can always take that long break from your work in case of the website, as it may not need that much regular updates. But in the case of a blog, you have to update it regularly. If you take that sort of long breaks (I am telling you with my experience, ha ha ha!) from your blog, people are going to get angry. Not only that, the traffic from search engines also drops, as search engines expects new posts from the blogs once a while.
So what is the best choice for you as a starter?
The best choice for you as a started is to use the blogging softwares like Wordpress, but to create a static and regular looking site with it. Now how is that possible? That is possible when you make following changes in your Wordpress:
- Use a static page as the front page of your website instead of putting your latest posts on the main page.
- Remove the commenting feature all together from the posts/pages (not just disable comments, but remove the whole comments.php block).
- Use a permalink structure which does not show any date or time stamp. Use something like:
/%postname%.html - Remove the date, time and author information from your posts (Eg: Written bye Jim Karter on November 13th 2008 etc. )
- Still use the pinging “Update Services” and ping all the possible websites while writing your posts.
By following above, you will be creating a regular website with the convenience of Wordpress and still getting that blog sort of initial traffic. With time you need to build your links and you will have a regular site which you can leave at your will and take your time off. You can see a sample of it at my chemotherapy site.
In past, many people have asked me for the theme for jimkarter.com and echemotherapy.com. I think this is the time I should provide those themes. 
Welcome back!
Jim Karter on November 16th 2008 in Blogging, Earning Money, Social Networking, Traffic Generation
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37 Responses to “Blog or Regular Website”
Sponsored links from google adsense.
Gnaka responded on 16 Nov 2008 at 10:38 pm #
It is good to fillup the sites with article all at once or should post them at regular intervals for such MFA sites!
Anjar Priandoyo responded on 16 Nov 2008 at 10:46 pm #
Thanks for sharing Jim, based on your experience, how big is the difference (in number/percentage) between a site that developed using blog style compare to website style?
e.g chemotherapy will get 30% higher and more stable traffic if using website style. because in my opinion, i guess there will be no significant difference?
CMIIW,
regards
Jim Karter responded on 17 Nov 2008 at 12:25 am #
anjar, the major difference is in the initial days when you are posting new content but site doesn’t have any backlinks. But in the long run it doesn’t make much difference (except the convenience of posting the content).
Envirogle responded on 17 Nov 2008 at 1:20 am #
@ Jimmy
I thought I saw a similarity between eChemo and this blog.
Very simple theme, works like a charm.
Websites do not necessarily have to be content sites, most beginners start their ventures into arcades, proxies, database sites (lyric, recipe, etc), first as these are just upload n’ go.
These aren’t great for raking in the money, although some do, it is a good start, it is great for building up valuable knowledge about sites in general.
In a few months with a few backlinks, and directory submissions, you will be generating $1+/day, and then you can sell it for $300-$400.
Then most venture into content sites, membership sites, etc as they realize there is not much money in arcade, recipe sites etc.
I know that’s how I started
I started with a proxy and sold it for $300 3 weeks later. Then made a vlog, 30 vids(all from youtube), sold it for $150, 15 days later, then I bought an arcade generating $2/day, for $400.
I managed to get it to $5/day with a bit of monetizing 2 months later. Sold it for $1′399 at Sitepoint.
-Sorry for the life story
goblogging responded on 17 Nov 2008 at 1:36 am #
Really agree with you Jim
regular site that using blog engine is very attractive.
Fred Chan responded on 17 Nov 2008 at 1:37 am #
I have been looking at your echemotherapy for some time and wanted to ask you the following:
Can you actually add the word “.html” to the permalink structure. In your echemotherapy, I noticed that your url are “echemotherapy/topics.html”.
Do you write your article as posts or pages? I tried using posts but the word “category” will appear whenever one click on the links to the article. example: domainname/categories/topics.html.
Eventually as I can’t figure out how to hack wordpress to avoid showing the word “category”, I converted my articles to pages instead of posts. When I publish the articles as pages, the “categories” will not appear in the url.
Fred Chan responded on 17 Nov 2008 at 1:40 am #
I forgot to ask, since your website echemotherapy look like a website rather than a blog, how many articles do you recommend for such a websites before one slow down the writing of articles to attract enough google traffic.
udkl responded on 17 Nov 2008 at 2:36 am #
Karam, Am venturing into niche websites now, and this was the exact dillema I faced. And you answered it …..I feel Lucky
BTW … You could use a spell checker
udkl responded on 17 Nov 2008 at 2:38 am #
Envirogle…..
Would love to have a chat with you.
Please Drop me your IM ID on toxic.f22@gmail.com .
Zaheer responded on 17 Nov 2008 at 3:41 am #
Just a quick question, what is a proxy site? Just heard this being mentioned a lot at the DP forums thats all.
As always Jim, you are an inspiration, keep it up.
Javier responded on 17 Nov 2008 at 6:21 am #
I’m still wondering what did you do in the “Chemotherapy articles” section.
Why did you divide it in 2 columns? (one is articles under categories and the other chemotherapy links, although they link to your website)
Money Blogger responded on 17 Nov 2008 at 8:21 am #
I am going to implement that idea.Look interesting
Mega Champ responded on 17 Nov 2008 at 10:08 am #
Nice post jim i am really looking forward to the website like wordpress theme you are using on Chemo site. So when are we having the download link
Chris responded on 17 Nov 2008 at 1:32 pm #
Great post Jim, I was just actually thinking today of making a website with WordPress (as opposed to a blog) and you’ve provided some handy tips.
I’d also be interested to know your opinion on how many articles you should post on a site before going live with it? Should you throw as much as you have at it to start with? Or start with a few then add regularly?
Armaan Bhati responded on 17 Nov 2008 at 3:24 pm #
I am looking for your theme from long time.
I triend to find it on DP too but no success.
Jim Karter responded on 17 Nov 2008 at 8:57 pm #
Envirogle, I totally agree with you. Even I started with a “lyrics” and “jokes” sites few years back.
Fred Chan, yes you can add the .html to perma link structure. The example I gave in the blog post about the perma link structure is actually using .html and is from my chemotherapy site only. When you create a page in a blog, I think that that page is not pinged, but a post is pinged.
Before slowing down, I would say atleast 40 to 50 articles is a good number. But thats just a number. You can do whatever you like.
udkl, ya I am bad at spellings. ha ha ha! Will check again.
Chris, my opinion on when to make your site live, I would say make your site live from day 1 and post 1. Just disable the comments till you have some content (if it is a blog). For site, there is not harm of it going live from day 1 and page 1.
Armaan, its a very simple theme and will post it here soon.
Fred Chan responded on 18 Nov 2008 at 12:08 am #
Thanks Jim for you response.
Just to clarify on your reply.
1. You change your permalink to /%postname%.html in your post and you don’t use page for your echemo site. By changing to this permalink, will the URL still show “../category/…..” ?
2. So writing a post is better as it send out ping. I will change my pages back to posts.
1 more question: when should one start placing adsense ads to a new site? day 1 or after the site get more than X number of visits or after the site has been visited by Google.
Note: I just want to say, you advise and reply are most sincere compare to other sites that I have visited.
PS….I am also interested in you echemo theme for WP
Jim Karter responded on 18 Nov 2008 at 1:30 am #
1. No, it will not show “../category/…..”
2. Don’t delete any of the pages/posts from the current content. Search engine hates getting 404 and put some sort of penalty as well.
When to put adsense is just your choice only. If you want to earn from day 1, its fine as well. It doesn’t make any SEO/traffic difference.
Envirogle responded on 18 Nov 2008 at 1:32 am #
@ udkl
Sent you an email
@ Jimmy
Good to hear that we all started with the small bux.
Hope all is going well with your other sites. eChemo looks like it is doing great.
Keep up the great posts.
Driveway Sealing responded on 20 Nov 2008 at 7:37 pm #
I go with blogs every time. Easier to build easier to get into Google and easier to build a network with. Plus I suck at HTML
Steve
titan responded on 11 Dec 2008 at 8:41 am #
i prefer with blog. Thats my best tools for marketing.
Gopal Tripathi responded on 15 Dec 2008 at 10:08 pm #
Thanks for tips.
1. Word Press gives ‘ping’ felicity for ‘Page’ as well, on every “write” post/page, even it can be ‘checked/unchecked’ any time after editing,too. So, a whole website can be made using pages only.
2. A question.. from where ‘time/date/author’
stamp can be removed as a block,from theme or somewhere in WP. While it is very easy to remove from ‘post’ head from theme, but it still shows on some site internal pages like ‘category,excerpts’ etc.. but there is not any specific file/block found in any theme for this purpose? How to remove it from WP platform?….thanks
Jim Karter responded on 16 Dec 2008 at 12:39 am #
Check for all the files like archive.php single.php page.php and index.php for occurance of the timestamp.
Sahil responded on 23 Dec 2008 at 5:57 am #
i’m going with website not a blog
Altenergy responded on 24 Dec 2008 at 3:40 pm #
i manage to do all on my blog what exactly jim explained.
thanks jim thats what i was looking for
Sichsoffvoicy responded on 27 Dec 2008 at 1:14 pm #
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Mayank responded on 03 Jan 2009 at 3:13 am #
Hi Jim,
I wasn’t able to find the download link to the theme.
Would you please be kind enough to point me to it?
letdpplwatch responded on 07 Jan 2009 at 9:57 am #
i just wanna ask you are you interested in buying a blogger blog. its mtvroadies05.blogspot.com
its all about the show mtv roadies
if interested let me know. we can discuss all other things after that.
c ya
mahetta responded on 10 Jan 2009 at 5:13 am #
Hello,
I am a newbie, and I found that making money by blogging is difficult. Can you visit my blog and give me some comments please?
YJ responded on 22 Jan 2009 at 12:17 am #
Great post thanks for the input and experience
SEO Tips responded on 23 Jan 2009 at 11:41 am #
Blog all the way!
Fair enough blogging is a long term career but the amount of tools available for blogs including some excellent plug ins its getting better and better for bloggers to spread the word.
izu mou responded on 13 Feb 2009 at 4:56 am #
Yes I agrees with you.blogging software is quite better.There are many premium templates that can turn wordpres blog to proffesional loking website.Still yet,one can creat website,creat a feed and me spearding it manually using pignomatic.com but all the same blogs are easy to update than any regular website plus saving of the webspace.
Military Aircraft responded on 18 Feb 2009 at 2:10 am #
Dear Jim There Is Huge Difference Between Blog And Web Site, Blog About News And Updates And Web Site About Portal or Information About Your Products….
Aditya responded on 07 Jul 2009 at 9:44 pm #
Hi!
I’m a newbie, and I think that we really gotta put much effort before expecting income. We must know seo and we must increase the traffic and PR rank before expecting income.
Thanks
Aditya responded on 07 Jul 2009 at 9:48 pm #
Yes, I’ve been thinking about the difference between a blog and a website. One drawback of a blog is that you can’t give it a look you really desire and secondly, installing plugins and making them work is a time consuming job.
Aditya responded on 07 Jul 2009 at 9:49 pm #
I must add here that blogs gets easily registered on many search engines.
Tyrone Shum responded on 20 Oct 2009 at 6:06 pm #
Actually most internet marketers are running blogs too to give their clients feed on their services and products. It is more likely acceptable since using keywords, it is easy to appear in different search engines. Blogs are often conversational so it is more user friendly and at the same time client friendly.