“Hi Darren, I’ve got a website at www._____.com which I’ve had for a few years and not really done much with. I’ve heard that blogs are a good way of building traffic and making money, should I change it to a blog?”

I get this type of question on a weekly basis so I thought that I’d tackle it as a post.

There are a number of factors to consider when deciding whether to change an established website into a blog.

6 Reasons to Consider a Blog

Much has been written on the topic of why blogs are a medium to consider for your website but here’s some that I’m particularly attracted to:

1. Blogs give Individuals, Companies and Brands ‘Voice’ – 5 years ago I was a guy with a ‘voice’ that reached a few hundred people on any given week – today what I write and say is sneezed out to hundreds of thousands of people on any given week. My blogs are the vehicle for this.

2. Blogs are Conversational – both in the style of writing, the way they interact with one another and the way that they are designed with comments at their heart blogs are all about the conversation.

3. Blogs build Trust – as a result of being a relational/conversational medium a blogger can build trust with their audience (something that most businesses would kill for).

4. Blogs build Profile – looking to become an ‘expert’ (or at least be perceived as an expert) in your field. Blogs have the ability to showcase your expertise and help you become the ‘go to’ person in your field. Just today my blog brought me the opportunity to appear in Australia’s national newspaper – the result has been numerous other opportunities.

5. Blogs are Immediate – blogs are a great way to communicate with people because they are so quick to use. Have a thought, write it down, hit publish and within minutes it can be being read and commented upon by your readers.

6. Blogs are a doorway to Search Engines and Social Media – one of the great things about blogs is that they are indexed so well by search engines which love sites that are focused upon a topic, updated regularly etc. Social media sites (particularly bookmarking ones) also love blogs.

The list of reasons to blog goes on and on. Of course everything I’ve mentioned above can also be achieved with other types of websites and just because you have a blog doesn’t mean the above all falls in your lap (it takes work – see below) – however these are some of the attractive aspects of having a blog.

5 Reasons why a Blog May Not be for You

Some bloggers tend to build blogging up to be the answer to every problem you might have online without giving a full picture. Let me shed a little light on the flip-side of blogging and why it might not be the right medium for you.

1. Blogs Take Time to Mature – one of the misconceptions that many new or ‘PreBloggers’ come to blogging with is that they just need to set one up and people will come reading it in their thousands. This is rarely the case. Unless you get extremely lucky or have some existing profile or traffic source to leverage a new blog takes considerable time to build up when it comes to readership. When I surveyed Technorati’s Top 100 blogs last year I found that on average they’d been running for over 3 years to achieve their prominence (it’d be more now).

2. Blogs Take Daily Work – the key to successful blogging is to post quality content on a regular basis. Most bloggers post on a daily basis, many of the top blogs post numerous times per day. Combine this fact with the last point (ie that it takes years for a blog to mature) and you have this question to ask yourself:

“Can you write something of high quality on a daily basis on your chosen topic for the next 3 years?”

That’s 780 posts if you post each weekday for the next 3 years – 1560 if you post twice each weekday…..

3. Blogs Take More than Writing – I’m not trying to depress you but there’s more to successful blogs than writing posts. Bloggers face a lot of other practical challenges on their way to success. These include moderating comments (blogs are the targets of spammers and occasionally ‘trolls’ (trouble makers), design (making your blog look unique can be an important element in it’s success), marketing (new readers don’t just appear – it takes networking, self promotion etc) and more. The list of jobs that a blogger needs to do can be overwhelming to a new blogger. Of course a lot of these skills develop over time and become a natural part of your working rhythm – but it’s worth counting the cost of this before you get into blogging.

4. Bloggers Can be Anti-Trust/Profile Building – I mentioned above that a blog can be a wonderful tool for building your voice, profile and trust. However the flip-side is that you can actually hurt your reputation in your niche if you don’t use your blog well. Everything that you do on your blog has the potential to either build or destroy your reputation in some way. Remember that what you ‘publish’ online is permanent. While you might delete it from your actual blog there will be a record of it somewhere online. So publishing untruths, writing while angry, being manipulative or not being transparent on your blog can actually come back to bite you and hurt your reputation. The vast majority of bloggers have positive experiences from blogging but do enter into it with a little caution and care – the blogosphere can be a very unforgiving place if you give it reason to turn on you.

5. Blogs Rely Upon YOU as a Conversation Starter – I was chatting with a new blogger recently about their experience of starting a blog and they reflected back to me that they didn’t realize how draining it could be to be the instigator of conversation. They’d come from a background of using online forums previously – a medium where the community kicks off conversation. Blogs are similar to forums in that they are conversational, but where anyone can start a conversation on a forum a blog relies upon you to do it. This takes time, energy, creativity and a certain skill.

Once again, this list could go on (and on) but I’ll leave it at that and invite others to add their thoughts in comments.

My hope in exploring some of these themes is that those with established websites might have a better picture of some of the pros and cons of switching from their current website to a blog.

Blog or Website OR Blog and Website

The last question that I’d pose to those considering the switch from a website to a blog is that it’s possible to do both.

My challenge to most people who ask me the question about making the change is to think about whether they really need to replace their current site with a blog or whether they could just add a blog to their established site. In some cases the established site is fairly poor and deleting and replacing it can be the best move – but if you have a site with some level of presence in search engines, traffic and reputation then it can sometimes be better to simply add a blog to it and let what you’ve already developed remain.

The thing is that we’re now seeing many bloggers add other types of websites to their blogs (forums, social networks, static pages etc). Bloggers are realizing that blogs are not the best medium for every situation and that there are opportunities to reach different people with different types of sites – so keep your mind open to the possibilities of keeping what you’ve already established and adding to it rather than replacing it.

Recommended Reading

As I wrote this post I was reminded of a previous one that I’d written that I’d highly recommend those considering starting a blog read. It’s called 23 Questions for Prospective Bloggers – Is a Blog Right for You? This post explores some of the above themes plus numerous more and is designed to help you work out whether blogging might be the right medium for you. It’s one of the first posts in my series – Blogging for Beginners which is also worth a read if you’re at the beginning of your blogging journey.

When you use WordPress you’re given the choice when publishing between doing it as a ‘post’ or as a ‘page‘. Posts go up on your blog while ‘pages’ are static pages that you can publish without it having to go up on your blog.

There’s a lot of reasons why you might choose a post over a page or a page over a post (that’s for another post) – but today I thought I’d highlight a few ‘pages’ that I have here on ProBlogger as examples of pages that bloggers might want to develop to promote their blog to different groups of people. Some are more essential in my mind than others but all have been helpful in the development of my own blogs.

1. About Page – perhaps one of the most common uses of the ‘page’ function on WP is the good old ‘about page’. Having an about page is essential in my mind as it gives new readers to your blog a snapshot of who you are and why they should subscribe to your blog. This is the page that I go to every time I hit a new blog – if they don’t have one it decreases my chances of subscribing significantly. Read more on adding an about page to your blog.

2. Contact Page – I’m amazed how many bloggers don’t have any way of contacting them on their blog. While I understand the temptation not to have one you could be missing out of wonderful opportunities by not giving readers, potential partners, press, other bloggers a way of contacting you. Read more on Why your blog’s readers should be able to contact you.

3. Press Page – I don’t promote this page heavily (although do mention it on my ‘About Page‘) but use it more when interacting with journalists and mainstream media outlets. The way I use it is to show journalists what others have written about me. I find that in providing a list of previous articles in mainstream media you gain a little credibility and give journalists a head start in finding an angle to pursue for their own potential articles about you. It’s also handy to be able to provide this page to anyone else that you’re attempting to build credibility with that may not be that ‘new media savvy’. It’s amazing how a mention in mainstream media will open doors for some.

4. Disclaimer Page – I need to update this page but for the interests of transparency have it linked to on every page on my blog to show readers what I get out of this blog – ie that I make money from it and use affiliate programs. I also use this page to dispel some of the myths and untrue assumptions that people have about me and this blog by sharing some of the ‘costs’ of this blog. I find that this balanced ‘disclaimer’ works quite well.

5. FAQ Page – this page was written with a very selfish motive – to cut down my workload. I get asked a lot of question, many of them repeatedly. As an attempt to answer some of these frequently asked questions I put together some answers for them. I still get asked the questions but being able to point to this page helps. I also have it linked to prominently from my Contact Page.

6. Subscribe Page – having a page dedicated to how people can subscribe to your blog can be very useful. I don’t link to this from my sidebar any more (like I do at DPS) but do link to it from within posts at times. I find that having a page like this can be useful as some readers don’t understand the idea of RSS or can be worried about issues of privacy or what it means to ‘subscribe’. Sometimes having a page dedicated to walking people through the process can pay off.

7. Advertise with Us Page – looking to sell advertising on your blog? An ‘Advertise’ page is an important part of attracting new advertisers and a well written one can cut down a lot of work for you as it’ll help to filter out people by giving them information that helps them to know if your site is right for them. Further Reading: Finding Advertisers for Your Blog.

8. Series Page – Compilation – I’ve used ‘pages’ in two ways when it comes to series of posts. The first way is to put together a compilation page of all of the posts in a series. I don’t do this that regularly but in the example linked to put together the content from all 25 posts on my series on Battling Bloggers Block. I found that some readers really appreciated having the series all in the one place.

9. Series Page – Central Page – the other approach to managing a series of posts with a ‘page’ is to use one as a ‘central links page’ that you update with a link to each post in your series over time. This is what I did in my 31 Days to Building a Better Blog Series last August. The beauty of this approach over the ‘compilation page’ is that it can drive a lot more page views as readers are ‘sneezed’ in multiple directions into your blog. It’s also good because it allows readers to be more selective about which posts in a series they want to read rather than reading the full thing.

10. Affiliate Pre-Sell Pages – having a dedicated page for an affiliate program that you’re running can be a very smart move. If you refer to a product that you’re promoting regularly in your posts – rather than linking to the affiliate program link to a ‘pre-sell’ page on your own blog. This allows you to ‘pre-sell’ the product more with a personal message. This is what I do on my AdSense page here at ProBlogger. This doesn’t work for every affiliate program but I find with AdSense that it works well as their landing page can be a little off putting to new potential users of it. It also gives me a little more flexibility with how I mention AdSense in my posts as their Referrals program doesn’t allow html linking. Further Reading: 5 Tips for Improving AdSense Referral Earnings.

11. Services Pages – If you offer services to readers then develop a dedicated sales page for yourself and link to it prominently on your blog. The example here is my Consulting page – a page I used to point to regularly. These days I don’t offer these services any more (due to workload) so have not promoted it for a while. I find that when you have a dedicated page to selling your services you can sell yourself much more expansively than just a quick mention elsewhere on your blog.

12. Key Information Pages – Do you have information that you’re constantly providing to people over and over again (whether in blog posts, via email or in other ways)? Make a page about it and keep the link handy. That’s what I did with my b5media page and have found it to help me cut down my workload in answering questions about the network. I also link to it in my navigational bar here on ProBlogger and it’s lead to some great opportunities. You could do this with any business or product that you’re associated with.

13. Landing Pages – this page is an example of one over at DPS that I used last year as a landing page for an ad campaign that I ran. If you do choose to run an ad campaign to promote your blog then it’s much wiser to link your ads to a dedicated landing page than the front page of your blog. Read more on Advertising Your Blog and on Landing Pages.

14. Sneeze Pages – one great way to propel people deep within your blog is to develop a Sneeze Page or a ‘Best of’ page that highlights some of the better articles on your blog around a particular theme. Put links to these pages on your sidebar or refer to them in posts and you’ll see your page impressions per visit statistics go up.

15. Testimonial Pages – if you’re selling something (even if it’s yourself) to have some sort of a testimonial page can be very worthwhile. People base buying decisions increasingly upon the opinions of others – so capture some of these opinions and present them.

16. Event Specific Pages – speaking at an event? Create a ‘page’ specifically for those at it and mention that you’ve done so in your presentation. This way you can tailor a specific message to those visitors, their needs, your presentation and ‘sell’ something to them (whether it be subscribing to your blog, buying a product, selling your services or getting them to read certain pages on your blog. The example I’ve given is from a conference I did this time last year. I also used to have a section on that page selling a product that I mentioned in the presentation and it converted quite well.

17. 404 Page – when people arrive on your blog to a page that has been deleted, follow a dead link etc and end up on a default error page on your blog you’ve got a wasted opportunity on your hands. Customize your error pages to help readers find what they’re looking for or at least find something else that might interest them. Further Reading: How to Create a Custom 404 Error Page for Your Blog.

18. Special Projects – Last year I participated in a charity event called (Movember). Rather than letting this event completely take over my blog for the month I created a dedicated page for the event that those who were interested in could follow my updates on.

19. Guest Blogger Page – I’ve never spoken publicly about this page on ProBlogger before but it’s a page that I provide to guest bloggers of ProBlogger with some guidelines on how to write for this blog. I’ve done the same thing for DPS and have found that it’s been very useful. I get more posts that are written in a format that I can use and it’s cut down a lot of work for me.

20. Archives Page – there are numerous ways that you can present that archives of your blog. It becomes more challenging the larger your blog grows to be able to direct people back to your best previous work and a dedicated page can be helpful in that process rather than just presenting a list of categories or dates on your site bar. What I’ve attempted to do with mine is to provide a page with dated archives but also categories with some suggested starting points.

Some of the above ‘pages’ can of course be created from ‘posts’ on your blog (and there might be some good reasons for doing so) however my preference is to make them ‘pages’. In most cases this is because I prefer these pages to not be date specific. The way I have my links set up here at ProBlogger posts have dates showing and in the link structure – but pages don’t. In many of the above examples I also didn’t want to page to show up in my blog’s RSS feed or categories – but preferred them to be standalone pages.

What page types would you add to the above list?

Update: Some great suggestions in comments so far. I agree that a privacy page is a good one, as is a comments policy (I have one of these but wrote it as a post – I think it’d be more appropriate as a page though). Another one that I should have included is a ‘resource’ page – a page that lists recommended resources, books, courses etc. Lastly – I should have included a ‘blog roll’ or ‘links’ page. Thanks for everyone’s suggestions – keep them coming.