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** This post was written by Kirsty Henderson. Find out more about Kirsty below **
Here are the rest of the posts in this series about building niche websites which make you money:
Part 1: Should you build a blog or static html website?
Part 2: Deciding On A Topic for Your Niche Website
Part 3: Getting Your Website Online (Part 1)
Part 4: Getting Your Website Online (Part 2)
Part 5: Getting Traffic To Your Website
Part 6: Optimising Your Website For The Search Engines
Part 7: Monetising Your Website (Part 1)
Part 8: Monetizing Your Website (Part 2)
When I started building websites back in 2001 I don’t think the word ‘blog’ existed and now it’s as much a part of cyberspace vocabulary as ’spam’ or ‘Google’.
It took me along time to jump onto the blogging bandwagon but now that I’m on it, I’m hooked. That doesn’t mean however that I don’t still build old-school static HTML sites and rely on these sites for over 95% of my income.
When it comes to choosing the right platform for your online empire, I thought I’d share my experiences with you so you can make an informed decision of what type of site is right for you…
Blogs
It took me years to be convinced that blogging had anything to offer me that building a regular website didn’t – now that I’ve started blogging, I see that they do have many advantages.
The Pros:
- Easy to get up and running quickly – content management systems (such as Wordpress) have been designed with blogging in mind and, while they are powerful tools with a lot of additional potential and functionality, getting a basic site set up is quick and easy.
- Interactive – commenting and other features found on blogs allow you to engage in conversations with your readers, build relationships, seek opinions and network with like-minded individuals.
- You can do cool things with no tech knowledge – plugins are always being created by techy types and shared with bloggers (often for free). These enable you to add features to your blog that do all sorts of wonderful things at the click of a button.
- Link building advantages – bloggers are more likely to exchange links with other bloggers without too much effort. As bloggers get to know each other, discover new like-minded people and build a network of online friends, everyone is usually happy to pass on link love both within their posts and in their sidebar blogrolls.
- Ability to create a following – people who visit blogs tend to be more interested in what you have to say and having a group of people who want to listen to you is never a bad thing for business.
The Cons:
- Pressure to keep posting regularly – to keep your readers happy and keep them coming back to your site, you’ll have to continue to post interesting articles on a regular basis. For me, if I have nothing to say, posting can sometimes feel like a chore and I can’t imagine trying to run more than two blogs.
- Cookie-cutter themes – if design is your thing then you will have a lot of options to choose from for the appearance of your site but with millions of blogs out there, there are bound to be some lookalikes. If you want to modify your layout and design it is possible, but if you don’t know anything about HTML or CSS then you’ll have a pretty steep learning curve and some frustrating times ahead.
- Not as loved by Google(?) – this one might be a touchy subject and up for debate but, in my experience, blogs get indexed more slowly and don’t do as well in the Google results as static sites. I have had brand new sites do better in Google than blog posts that have been around for years which leads me to believe that Google has a bit more love for static sites.
Static HTML Sites
With blogs seemingly taking over the internet these days it might be tempting to build all of my new sites as blogs. I haven’t taken the bait because static HTML sites work for what I want them for and there’s no point fixing something that isn’t broken for the sake of a few extra bells and whistles.
The Pros:
- Not as time-consuming to maintain – this is personally why I favour static sites; once you’ve got the thing built, you aren’t as obliged to update it consistently. I like to build a site, leave it for several months and then add content as I feel like it.
- Lots of tools to help you build – there are plenty of tools out there to make building a site from scratch pretty easy. You might not understand the code but you will be able to get a site up and running using Dreamweaver, Microsoft Frontpage or any of the online website builders.
- No community to impress – static websites don’t usually have the tools required to cultivate a community, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. No community means that there is nobody you need to keep happy. So if you want to neglect your site for a month or a year or longer, you can do so without feeling like you’re turning your back on your readers.
The Cons:
- Getting a site up can be slow – if you decide to build your own sites from scratch using HTML there is a huge learning curve. On the plus side there are loads of free HTML guides and plenty of forums to ask questions on, but the learning curve is daunting and trial and error is very time consuming.
- Difficult to get inbound links – without the sense of community that blogs have and without constantly changing content, finding people willing to link to you is more difficult
Don’t jump into blogging when building a static site might work better for you, and vice versa. Take some time at this first stage to think about the pros and cons for each, including aspects like how much you want to maintain your site(s), how much technical knowledge you’re starting with and how quickly you want to be up and running.
And most importantly, decide what your goals are for your website and online business before deciding whether a blog or static website will work best for you.
From someone who knows little about CSS and PHP, its great to see an article like this which merits HTML static sites.
Not sure about the google listings though. I ran a WP blog at the start which burst ahead of my static site. But I do like the long term pros of static sites over blogs. They are easier to follow as both human and bots seem to attest. Meanwhile blog archives seem to dissapear relatively quickly.
Anyway, as someone once scorned for a creating a html site it was good to read this.
Good information on Websites. I built static HTML sites for a long time myself, then I got away from it, and the last two years I have been coming back. I found that blogs are far easier to build and far less time consuming. I have also found that they do much better much quicker with Google than a static site. There are some great plugins for WordPress that will really help you get noticed quickly.
The huge drawback I have found is that they are so time consuming. I like to write but you brought up a great point, if I don’t feel like writing it can be quite a chore.
I do have a question on how you get income from them. Are you selling them or building them for others, or do you build a site and try to create an income stream from them? I have been slightly successful from creating an income stream from a site but I have yet to get out of it exactly what I want.
my advice is to choose the type of site based on the type of content you want to produce.
… and once you know what you want to present, i’d recommend building the site on something like wordpress, REGARDLESS of whether or not it’s a “static” site or a blog.
suddenly you have a CMS, a way to update your content quickly… you can have static pages and dynamic sections, options for user comments on any page, automatic archiving, searching, multiple distinct authors… etc.
and depending on your abilities with HTML/CSS, or if you have JQuery, PHP, MYQSL even better, you can make something that doesn’t look at all like a blog but has access to all the important features. i have friends in design studios that produce client sites STRICTLY in wordpress.
sounding like a blatant ad for wordpress. sorry:) i just can’t go back to building things from scratch. if you have know-how and time, try out Drupal… with the countless plugins, you could even use it to build a pretty massive social network. it’s a crazy open source project with active communities that meet up in person in cities all over the world… in case you like to geek it out:)
that’s all…
disfruta el dia chicos
As a web designer myself, I can’t imagine building anything NOT in WordPress these days, even if the person just wants a basic, 5-page site.
Who says you have to use the blogging features of a platform in every case? Why not use it in order to take advantage of its other benefits, and leave the decision of “to blog, or not to blog” up to the user?
Besides, if they decide six months down the road that blogging sounds good to them, you’ve just saved countless hours in porting over the static templates into WordPress.
(it’s obvious where my bias lies… but I’m never going back to anything but database-driven sites, no matter the application.)
ha. thanks adam
that’s a far more concise way to say it:)
Great post, I have had the same sort of dilemma as yourself, I started building websites in 1998 and so I have always done it that way, I got into blogging really late but now I now really love it.
What I have done with most of my sites is to build the main site as a traditional website and then also include a blog into it, trying to integrate the two as much as possible, which works for me. A good example is on my Safari Holiday Guide Website – I would love to have your thoughts on this as an idea of the best of both worlds.
I would like to see more Wordpress themes designed for small businesses where they might only have a handful of articles and information pages, as opposed to a long home page with lots of entries. Some magazine themes work well in this manner, but I would like to see some even more simple than that.
Yay – I was waiting for someone else to mention building static sites using Wordpress!
It’s something we do exclusively now too – both for our clients and ourselves. So much easier than building html sites and from a client’s perspective gives them far more control and reduces their reliance on you.
@Don Mak – there are quite a number of themes which can do this – or you just limit the number of articles/posts on the home page in the setting. As an example our Headstart sites are all built in WP (strategyheadstart.com, technologyheadstart.com etc.).
Very timely post!
From a location independent point of view, one problem I’ve had with wordpress sites is not being able to update them when net access was down. Plus I’m a little paranoid of anything that I can’t just easily re-upload in case something goes wrong!
But wordpress sites do look good with some of the templates around at the moment and in my experience seem to rank better than static sites.
One tip I found is to remove the year from the post display, that way if people do come years later they aren’t put off. To make this work you’ve got to make sure you have timeless fantastic content of course!
The other disadvantage of WordPress is the requirement to be forever updating it because of security holes. That’s my only problem with it – as other have said above – I have WordPress sites which haven’t been updated for months -remove the date on the post and who would know?
I am hooked on WordPress. Being able to buy a domain, and get fresh content indexed rolling on a new blog within 24 hours is too thrilling for me! I find it a lot more fun than what I use to do years ago with HTML and web editing software.
Nice post. I too have both and couldn’t really see myself giving up either (although it is a kind of sweet thought sometimes when I am struggling to come up with daily blog posts).
I’m glad people have found this article useful as I think it’s a topic that might sometimes be overlooked.
For you Wordpress people, I totally agree. I think that WP can be used as a CMS without it looking or acting like a blog. Setting this up isn’t always easy though. I had a crack and couldn’t work it out and gave up. My problem was that I wanted different sidebars on different sections and, while I’m sure this is possible, it drove me mad and I gave up. I have gotten along just fine with my ’static’ type sites and without the headaches. If someone has the dedication and patience early on to master this though, it would certainly be a good way to go.
A static website is not the best choice now-a-days. A web site with regular web updates is the way to go. This does not necessarily means having a blog on your web site. A section where you can find company/industry news and/or product updates is a good start.
It is important to see the future of your web project and then choose a platform that fills your need. Wordpress is absolutely great for a small website or a blog web site, but if you want more flexibility and want to implement a membership area, download area, an e-shop, or a directory of some sort, I would look into Content Management Systems like Joomla! and Drupal. Both excellent systems with lots of interesting modules and components to pimp your web site.
Choose wisely when you start out. Once your web site has been indexed by search engines, and people have subscribed to your RSS feed or bookmarked your URLs, a change to different software is quite touch.
I am currently releasing my new travel blog and have been searching for information like this. It seems that a combination of static and blog sites works best for potential income. Is it beneficial for the static sites to fall into the same genre as your blog?