Should you start blogging to make money?

But, you heard blogging is dead, so…

Maybe start vlogging because it’s the newest trend.

What to do!? Blog or vlog?

Blog VS vlog

Blog and vlog are complete opposites. Blogging is wordings in text and still images or reading books. Vlogging is seeing and hearing things in action or watching TV.

Let’s look at blogging and vlogging separately. Then you can decide what is best for you or your business.

Blog

Blog or weblogging started with the advent of the internet. Blogging was all the rage until social media came out guns blazing. Then people began declaring that blogging is dead. 

Blogging was like a diary, a journal of someone’s life. And, it was alive and well in the early 2000s. But, in 2014, social media replaced blogs. 

[source: History of blogging]

Today, no one is visiting someone’s website anymore to read what they had for lunch. No, it’s easier to keep up to date on social media. 

The social media revolution had people declaring that blogs are dead. Yes, it’s dead if you are using blogging as a tool to write about what you had for dinner. 

However, blogging is a great way to sell your products or services. Even if you are a non-profit company, blogging is excellent to gain awareness for your organization.

Why blog?

Let’s talk about how blogging can make you money or help your business. That is the reason why you are thinking about whether you should blog or vlog, right?

Well, if I got you all wrong, then I’m sorry. If you just want to keep it as a hobby, that is more than fine.

Blogging is a great way to keep a diary of your life. You can write anything from the food you ate, places you’ve been, and your letter to Santa.

If this is your thing, then blog on Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, or Blogger. These social media platforms cater to people who love to write, more so with Tumblr and Blogger. And they are all for free. 

Blogging as a service

Are you a budding writer? Got something to share with hundreds of millions of readers? Medium offers a free platform for people to write ideas and share their stories to 170 million readers (according to Medium).

The best thing about joining Medium is that they pay you when people engage with your stories and blogs. Join Medium. 

You can also make writing your business and get paid for your services. You can start a website offering your services. The website will act as your portfolio to showcase your work, to check out your prices, and for people to get to know you better. 

Moreover, your website will feature a blog to help potential customers and capture lead for your business. Start your blog the right way, click here.

Disclosure: We partner with awesome companies to bring you the best deals possible. And when you purchase from the following links, we earn a commission at no cost to you.

You can also sign up for freelancing sites such as Fiverr and get paid for your services. As a blogger, you know how to write and make your article flow. And, businesses nowadays need plenty of written content. 

Don’t think Fiverr can make you money with writing? Just have a look at the following writers who made Fiverr their money-making platform.

Just have a look through these Fiverr success stories. 

Take Morissa Schwartz, feefeertr on Fiverr, for example. Morissa started on Fiverr when she was a student and now owns her own publishing company.

You can use Fiverr as a side income in addition to your blogging business. And as your business grows, Fiverr can be your friend by hiring freelancers to help with your content.

Generate traffic

A website is great to refer leads to learn more about your business. What if you can get people to your website without cold calling? Cold calling is an unsolicited phone call to acquire business and sales.

I hated calling people I don’t know and asking them to buy something and vice versa. What if you don’t have to call strangers to generate income for your business?

Generating traffic with your blog is a content marketing game. And with content marketing, you need plenty of, well, content.

When you blog about things related to your business, you get brand awareness, inbound leads, and sales.

How do you do this exactly?

Let’s say you are selling cat shirts. How do you get people to your online store? 

You can harass everyone you know by calling, texting, and emailing them about your store. Or you can leverage the search engines where thousands of people are searching for cat shirts daily.

When you write about “where to buy cat shirts,” a browser can click on your article and be directed to your store.

You can educate cat lovers about the best cat food, buy the best cat food, or the best food for a fat cat. Seriously, people are searching for the best food for a fat cat.

When people read your blog, you can give them a chance to buy your products or sign up to your email list where you can tell them more about your cat shirts.

Vlog

Vlog is blogging in video format. It’s the same principle, different delivery.

The first recorded vlog, according to Wiki, was on the 2nd of January, 2000. Adam Kontras wrote a blog together with a video about his move to LA to pursue showbiz.

Vlogging started gaining traction in 2005 when three Paypal employees introduced Youtube to the masses, and people flocked.

Only a year later, in July 2006, Youtube became the fifth most popular web destination. 

By October 2006, Google announced that they acquired Youtube for $1.65 Billion in Google stocks.

Today, Youtube holds the second spot for user search. Technically, Youtube is Google. The amount of search on Youtube is more significant than the other notable search engine, Bing. 

Why vlog?

Similar to blogging, you can also get paid and generate traffic with vlogging. Your success or failure depends on how good you are.

Get paid to vlog

Vlogging has become popular in the online social sphere. People started sharing their recipes, travels, make-up routine, food, and anything you can think of. 

As people share their stories, they amass a massive following making them influencers.

Being an influencer, you can get sponsor deals from large companies. You can promote products and earn a commission. Or sell your own.

The most known method to earn money with vlogging is through ads. However, making considerable money with ads needs a lot of audiences.

So, if you can garner plenty of followers on Youtube, you can say, “you made it.”

Just have a look at these Youtube influencers featured in Forbes.com who “made it” with vlogging:

10. VanossGaming (Evan Fong) rakes in $11.5M just playing games. Ah, I wish I could be funny while playing games. But, I’m too focused on playing the game that I can’t really do anything else.

9. Dan TDM (Daniel Middleton) is another guy who talks about games all day and makes $12M. 

7. We have a tie between these two gamers! Markiplier (Mark Fischbach) and Pewdiepie (Felix Kjellberg) take number 7 with an earning of $13M. What is it with gamers? I mean, I game too!

6. Preston (Preston Arsement) earned $14M to take the number 6 spot. Yes, another gamer.

5. Jeffree Star is not a gamer. Thank god! Jeffree is a musician but talks about makeup. Jeffree currently has a makeup line which he is pushing out to the market using his influence and Youtube. Jeffree earned $17M.

4. Rhett and Link are funny-ish, sorry. But, what do I know, they have 16.7M followers, and I have 14. Yup, that’s one, four. Fourteen followers. Rhett and Link earned $17M, woah!

3. Anastasia Radzinskaya has a children’s channel that has earned $18M! Anastasia makes videos playing with her dad. What the fudge! I’m gona have to start my daughter’s channel.

2. Dude Perfect. I’ve seen these guys’ videos, and they are amaze-balls! These five guys play stunts, break world records, and do silly stuff. It’s funny, entertaining, and they break (try) world records.

1. Ryan Kaji. If you have a kid, you’d know Ryan. You may even have seen his product line selling at toy shops. Ryan tops the list with a whopping earning of $26M. 

[source: The world’s highest paid Youtube stars]

The income figures are pre-tax and from June 2018 to July 2019. 

So, should you start your gaming channel or start playing barbies with your daughter? Well, whatever you do, I hope you have a good video presence. 

There are many people making videos nowadays. It’s the trend, after all. And, with videos, you need to provide amazing vlogs to cut through the noise. 

Look, not everyone can “make it” by vlogging. Even if you’re talented but hate getting haters, you’ll have a hard time. Embrace the haters, they make you famous, or you already are. 

Drive traffic

You don’t have to have a high amount of followers to make vlogging work for your business. Youtube is also a search engine. And you can take advantage of that by vlogging about what people are searching for.

Going back to our example of selling cat shirts, you can get your brand seen by people searching for cat-related videos. 

Cat shirt buyers are probably into cats and not dogs. Making a video about how cats are smarter than dogs will get you the right audience for your cat shirts.

When people are watching your video about cats outsmarting dogs and sees the cat shirts you’re offering. There’s a good chance they will click on your product page.

Blog and vlog difference

Blog and vlog have the same purpose but are delivered differently. A blog is written content, while a vlog contains videos. 

Blogging and vlogging can generate traffic to increase brand awareness, make sales, and help your business grow. 

Blogger vs. vlogger

A blogger is someone like me who spends hours writing about what I love. Of course, there are bloggers who hate what they are writing about and often fail at blogging.

So why do bloggers blog?  Some make it their full-time job – you see them everywhere online, pushing product after product.  

Some are trying to promote themselves as authors working on a new book or screenplay.  

And then there are some who blog because they love writing and sharing what they know with other people.   

A vlogger is who I consider a YouTuber.  But I’ve heard vlogger defined as anyone who has a camera and makes videos about themselves, their life, or their passion.

I’m not going to lie – there are some amazing YouTubers out there, but also some that need to retire because they have no talent whatsoever. I’m one of them.

Some of them should just take up painting or sculpting instead. Of course, we all live in a world where everyone creates content for free and gets paid nothing by another company (in most cases) for posting on YouTube (or social media platforms).    

Why do vloggers vlog?

They get to express themselves and their opinions. They’re able to inspire others with their ideas, wisdom, knowledge – or lack thereof, depending on who you watch.

They get a chance to show the world what they’ve been doing for years. Maybe some did something special once in a while and no one really knew about it until he/she started vlogging. Then the secret got out and everyone responded positively.

Some of them just want to travel – they want to add life experiences in order to live – they want to do this every day!  Maybe that’s why I love traveling so much. I get to experience something new every day.

Yes, I was a blogger, turned vlogger, turned blogger, and now contemplating about starting a vlog again. Argh!

Travel blog vs travel vlog

Look, I’ve or we’ve started a travel vlog back on May 26, 2016. That was 5 years ago.

The theme was about me eating food around the world (Asia). I didn’t make it around the world. Hopefully, we can get back into it.

I found out that I was horrendous in front of the camera. But, my partner is a natural. You can definitely tell the difference. I was boring, she was more “authentic” so to speak.

We only have 200 subscribers, I did not promote the channel or did any intensive marketing. I thought we would go viral! That wasn’t the case.

Producing content is very time-consuming. More so than blogging. In saying that, after you get familiarize with the tools, or mainly the ripple delete tool, you’ll cut your editing time in half.

You also need to templatize your work process as this can help you with time tremendously.

I also wrote (blogged) about our travels. But I stopped as I was mainly focused on the vlogging part. Which, as I said, very time-consuming. Also, I let the hosting expire without moving it to another.

I can’t find the content on the internet but I still own the domain, foovler.com. I would try to get it back but I don’t think I have the time to blog in another site.

In the end, both can make money. There are a lot of travel blogs and travel vlogs. There are definitely stiff competitions in the market, don’t be scared. It just means it’s validated.

My advice is to focus on what you’re comfortable with. If you’re shy in front of the camera and you’re self-conscious about people looking, stick to blogging.

If you think blogging is dead, you’re severely mistaken. There are many people searching on the internet for the best places to go in certain places. As well as places to eat, things to do, how to’s.

These people searching are more than happy to read about your detailed guide on making money while evading massive anacondas in the Amazon.

There are many guides out there on making money with a travel blog. But, I hope you read our comprehensive guide on how to start a travel blog while sitting on the beach instead.

If you’re a natural in front of the camera, then vlog for now and have someone transcribe your videos once you have money coming in.

You can talk in front of the camera or be behind the camera and capture the beauty of nature or the hustle and bustle of the city. Then sprinkle your voice when you edit.

Conclusion

Blog or vlog? That is the question. The answer? Be everywhere!

A company may have the budget to do both blogging and vlogging. Employ someone good on screen to represent your brand. And hire writers to blog unique content.

If you’re an individual running your own business, tackling blogging and vlogging at the same time will be difficult. 

Stick to one thing for now. Which one? You should ask yourself, what are you good at? 

If you’re comfortable in front of the camera, charismatic, or funny, then you should do video content for your business. 

Are you more of an introvert? Love to write? Then stick to blogs. You don’t have to do videos because it’s the trend. Blogging is not dead. It will never be if you’re using it the right way.

If you can do both, but you don’t have the time, then it comes down to which one can you crank out faster? Editing videos can take days if you’re starting. Don’t forget the time and effort to make the content. 

It’s the same with writing content. It took me two days to write this article. Well, six hours, but you have to let it sit a day and proofread.

If you still have no idea after reading all that, you should do both. You’ll know which you’re better at or love doing more after a couple of months.

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