New blog or new book, what's your advice?

[alfi]

I have the idea of exploiting my knowledge on machine learning and artificial intelligence in the form of either a blog or book. However, I don't know what what will be a faster lane. There are lot of blogs / books about the topic already in English but very few in Spanish. Therefore, I thought of Spanish as the target language.

advantages of the blog:

• it is easier to start as I don't need to write a whole book at once
• it is easier to grow with newer content
• it is easier to understand if the topic picks interest in the Spanish market before putting lots of effort (e.g. without the need to write a full book)

disadvantages for the blog:

• don't know enough on how to monetize the blog. Advertising would be like becoming the passenger with no much control

advantages of the book:

• it is easier to imagine where the money could come from ... from selling the book

disadvantages of the book:

• I would need to write the book. It requires more work upfront, compared to the blog, without knowing if this would be a good idea
• My knowledge about self-publishing is very little, my only idea is to self-publish on amazon but have now idea on how to market it

what is your experience with blogs / books?
any suggestions?
Thank you

 

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[Healthfulness]

Not any expert in any of those, but why not both? Start with blog, gain some followers, on the side start writing book, your blog followers and blog itself will help to promote the book and later on, those who will read your book can be turned into blog followers.

 

[SquatchMan]

I'd go with a blog. The blog itself won't be the moneymaker; your list from the blog will be the moneymaker.

You can release a course to your followers.
You can release a book.
You can launch a business and pitch them as customers.

Plus, once you get decent traffic you can put up display ads or native ads. Affiliate marketing will make you some money too.

So many different ways that you can monetize a blog once you have traffic. The traffic is valuable; not the blog itself.

Hell, I started a hobby blog for fun in January and currently have 4k/monthly users and make about ~$200/month from it. 100% affiliate sales.

That said, a blog is a lot of work upfront. You probably won't have any significant traffic for the first 6-12 months.

 

[alfi]

Thank you for your reply SquatchMan. I think it is good advice and also consistent with the fast lane book as with the book I would possibly be able to affect less the life of other people.

That said, a blog is a lot of work upfront. You probably won't have any significant traffic for the first 6-12 months.

what is your experience on this? how often do you post? how you promoted your blog?

 

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[SquatchMan]

what is your experience on this? how often do you post? how you promoted your blog?

I post about once a week. 100% of my entry traffic is from ranking #1 for a few marginally popular (1,500 searches per month) and low competition keywords about a few different topics. Took about 6 months to rank.

People get hooked on my writing style and they usually bounce around my blog since it's a funny take on a somewhat boring topic.

You could promote your blog in other ways too, I suppose. Guest posting and collab, but you usually have to be somewhat popular for a collab or guest post (or pay).

 

[The Abundant Man]

 

[MJ DeMarco]

1) Blog.
2) Gauge Audience
3) If audience +, book.

Act...
Assess...
Adjust...

 

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[Megan Kay]

This is basically the question I was going to ask. I'd already started a blog and, after reading MFL, began wondering if perhaps the articles should go into a book instead. Looks like that's answered, thanks!

One angle I suggest is a shorter version of the same content on your blog that can bloom into expanded, more informative content in a book, or maybe a series of books, depending on the topic(s).

For example, my current project is to expand on a list of 200+ ideas, turning each one into an article. I could do a surface level article on each topic for the blog, then expand greatly into a more expert level covering each concept in greater detail in book format.

 

[alfi]

regarding the blog infrastructure ... I just installed wordpress and I'm already overwhelmed on the possibilities. I cannot even decide which theme is best for my case, so I appreciate every suggestion.

My idea would be to have a section for information (e.g. the expanded version should go to the book, in case), and a forum for discussion .... any ideas on how can I get it started? or this maybe discussed in another post?

 

[Megan Kay]

I cannot even decide which theme is best for my case, so I appreciate every suggestion.

Out of the box I really like Panoramic and use it on my websites. Don't get too caught up in the look and feel at the moment. As you build content, you'll figure out which aspects are important.

The thing I'd think about most right now would be structure of posts vs. pages. I like to do a basic outline of what I think I'll be talking about grouped into categories. If you have a broad topic, utilizing tags and categories can make it much easier for people to find info that's relevant to them. It's much easier to, as best you can in the beginning, hash this out before you start building content so you don't have to try to retrofit it later.

Edited to add:
I wouldn't even think about the forum until you have traffic. Dead forums are an instant turnoff.

 

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[alfi]

I just wanted to update you all on the execution of this project. I learnt a ton about wordpress, plugins, themes, SEO, fast loading of websites both on desktop and mobile, etc. I would say that I did learn maybe too much for what was needed so far. But as a recent post said, I wanted to increase the probabilities.

I've been blogging once per week, sometimes even more, since December 2018. Still, no major results yet. I'm putting quite a lot of effort in the posts. They are informative, insightful and easily 1000+ words.

So, the fact that almost nobody is going to the blog could mean several things:

• it is still to early
• there is not enough interest about machine learning / artificial intelligence in Spanish

How can I tell the difference between the two?

 

[SolopreneurGrind]

Are you doing anything to drive traffic to the posts, or just relying on SEO? If the latter, I highly recommend starting some form of social media account and growing that to push some traffic to the blog, otherwise it may take some time for the SEO to kick in.

For example, an instagram account with snippets from your blog, youtube channel, etc.

 

[Bryaninbangkok]

I am writing on medium.com which says it could create revenue if you opt in, but the aim is to write tons of articles on linkedin and medium and then I will collect it all and put it together for my book later.

The key here is that I take small pieces of action daily.

 

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[alfi]

1) Blog.
2) Gauge Audience
3) If audience +, book.

Act...
Assess...
Adjust...

After one year of writing (not full time) the blog, there are about 250 visits / day.
Does this looks encouraging? ... or is it better to spend my time somewhere else?

 

[MJ DeMarco]

After one year of writing (not full time) the blog, there are about 250 visits / day.
Does this looks encouraging? ... or is it better to spend my time somewhere else?

So you don't have a book? The blog should support the book.