Blog or website or both - opinions please

Hi all
As I said vaguely in my introduction I want to set up an authority site - travel related. I have no idea where this will go but certainly in it for the long term as it's a topic I thoroughly enjoy writing about.

Anyway - in the past I've always set up large sites which have taken darn ages to build. I would rather get up and running with this quickly to at least establish a presence and find out if my idea is viable so I am thinking of setting it up as a word press blog initially (I've bought to domain and decent hosting) and then setting a website up later on.

My question is have any of you done it this way round - do you think it's the best way or even need a website if you have a blog?

For the record I'm planning on slowly moniterising the site through amazon/affiliation and adsense although I would rather this come across as being part of the site rather than full blown in yer face advertising! That said, it would of course be nice to create an income from it.

I'd really like to hear your experiences.

Thanks - there's some great info on here.

Lily

 

If you update often and write good quality blog post, you can make it on just having a blog. It is easier if you are mostly going to add articles.

 

travel related may contain BOTH
because you may have

- travel guides per country or per destination
- wallpapers from destinations
- ecards from destinations
- news/RSS feed = blog
- forum

that is about what i have travel related and i find it perfect as is

 

Why not combine the two? You can set up a blog on Wordpress and have it look more like a traditional website, especially on the home page depending on your theme. Best bet would be to look at non-blog or magazine style themes like Gridlock. There are some great wordpress sites that don't really look like blogs: www.xxlmag.com, www.mudsugar.com, or www.kineda.com.

 

Hi - thanks for your replies
jhmattern - wow! Ok now I know I'm behind the times! I didn't realise wordpress could be changed so dramatically. That's great and food for thought! That definately looks like the road to investigate. I'm very grateful because I think it would have been a while before I stumbled upon that.
By the way - I just had a look at your blog. Looks great and a lot more things to investigate by the sound of it

Lily

 

Blog on a web site might be the better idea as that;s the trend to let others post whatever....

 

I don't see a problem with doing a blog and then adding cool stuff later. It lets you build up a following, then you can say "Hey guys, see this new free tool on the site" or "we just added a new guide on the site, click here to download it."

Like jhmattern said, you can find some themes that look more like magazines, giving you the best of both worlds. If you start making big bucks, you could get a custom wordpress theme done and use that structure and CSS to style the main website, for a seamless transition between blog and website.

 

Thanks again for the replies.
I have been investigating this further and I think workdpress is definately the way to go. I've found a few sites for wordpress themes. Yes I'd definately like the blog/website to be seamless. I think I might like to learn how to do the CSS myself. It's about time I did anyway!

Think I'll have a search around here for some recommendations on wordpress and css help.

 

i like web, because i can't make a post regulary, and im to lazy create content evertime

 

I think blogs are easier. Its easy to write very uniquely on blogs because its often your own views, opinion and and analysis.