What can be a better way to diversify your income than to start an online business? Blogging and Vlogging are two popular ways to start an online business – with almost zero to moderate investments. I am making money from this blog just by following and sharing my passion. And I am confident that you are capable too! All that you need is some guidance in the right direction. In this post today, I will share the differences between Blogging vs Vlogging.
By the time you finish reading this post, you will clearly understand what is blogging and vlogging and how they are different from one another. Most importantly, you will be able to decide which path you should choose in 2022!
What is Blogging? Definition
According to the Merriam Website dictionary, a blog is a type of website that contains online personal reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks, videos and photographs uploaded by the writer. Therefore, the act of managing a blog is known as blogging!
Types of blogs:
Depending upon the type of content published, we can broadly classify blogs into the following 3 types:
- Personal blogs – where the writer casually shares about the events and experiences related to his or her life. The writer may also share random thoughts on any topic of interest.
- Corporate blogs – these are usually owned by businesses where the marketing team of the company writes articles with an aim to attract the target customers.
- Niche/Professional blogs – These types of blogs are usually managed by professionals who have an in-depth knowledge about their blog niche. Since these types of blogs usually attract huge traffic, we can never discount their earning potential.
What is vlogging? Explained
In simple words, vlogging is the video version of blogging.
A vlog is a short form of video blog, where instead of posting written form of content, the author/creator publishes content in form of short videos. Like blogging, depending upon the type of content these videos can be personal, corporate or professional.
The convert kit blog has rightly classified that there are two popular styles of vlogging:
- Talking head – where the creator fixes his camera on a tripod and records himself/herself expressing views/opinion about the topic in discussion.
- Follow me around – where the creator takes the camera along and shoots, such as doing product reviews, food recipes, or even reviewing a travel destination.
Who should choose blogging as a career path?
Now that we have understood the concepts of blogging and vlogging, let’s now discuss which path is ideal for you depending on your nature and temperament.
Choose blogging if you:
- Enjoy writing and have a flair for it.
- Love presenting your ideas through words and creative images.
- Can make a long-term commitment to continue publishing fresh written content and market it as well.
- Love the sense of ownership that comes with maintaining a blog/website. It’s your digital asset!
Skills required for a successful blogging career
If you are choosing blogging as a career path, it’s important to discuss the skills required to be successful here:
- Writing skills are imperative. Consider them the foundation stone of building a successful blog.
- Marketing skills such as SEO, online ads, and social media marketing will help you gain traffic to your blog. Maintaining a blog is meaningless if there is no one to read and appreciate your articles.
- Networking will help you establish meaningful connections with fellow bloggers and influencers. These connections will help you grow your blog!
- Creativity is something which is hard to develop as a skill. It’s an inborn quality. Creativity helps you present your thoughts and ideas in a way that impresses your blog readers. Your creativity will prove to be of immense help, especially when you have to design illustrations and infographics for your blog posts.
Who should choose vlogging as a career path?
As compared to blogging, vlogging is more suitable for people who:
- Don’t enjoy writing. Rather, they love expressing their thoughts and ideas through videos.
- Love to be in front of the camera to record and share their personal experiences.
- Can make a long-term commitment to continue to publish fresh videos and market them along the way.
Skills required for a successful vlogging career
Let’s now discuss the skills required to become a successful vlogger:
- The art of public speaking is a cornerstone to becoming a great vlogger. Though you are not live in front of a large public gathering, your video uploads might be seen by a breadth of demographics beyond your imagination. It’s therefore important to work on how you address the public and convey your thoughts in front of the camera.
- Presentation skills help you stand out from the crowd and make a solid first-time impression on your viewers. When you are in front of the camera, you need to work on your physical appearance and attire. Equally important, you need to work on the way you speak and present your ideas.
- Video editing skills will help you make your videos appear creative and interesting to your viewers. As a vlogger, you can expect 50% of your time to be spent on video editing, trimming, animations, and frame compiling. Choosing a simple and powerful video editor like FlexClip will greatly save your time and energy. Further, you may use Wave Video editor to add subtitles to your videos to make them look more engaging and accessible to people who don’t understand your language.
- Marketing skills such as SEO, paid ad campaigns, and social media marketing will help your videos reach their target viewers.
Benefits of blogging over vlogging
- More SEO friendly: Articles rank better than videos on search engines.
- Better earning opportunities: Since your website is an asset, you’ve better chances of making money online than vloggers
- It’s easier to update an old article than to update an old video.
Benefits of vlogging over blogging
- Video content is more engaging and shareable
- It’s quicker to record and upload a 5–10-minute video than to write a 500-1000 words article
- As a vlogger, it’s unnecessary to have a website. You can create your own channel on YouTube and start your vlogging journey quickly.
Blogging vs Vlogging: Cost breakdown
Though you can start with a free blog and a vlog, as you grow professionally, so does your cost for maintaining your online business.
We can divide the cost heads between blogging vs vlogging into two major parts:
| Website related cost (Blogging) | Equipment cost (Vlogging) |
|---|---|
| Domain charges ($10-15 annual) | Digital camera / DSLR ($500-800) Nikon Coolpix B500 is a good budget camera to start with |
| Web hosting charges ($120-150 annual) | Tripod ($30-50) |
| Cost related to plugins and themes (depends) | Video editing software ($40-150) |
| SEO / Marketing expenses (depends) | Mic, Theatrical props/scenes, Lightning setups (depends) |
Blogging Vs Vlogging: Key differences at a glance
We have discussed everything about blogging and vlogging. Now let’s summarize the key differences using this table:
| Comparison Aspect | Blogging | Vlogging |
|---|---|---|
| Content form | Written | Video |
| Communication skills | Written | Verbal |
| Engagement level | Lower – reading long paragraphs/content sometimes seem boring | Higher – people love videos! |
| Content production | Time consuming and laborious | Relatively quicker |
| Flexibility to update old content | Higher – Just rewrite it and hit publish | Lower – Damn! It’s time consuming to replace the older video with a new one |
| SEO friendliness | Higher | Lower |
| Cost heads | Website cost | Equipment cost |
| Earning potential | Comparatively higher – Google Ads, Other ad networks, Direct ads, Sponsored content, affiliate marketing & ability to sell products through your online store | High – Google Ads, Sponsored videos, paid product reviews & affiliate marketing |
What’s your preferred choice?
As you have seen, both blogging and vlogging have their own pros and cons. Ultimately, the choice between the two depends upon your personal nature and resources at your disposal. Anyway, I am interested in knowing what do you prefer and why. Please share your thoughts in the comments below.
Nice post. As a reader I prefer written form of content over videos.
The biggest advantage is that I can read the articles silently in my office without bothering to turn on the speaker or plugging in my earphones.
Plus, it puts less strain on eyes with dark mode enabled on my phone.
I can add one more advantage – it consumes less data! Haha