Would you like to be a content creator but not sure which platform to use or how to start?
Are you thinking about a vlog vs blog but can’t make up your mind? Not sure which one will make you more money or what you will need to succeed?
In this post, I will cover the main differences between a blog and a vlog, the monetization options, and the personality traits you will need to be successful with each.
I will also cover what vlogging and blogging is and give you some examples of successful vloggers and bloggers.
So, let’s start with some important definitions.
Table of Contents
Vlog vs. Blog Meaning
Let’s start with a straightforward definition of each of them –
What is a Blog
A blogging business is based on written content. A blog is a website where you publish content regularly in a specific niche.
The content can be informational, like an overview of a topic, tips, and step-by-step guides—for example, how to crochet a flower. It can also be transactional in the form of product recommendations in this niche, such as the 10 best tools for woodworking.
One of the most popular income sources for a blog is affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is where you, the blogger, sign up to be an affiliate for a specific brand and recommend products of this brand on the blog.
Every time someone clicks on this link and makes a purchase, you make a commission. This is why content that is a product review or list of product recommendations in a specific niche is usually called a ‘transactional post’.
Every piece of content published on the blog is called a blog post.
What is a Vlog?
A vlog is a video blog (like a personal journal) in a video format. It is a ‘video blog’ and the person who is recording himself is called a “vlogger” (yes, similar to a blogger).
The most popular social media platforms for vlogs are YouTube (for long-form content) and TikTok (for short-form content).
With a vlog, you can document your journey, have specific experiences (like a travel vlog), learn a skill, or teach something that you know how to do well, like cooking in front of the camera or putting on makeup.
With a vlog, every piece of content is recorded as a video and uploaded to the social media platform.
In recent years, some YouTube vlog ideas have gone viral and become a profitable business, making income from sources like YouTube ads, affiliate marketing, and selling products.
Blog vs. Vlog Examples
Some examples of highly successful blogs –
Finance niche – Nerd Wallet, The Penny Hoarder, and Making Sense of Cents. Food blogs – Kitchn, Pinch of Yum. Nomadic Matt – a travel blog.
Some examples of highly successful vloggers are MrBeast (who creates highly exciting, thrilling, and engaging content for young audiences), Michelle Phan (who does a beauty vlog), and Rosanna Pansino (who does cooking and baking).
Blog vs Vlog: Key Difference
Content Format
One of the most significant differences between a blog and a vlog is how the content is delivered. While a blog’s content is text-based, a vlog is video-based and published on a social media platform.
The Length of the Content
YouTube vlogs can be short, using short or long videos, ranging from 15-30 minutes to even hours of video.
Blog posts are usually 1500 – 2000 words, and comprehensive guides and ‘How-to’ posts can even be 6000 – 7000 words.
Just as a comparison – a script of 1500 – 2000 words can turn into a 10-minute video.
Content Marketing Platforms
Blogs can be published on your website (the best option) or on other blogging platforms, such as Medium or LinkedIn. The difference between publishing content on your own site and publishing on another blogging platform is that the content you publish on your site is yours for good.
In time, it will accumulate and grow. No one can shut down your website one day because they think you violated one of their rules.
On the other hand, when you publish on Medium, for example, they can decide at any moment that some of your content is not aligned with their guidelines and close your account, even if you spent months or even years writing on this platform and building a following.
Although it is much easier to start blogging on another platform like LinkedIn or Medium, it is much more riskier in the long run.
Vlogs, on the other hand, can only be published on social media platforms because they are in the format of videos. The most popular platforms for vlogs are YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram.
To prevent any risk of losing all your videos because of a copyright strike or some other changes to the platform’s guidelines – you can add your content to a blog as well and build a following in the form of an email list, for example.
If the worst happens, you can transfer your content to another platform and send your email list your new details so they can continue engaging with you and your content.
Online Presence – Do You Like to Show Your Face?
One major difference between a vlog and a blog is that a vlogger needs to be on camera all the time, as a vlog is a video of your day-to-day life. Although there are some faceless vloggers, most vlog niches will require you to show your face, as this is far more engaging for viewers who want to see you and connect with your personality.
As a blogger, showing your face is less important. You can upload your picture to your About page, or you can create a blog not connected to you at all and write your blog posts in a specific niche without showing your face. Company blogs are usually like that, where there are a number of authors, and the content is not based on a specific person.
If you don’t like to show your face, are more introverted, or just want to maintain your privacy, blogging might work better for you than a vlogging business.
Time Commitment & Content Creation Process
Creating videos for a vlog will take you much longer to produce than writing a blog post, no doubt about it.
Let’s break it down so we can understand the process of creating these 2 types of content.
How to Create a Vlog Video
- Research and decide on the topic of your video (this could be spying on the most popular videos of your competitors or using a keyword research tool for YouTube like VidIQ (here is a step by step guide how to use VidIQ for YouTube).
- Recording the video
- Editing the video
- Creating a thumbnail for your video
- Researching for tags and writing your video title and description
- Uploading to YouTube
The most time-consuming steps here are recording and editing the videos. One video can easily take about 20 hours to produce.
How to Write a Blog Steps
- Doing keyword research and deciding on your main keyword
- Writing the post
- Checking for grammar or spelling mistakes using Grammarly
- Creating the main image and finding more images to incorporate into the content
- Using an AI Optimization tool for SEO to increase the potential of your post ranking on the first page.
- Upload the post to your website and structure your content in a way that is highly readable for the readers.
- Writing an engaging title and description that is also optimized for SEO.
For an in-depth course on blogging, you can check Perfecting Blogging (Sophia Lee’s blogging course), this is how I was able to make money in my first year of blogging.
The most time-consuming step in publishing a new post on your site is writing.
From research to publishing on your site – a well-crafted blog post can take about 10 hours to produce. Of course, with the help of AI-generated content, this writing process can be much faster.
Tools You Need to Start
Blogging Tools
To start a blog, all you need is –
1. Buy a domain name for your website
You can buy a domain on Namecheap; they give you the lowest price, and you get Privacy Protection for life for free. A .com domain will cost you less than $15 a year.
Or, if you want to get a free domain for your first year and get hosting at the cheapest price, you can use my Bluehost exclusive link.
Check my step-by-step guide – how to start a WordPress blog on Bluehost.
2. Sign up for a hosting provider
There is no need to pay for super-expensive hosting at the beginning of your blogging journey. Bluehost or Hostinger are great blog hosting options and cost less than $10 a month.
3. Purchase a theme for your website
This will cover all your website design needs! And it is a one time payment for your Website.
Check What You Need to Know Before Buying a WordPress theme for your website.
Vlogging Tools
Microphone for Vlogging
good audio for your video is one of the most important things. Of course, the most popular microphone for vloggers is the Yeti microphone, which can produce high-quality audio and is also budget-friendly.
Blue Yeti USB Microphone for Recording, Streaming, Gaming, Podcasting on PC and Mac.
Amazon’s Choice
Camera for Vlogging
To produce a good quality video, you need a good camera. It’s perfectly fine to start with shooting your videos with your smartphone and later on upgrade to a professional vlogging camera like the Sony Vlog Camera ZV-1 .
Tripod for Vlogging
Simply put, a vlogging tripod is a tool used by vloggers to hold the camera. It can stand on the floor or be held in your hand while walking and talking to the camera. One of the most popular ones for vlogging is the JOBY GorillaPod Tripod.
JOBY GorillaPod 5K Kit, Flexible Professional Tripod with BallHead, for DSLR Camera and CSC/Mirrorless with Lens.
Amazon’s Choice
Editing Software
When you just start a vlog, you can easily use free ediditng software to edit your videos. For simple video editing, like cuts and simple transitions, you can use free editing software like DaVinci Resolve or iMovie. If you would like to create more professional-looking videos, you can use Adobe Premier or FinalCut Pro.
Technical skills
A vlogging business will require more technical skills than a blogging business.
For a vlogging business, here are the technical skills you would need –
- Learning how to film yourself with a camera
- How to record the perfect audio for YouTube and
- How to properly use your mic
- How to create engaging thumbnails for YouTube
For a blogging business, these are the technical skills you need –
- Learn how to build your own WordPress website
- How to install a WordPress theme
- How to work with a website builder
- How to use a WordPress dashboard to publish your posts and install plugins
- Learn SEO (search engine optimization).
- However, the most important skills to develop as a blogger are copywriting and writing skills.
Growth Pace
If you want to build an audience fast – vlogging may be a better option for you.
Reaching many views on your YouTube videos and growing a following is much easier and faster on YouTube. This is because every time you publish a new video, the YouTube algorithm pushes your videos and shows them on the YouTube home feed of viewers who might be interested in your content. In addition, you can easily show up on the YouTube search results (especially for low-competition keywords) if your video targets a specific keyword that is searched on YouTube.
With Google, on the other hand, the growth pace is much, much slower. All your visibility on Google is based on your ability to rank on Google’s first page for specific keywords. No matter how high-quality your posts are, ranking on Google takes months and even years for competitive keywords that are searched for a lot.
So, although writing blog posts takes less time and effort, the results can only be seen in the long run, whereas with YouTube, you can start getting views and even subscribers in a few days.
Search Engine Optimization
YouTube SEO and ranking your vlog content on YouTube is much less complicated than Google SEO.
With YouTube, your SEO process will include keyword research (easy-peasy with VidIQ), finding tags for your videos, and including your main keyword in the title and description of your video.
On the other hand, when you apply SEO techniques to rank your content on Google, you will need to learn on-page SEO optimization (everything you need to do as part of your content itself, including technical requirements for every blog post) to optimize your whole site for Google.
The ‘icing on the cake’ is to start building links to your website (this is called off-page SEO).
Blogging and Vlogging – Monetization Options
How to Make Money Vlogging
As a vlogger, there are mainly 3 revenue opportunities you can take advantage of –
The first one is affiliate marketing. Recommending physical products, software that you use, or online courses is the easiest thing. You can add your affiliate links in your video description and show in your video how you use these products in your life.
The second one is sponsorships. When you start to get a lot of views, your videos will go viral, and you will get a lot of subscribers, and sponsors will start contacting you offering you sponsorship deals to talk about their product in your video content. Sponsorship deals can be highly profitable, starting from a few hundred dollars for beginner YouTubers to a few thousand dollars for YouTubers with larger audiences.
The third one is YouTube ads. YouTube will pay you for ads showing on your videos once you get accepted to the YouTube Partner Program (the minimum requirement to apply is to have at least 1000 subscribers and 4000 hours of watch time in the past year.
The fourth income opportunity is selling your own products on your YouTube channel. If you have a product related to your vlog, talk about it on your channel and show how your viewers can achieve the result they are after much faster by using your product; for example, your conversion rate will be very high.
How to Make Money Blogging
As a blogger, your income streams are very similar to a vlogger. Here are the 4 blogging income sources –
Making money with affiliate marketing – your affiliate links will be embedded in your blog content (in informational and transactional posts).
Making money with sponsorships – depending on how relevant your audience is to specific brands and the amount of traffic your blog gets every month and, these brands can approach you to sign sponsorship deals with them and present them on your site. This could be in the form of a product review or a roundup post featuring the best products in a specific niche, featuring this brand at the top of the page for example.
Making money with ads—To make money with ads on your blog, you must be accepted to one of the big media companies like Mediavine (at least 50,000 sessions in the previous 30 days) or AdThrive (a minimum of 100,000 page views in 30 days). Of course, this takes a lot of time, and it will take you more than a year of posting constantly to reach that amount of traffic.
Selling your own product – You can sell physical or digital products on your website more successfully when you have a blog. The blog is there to support the sale. If you write a blog about health and sell your own vitamins, people will be more likely to buy your vitamins if they have followed you for a while, read your content, and implemented your tips.
Conclusion – Blogging or Vlogging – Which One is a Better Fit for You?
At the end of the day, a blog or a vlog can form a profitable business. The question is which one is more suitable for your goals and personality.
Would you like to be on camera and build your content business around you, or would you prefer to create content and keep your life private? Do you have a product to sell and want to engage with your customers, or does your business rely more on affiliate marketing and sponsorships?
Whatever you choose, blogs and vlogs are great businesses to start and make money online. Think what will best suit you and take the first step today!
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