Should I Start A Blog Or Website First?

Should I start a blog or website first? I believe this is a common question many newbies ask nowadays.
To answer this question, you must first ask yourself what is your objective?
Are you trying to:
- sell your own product?
- make money as an affiliate?
- make money from advertising such as Adsense?
- Or you simply want to share your knowledge with the world (and make some money in the process)?

Sell your own product….

If you are trying to sell your own product, the answer is obvious. You should first have your product website.

You should focus your initial effort in getting traffic from joint venture and advertising, and building a list. You should not waste your time blogging to thin air (assuming you are totally new and has no traffic sources).
BUT as soon as you have a substantial list, say 1000 subscribers, you can start blogging, with 2 intentions in mind: 1) to build relationship and sales, and 2) to build search engine traffic “for the future”.

Make money as an affiliate….

With so many ways to make money as an affiliate, it’s impossible for me to cover the details here. But whichever way you use, starting with a blog is definitely not the fast way and certainly not the way I would recommend.

You can start with a presell website, advertise to get targeted traffic and sales. Or you can start with a squeeze page to build a targeted list.

You should start a blog ONLY when you have a list, and you should blog with 2 intentions in mind: 1) to build relationship with your list and make more sales, and 2) to build more traffic from the search engine.

Make money from advertising such as Adsense….

How about building many blogs on different niches, optimizing them for search engine traffic and monetizing them through Adsense?

Compared to static HTML websites, blog indeed offers a better alternative because you can easily make changes to your blog through templates.

But as your empire gets bigger, you may realize that it becomes troublesome to manage so many blogs, with so many different logins, databases and templates. I believe there are software that you can use to mass manage blogs, especially WordPress self-hosted blogs. (I don’t use such software. If you have any recommendation, feel free to share it below.)

Note: If you want to use blog for this purpose, remember to remove posting date from the template and DO NOT show any post history by date. The reason is obvious. Since you are not going to update the blog very often, disclosing the posting dates will not do you any good.

Besides static HTML website and blog, another alternative is to start with .php websites. (Note: WordPress blog is also a PHP website, but here I’m talking about simple PHP website without the need to install or create databases.) The advantage of creating website in .php instead of .html is that you can use the PHP INCLUDE function to build simple templates for your website. If you were to make some changes, you just have to change the templates instead of altering every file. If you understand HTML, you can easily pick up simple PHP language and learn to do it.

Share your knowledge….

Lastly, if you simply want to get online and share your knowledge, I advise you to start with a content website instead of a blog.
Before you think I am anti-blogging, read my explanation below:

If you are good at scrapbooking, you probably have some fundamental skills that you want to share. It will be better if you create something like an online learning center for scrapbooking fans, with organized scrapbooking tutorials that your visitors can study.


You can still have a blog, but it’s more for current issues, latest promotions, etc. Yet again, you should always build a list if you want to start a blog.

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Another Interesting Business Idea For Discussion

This is another episode of Tuesday With Kenneth where I help our members with their challenges. Today we have Jane, who shared with us her interesting business idea.

It’s an interesting concept, though I’m not too sure how profitable it will be.
From the look of your website, it seems that you are not too competent in web programming. It’s okay, but you must keep in mind that if you want to grow, you must take one of the 2 paths:
- Master web programming yourself
- Outsource web programming and learn how to manage programmers
That is something you need to keep in mind and work on consistently. For now, you just need to promote your website and measure the response.
Promoting your website is pretty straight forward. You can go to various book forums to spread the words out. At this stage, you need to know what is the market response to your service.
Bear in mind that market response depends on 3 factors:
- The effectiveness of your sales letter (in this case, your homepage)
- The source of your traffic (whether it’s targeted)
- The business model
If you are not getting response from your promotion effort, it must be due to one of these 3.

About your sales letter / homepage

My assessment is that your homepage is weak and it needs some major improvement.
You need to ask yourself an important question, “What do you expect your visitor to do when they visit your website?”
If you want them “to buy a book from you for $1″, then you need to show them what book you’re selling.
If your objective is to get them to sign up your newsletter, you should include the signup form on the same page and give them a good reason why they should opt-in.
Remember, when people visit your website, it’s your job to arouse their interest and give them a clear instruction on what to do next. If not, they will just do one thing – leave!

About your business model

As I said in my earlier post on How To Start An Online Business, never reinvent the wheel.
Your business is actually buying and selling cheap books. A simple search for “buy cheap books” and “sell books” returns several established websites that are already doing that.
As an entrepreneur, your job is to think of how to make your service better and different from other competitors.
For now, it’s apparent that you can’t win them in terms of popularity. You also can’t beat them in terms of website features and design. But there is one thing you can be better now – you can have a better business model, since you have the advantage of evaluating and improving their business models.

Do not be intimidated by these established sites. Start with whatever resources you have now. As long as you keep upgrading your skills and keep moving towards the vision of a better business model, your business must grow and prosper.

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