In February of this year, I bought my girlfriend her own domain name. It was simply a .com of her first and last name and was intended for her to start a blog or website about anything she wanted. For six months, her domain has sat empty with her not wanting to do anything with it. I finally got a text from her today saying that she wanted to start a website about fashion, but she wanted to start a vlog, which basically serves the same purpose as a blog, but uses videos instead of words. Almost all vloggers use YouTube as their platform of choice and use their website to send traffic to YouTube… Normally, bloggers try to use YouTube to send traffic to their website, so this concept seems backwards to me.
SEO
When you have a blog that uses a platform like WordPress, you can get plugins that turn your post tags into meta tags. Blogging also has the advantage of keywords in the title and post body, keyword-rich domain names, search engine friendly URLs, and the ability to gain strong backlinks from other websites.
If you choose to start a vlog using YouTube, you can have tags, a title, and a video description. These three things pretty much make up the SEO of your video and can’t be enhanced in any way. In addition to simply having your video on YouTube, you can make a WordPress blog post for each video that would include a domain name, keyword-rich meta tags, a title, etc. If you choose to create a blog post for each video, the only real way to rank in Google would be to provide a transcript of everything you say. At that point, you might as well just write the blog post and scrap the video.
In the SEO department, having a written blog definitely wins.
Making Money
On my websites I tend to use Google AdSense and affiliate marketing to make the most of my money. You can also sell products or services, serve advertisements directly, and sell links or other Internet marketing services. The possibilities of making money with a written website are endless and can always be expanded and upgraded, making it easy to skyrocket your income in just a few months.
On YouTube, the only real way to make money is to serve AdSense advertisements. There are some really popular YouTubers that are sponsored by different companies, but for the average person looking to get into vlogging, Google AdSense advertisements are the only possible way to make money. YouTube makes it hard to sell services or products because everything is video-based.
Due to the restrictions of vlogging, having a written blog will make you more money.
Gaining Traffic
When bloggers choose their post topics and write their posts, the main goal is to gain traffic from Google and other search engines. I use social networking, email, and referral tactics such as guest posting, but my main source of traffic is from Google searches. Depending on the topic of your blog, you could get a lot of hits from Google or you could not – it’s all up to the searcher.
Because the majority of people that watch videos on YouTube are teenagers that are heavily into social networking, vlogs are more likely to be shared than blogs. If somebody sees a funny or moving video on YouTube, it’s very easy (and tempting) to share it on Facebook, leave a comment, and see other videos on the same channel. Traffic will flow to your videos quickly, but only if they are worth sharing. As far as ranking in Google, I have seen some YouTube videos make the top spots, but it takes some time and a lot of views. Plus, the majority of people looking for a video will search directly on YouTube.
Because YouTube videos are more sharable, you will receive more targeted traffic on a vlog.
Conclusion
If you are having troubles deciding between Blogging vs Vlogging, I would choose the written option or a combination of both. You have more opportunities for search engine rankings, more opportunities to make money, and it’s generally easier. If you mess up in the middle of a video, you have to start over again. If you mess up writing a blog post, all you have to do is hit the backspace button and edit it. Vlogs also show your face which can lead to negative comments or loyal viewers – it all just depends. I personally just prefer written blogging because it’s easy for me to do anywhere, I don’t have to spend forever editing videos to look pretty, and it’s better for SEO.
If you want to start vlogging, make sure you get a good camera. It makes a world of difference when you’re shooting in HD or 4K vs when you are shooting with a cell phone or something similar. People want to watch very high quality videos and your stick time with the viewer will be longer too.
I would suggest reading some reviews or testing some cameras out – there’s a number of good review sites. I used a Canon camera for my vlog and people have commented about how good the video quality is when I tweaked it a bit. You can check some settings and ideal cameras based on price range at http://www.vloggingcameras.net/best-canon-vlogging-camera/
Recently people making money from youtube. I think youtube videos will make more money than blogging. Because, people started searching everything on google.
I have never heard about Vlog before:D
Can you point me any vlog in reply of this comment Ian?
A vlog is basically a blog but instead of typing the vlogger uses videos. A common one that can be found on YouTube can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93yx2-Mg1dg.