• By Connie Ragen Green
• Published 09/22/2008
• Writing

What is the difference between a website and a blog? I am asked this question regularly by the people who come to me to get started with building an online business. The simple answer is that they are both websites, but there is more to it than that. When you are a newbie to internet marketing, you just want to get your site ready for visitors to come and see what you have to offer. A website can take weeks, or even months, to develop just as you might like for it to appear. Most of us are impatient and just want to start doing business online, without having to wait for technical people and graphic designers to create and build our sites. Also, you will want to put up more than just one site, so it is important to be able to get it done quickly.

A blog, whether it is created using WordPress or Typepad, can do anything a traditional website can do. You can add an opt-in box, where visitors to your site can leave their name and email address in exchange for your free giveaway. You can also sell products or services from a blog, sending people direc

tly to an order page or to a sales page where they can learn more. A blog also allows people to leave their comments on what has been written. A traditional website, on the other hand, is typically more static. This means that you are not making updates to your website on a regular basis, so that the search engines are not spidering your site as often. You will gain in popularity over time, but you will need to add pages to it and include more content on a daily or weekly basis. It is much easier to set up a blog than it is to build a website. You can have a blog up and running within hours, and the search engines will be able to index it within the first 24 hours. You can also add pages to a blog, making it simple to include information about yourself and your products. Additionally, it will cost you much less to set up a blog than a website, and take much less time.

Many people consider a website to be a brochure. It is usually very nice looking visually, but if you just want to get your online business ready to make money for you on the internet, consider setting up a blog to make the entire process go most smoothly.

Connie Ragen Green teaches you how to write articles and eBooks to build an online business, as well as how to use the technology needed. Visit http://www.EbookWritingandMarketingSecrets.com to find out more.

by Connie Ragen Green