Should You Have a Website or a Blog?

It’s important that you make your presence felt on the Internet as soon as possible. Even before you have a product available for purchase, you should let the world know who you are, so that when your product is available, your name is already familiar.

But should you get a website or a blog? Here are the advantages and disadvantages of both:

On a website, you can post sample chapters. You can separate your information onto pages, which is neat and organized. You can have a store included on the site, as well as reviews, links to articles, etc. You can hold a lot of information on a site and it can be as complex as you like. You can do any design, any color, any font, and upload any pictures.

Disadvantages to a site – if you don’t know how to set it up and maintain it, you will need to hire a webmaster. It takes a little bit longer to change things on a site – everything is done in html and that requires going in a layer. There is also a charge for the site and for the domain name -- you can pay as little as $6.95 a month all the way up the scale, depending on what company you go with.

With a blog, you don’t have quite the room you do with a site. It would be pretty hard to organize your sample chapters, reviews, etc. and while I imagine you could set up a store, it wouldn’t be as nicely laid-out.

However, the advantages of a blog are pretty good. You can change things around as much as you like. You don’t have to write code. You can interact with your readers through comments. If you don’t like a blog, just erase it. There’s no need to hire anyone to maintain it – it’s very user-friendly. And in most cases, it's free.

So what’s my advice? Should you get a site or a blog? Personally, I think you should have both. There are advantages to both, and you’ll find that some people don’t enjoy reading blogs, so send them to your site. Others prefer blogs, so communicate with them that way. And whatever you do, make sure to link them to each other.