Difference between content based site & blog

[cameron]

I am a newbie to these things as you can probably tell. I cannot see exactly what the difference is between a content based site and a blog as a means of attracting ads, links and putting a shop like Amazon, to generate income from those things.

Also, if you build up the site/blog gradually with information on one subject that you know about, can you end up with an ebook that you can then sell?

I do not want to wait until I have written all I know about the subject to get the site/blog going

Thanks

[tke71709]

All blogs are content sites, but not all content sites are blogs...

The general difference between a content site and a blog is that users generally expect blogs to be updated on a regular basis.

And yes, you can go the e-book route with your content eventually but you'll often find that your relationships with your readers (more so on a blog) are worth more in terms of revenue potential than an e-book would be.

IMHO the more ways you can package and sell the same information, the better for you.

[benitez17]

I can't speak to the ebook part of your question, but my opinion on the difference between a content based site and a blog is that a content based site generally has information that does not need to be updated as often, while a blog has articles that discuss current events or opinions. For example, I have a economics blog where several different articles are posted each day, and I have a network of celebrity image sites that I haven't touched since I bought them a couple years ago. The celebrity image sites have stable traffic that has actually increased over the last year despite the fact that I have basically ignored them, but I can see a direct correlation between the number of articles posted on the economics blog each day and the number of visitors.

All other things being equal, I would rather own and manage a content based site because there is less required maintenance. If you can write interesting content on a topic that doesn't change much, it will be a lot more useful in the long term than an article with your opinions on the latest hot political issue.

[ClaytonL]

I agree with benitez. Blogs are more date dependent then your typical content site. The typical blog will consist of timely articles, similar to a magazine. Also, some people may call a website a blog just because it's built using blog software such as Wordpress.

[cameron]

Thank you. Useful feed-back. Just a couple more questions:

- Can you build a content site, as you go along, without putting off the visitors?
- Is it necessary, or better to have a box for comments on a content site?

[hooperman]

- Can you build a content site, as you go along, without putting off the visitors?

Do you mean putting visitors off because of lack of content? I suppose it's a concern. If I know I can create content quickly, I tend to get a home page up there ASAP and then keep adding pages (a cavalier approach, I know). If I think there's going to be a delay between new pages being published, I wait until I've got a few ready and then publish. This is just my preference.

- Is it necessary, or better to have a box for comments on a content site?

I think it depends on how you want the site to develop and also the area the site is in. Do you want a community to interect with? Some niches are better than others for interaction. Content about political issues might be more able to provoke debate than a statistics tutorial site, but then again maybe not. Learners might need clarification that the author can provide. So... it depends!

[Clinton]

Great questions, cameron, and welcome to the forums.

Can I give you an example. My own site was bought off the shelf for $100 a few years ago. I intended converting it to talk about buying and selling websites, making money online etc. Initially I put up about half a dozen pages. That was a few years ago. Since then I've been adding content on my area of expertise. It now has a few hundred pages and gets in excess of 6,000 uniques most days. I still add content when I get a chance. And that last bit was important to me.

My site doesn't use a CMS. It doesn't use php and a database. The pages are just static pages. There are upsides to this - not least that nobody can leave comments - but the downsides are that I can't easily make sitewide changes. If I ever want to go for a new design it would be an enormous amount of work.

Having a blog would have meant me having to make posts at fairly regular intervals rather than the sporadic pattern I follow based on my free time. It would have also "imposed" on me the taking of comments from all and sundry, dealing with spam, building relationships with my regular "followers", answering questions and, maybe, even networking with other bloggers. That's not my style and wasn't a commitment I was looking for. There are bloggers who'll swear that what I'm doing is lunacy - no pings, no fresh content, no userbase I can keep selling to, not even a newsletter. They may have a point but I'm satisfied that what I have works for me. The last offer I had for the site was a six figure sum in pounds sterling. Would it have been worth more if it was a blog? I don't know. Maybe. Would I have done things differently? An emphatic no.

What do you see working for you?

[Clinton]

PS: If you want to add a comment box to a non-blog there are tools such as instantsitecomments.com

[hooperman]

On one of my sites I've tried to combine the advantages of blogness (ease of adding new content, quick sitewide changes) with those of static sites by editing the template to remove all trace of dates and comments. I've removed the last posts/archives bit in the sidebar and replaced them with static links to my posts so it looks like a static site.

I wish I'd just made a static site now. One of the big limitations of blogs - for me - is the fact that you can't control at page level the navigational links. You're stuck with the same ones on every single page (unless there's some plugin that can change that).

[Clinton]

Yeah, if you look at the first two links in the nav bar of my previous example (I won't drop another link ) you'll see that I used this ability to control page level links to good effect. People looking to buy a website get offered different links to those looking for information on selling.