website vs. blog

[Ali]

I actually have three questions here...

1. So what are the advantages to having an actual website rather than a blog?

2. I have also been reading that you can have one website with one domain name and have smaller websites linking to the big one. I don't think I understand how to do that without paying for a bunch of individual domain names.

3. Have you found a good, user-friendly website making program that I can buy or use that I don't have to pay a monthly fee for from the host? I tried frontpage (which doesn't require a monthly fee) but it's a little over my head for me and can sometimes be a struggle to use.

Lots of questions because there is a lot I want to know! Thank you!

Ali

[longroad]

Lately my tactic is to have a static website AND a blog. So i build the blog in a subfolder off the site. I've had good results with this method.

If you are new to site making, I suggest wordpress. It's the easiest way to set up a site in minutes. Get a host with Cpanel, and you can install it through there with a few clicks.

[Linda Buquet]

Sorry confused by this:

"3. Have you found a good, user-friendly website making program that I can buy or use that I don't have to pay a monthly fee for from the host?"

Unless you go with a host like Yahoo or GoDaddy or others that have website builders that are included - TYPICALLY the web design software is totally separate from hosting.

NVU is a free web design program that lots like and say is easy. You still need to pay for a host which is separate. But you can get a decent host for under 10 a month. There is some free hosting but search engines don't like sites on free hosts so it would be really hard to get traffic.

[Linda Buquet]

Sorry, replying bassackwards

1. So what are the advantages to having an actual website rather than a blog?

For the most part the 2 function differently so it really depends what you are trying to do. A blog may be better than a site in many cases.

2. I have also been reading that you can have one website with one domain name and have smaller websites linking to the big one. I don't think I understand how to do that without paying for a bunch of individual domain names.

Maybe you are talking subdomains??? With most hosts these days subdomains are free. they would look like this luggage.mysite.com travel.mysite.com hotels.mysite.com Is that what you mean???

Lots of hosts allow multiple domains at no extra charge too, so all the sites could have their own domain.

Try painting us a picture of what you are trying to accomplish. Give us the general product category (not specific niche) and tell us how you want to lay it out or give us some idea of what you want to achieve so we can try to give you more specific answers.

[ExpAds]

Blogs can be easier to update and add pages to via platforms like Word Press. They also have lots of cool plug-ins to add functionality to your blog. Rankings wise there is no difference between sites and blogs...

[Bluesdayschild]

I don't know if this is any good for you Ali, but Holly Mann is offering a good deal:

She is giving away (setup and pre-prepared) websites totally free if you sign up to hosting with Bluehost through her website (cost of hosting is $6.95-$7.95 p/m with 1 Free domain name inc), you can have add-on or sub-domains (a one-off charge of $10 for reg. of new sub-domain name)

The websites are based on the newest version of Wordpress, they have
Full SEO capabilities (which allows you to add a custom title, description and meta tags to each post or page), User signup with forms (inc comment & photo on posts/articles if you like) & a lot of optional widgets are all pre-loaded.

I am not an affiliate of this programe, but I think it may be a good starting point for some people - For more indepth information:

Free Website Update from Holly Mann | Work From Home


Hope this helps someone

Caz

[genuwine4532]

1. In my experience Blogs do get ranked quicker than websites, search engines LOVE blogs, and they are really hot right now, especially Googles blog service Blogger. Also remember the main difference of blogs and websites is that blogs are vibrant constantly being updated with fresh content (which Google loves) while websites are static. So if you are planning a niche or how to site where you will be adding fresh content, updates and entries on a regular basis then a blog is a good idea, BUT if you are planning something like a store then a website would probably be better.
ALSO If you are planning a long term biz you should not use a free service like Blogger, it is better to buy a domain and use a blog creation software like WORDPRESS, BECAUSE if you use a free bloging service like BLOGGER you do NOT OWN that site OR the design and if you are planning a long term business you should OWN the domain and the site's design. Otherwise it's like renting a house and renovating it even though it's not yours.

2. I think you are referring to subdomains, which means you register (pay) for your main domain for example: yourdomain.com and then you can add subdomains to it from your hosting company cpanel. A subdomain would be like help.yourdomain.com or dogs.yourdomain.com or whatever.yourdomain.com. You don't pay for the subdomains you only pay for the MAIN domain.

3. Forget frontpage! that is way too complicated. There is enough to learn with affil marketing without having to deal with that techie headache. COFFEECUP VISUAL SITE DESIGNER is the GREATEST and EASIEST web builder software. If you can use WORD you can use COFFEECUP. TOTALLY user-friendly. Beautiful templates, NO HTML required, wysiwig, drop and drag features, and FTP upload. It is very user friendly. I used it and built a site in 2 hours start to finish. It's 49.95 BUT they give you a free trial and you can build your site and use the service as long as you want for FREE (the only catch is you will have a link on your site to them at the bottom of the page, but if you buy it then that link goes away) Also their customer support is the greatest, they ACTUALLY answer the phone WITHOUT holding and you can get help if you get stuck. coffeecup.com is their website. HERE IS THE LINK: CoffeeCup - HTML Editor, Flash & Web Design Software

There is also Webeasy 7 Pro. Another good software BUT Coffeecup is better more user friendly. You can get a free trial BUT just to see how it works you cannot publish a site with the free trial like you can with Coffeecup. HERE IS THE LINK: Web Easy Professional 7

It is not a good idea to use the web builders that come with Hosting: Mainly because if you ever want to switch hosts YOU will not be able to edit your site, you will have to find a host that uses the SAME web builder and that is hard to do because they usually use different ones.
Also those builders are NOT the greatest design wise and they are hard to work with because you don't download the builder to your computer you have to use it on their server and that means you don't really get a full screen view you view and design it in your browser, which sucks!

Hope this helps--I asked the SAME THREE QUESTIONS when I first started out, some things I learned the hard way, paid for hosting with site builder which sucked and I lost money.

[HL08]

1.A website is more professional than a blog and you have more control over the design.

2.What you have are extensions of your website. For example, your site is "mydomain.com" You can have unlimited extensions, such as "mydomain.com/topic" "mydomain.com/topic1" etc.

3.Do a google search on "free website templates" or "free websites and hosting"

[Rob_TID]

More professional? Something like 78% (can't remember the study) of people don't even know when they're on a blog, so I don't think that's really the case.

I use blogs almost exlusively. If you build pages rather than posts, then you can structure them like a normal website. Plus it's a lot easier to put up new content because you dn't have to mess around with nav etc.

HOWEVER, if you can't spend 6 hours learning HTML then you probably don't have the staying power required to be a successful affiliate. I mean come on. This isn't a get rich quick thing and there is a very big learning curve of which HTML would be a VERY small part. You don't need it, but you shouldn't shy away from it either.