No, its not dead. I agree that it keeps on evolving as people get smarter and expect more from websites. Its only dead if you are using techniques from 10 years ago.
I was building website with affiliate links and I was constantly removing dead links from 'deactivated merchant' so, I gave them up and I moved on. I work through other websites now. It is so much better. I had more than 1,500 page full of crap and I had to wade through them to find all of the dead links. I prefer to leave the websites to the you professionals. It was/is too much for me.
Im currently "living" off of my website, I actually dont think its out there in the open like everyone thinks, only us web geeks. Theres so many niches and ways to get revenue these days its crazy. Websites will live on forever! Steve P.
In the end, it all comes down to how you market your site, doesn't it? With blogs, you get to ping every post you make, which attracts Google's attention quickly. With your site, you don't have that benefit, but there are other things you can do instead to attract Google, like adding content frequently and linking back to it from the internet sites that give you the highest credit. I'd say that the big reason blogs are so hot is because of the pinging, otherwise they really are no different from a web site. You bookmark your posts - and apparently you can bookmark the articles on your site as well. In fact, you can put an RSS feed on your site, something I just discovered. A few years back, I added a blog to my static site and it made a tremendous difference to my traffic. So why not make the most of both worlds? Sylvia