So what is a blog site? Well, starting with the name, “Blog” is a short name for “Weblog”. A blog can be a website in itself, or sometimes just a part of a website. It’s usually maintained by an individual who makes regular entries. The entries the person writes are typically displayed in reverse chronological order, so the newest entry is usually displayed at the top. That person could be writing about anything that interests him. It could be just commentaries on his favorite subject, a review of a product or service, or it could simply be an online diary that he writes to. Anything and everything that you want to write about can be made into a blog entry. When you post an entry to your blog, you can include text (of course), images, links to other blogs or websites, videos, audio files, and other media. A great feature about blogs is that you can allow your visitors to leave comments on your posts if you want. It can start a discussion, and you can get other people’s thoughts and ideas on the topic.

Now you’re probably wondering how a blog is different than a typical website though. (Keep in mind that a blog actually is a website.) A blog is something that’s meant to be updated on a regular basis, with new posts from the author on his thoughts, comments, ideas, experiences, etc… A website, in the typical sense, is pretty much something that’s there for informational purposes and not necessarily updated on a regular basis. For example, a company website might describe the products it makes or the services it offers, have some company background information, a page for some contact and location information, etc…, but that information doesn’t change on a daily, weekly, or even monthly basis. A blog is somewhat of a living, breathing thing (so to speak) and new entries can be added to it regularly and people can leave their comments and thoughts on it.

Whether you’re building a blog site or a typical website, you still need a place to host it (I’ll probably get more into this in another post), but another difference is that blogs can be much more easy to setup. There are ready made blog programs that can be easily installed on your host and you can be up and posting entries in no time. A favorite of mine is WordPress. You can get a copy of WordPress here. It’s FREE! I’ll definitely be talking more about WordPress in future posts. There are also many free places that you can start blogging at that don’t require you to pay for a host if you don’t want to. I’m talking about places like Blogger.com from Google, or WordpPress.com, or even Blog.com. However, if you’re looking for more control over your website and prefer to use your own domain name, then I would recommend checking out Host Gator. They’re really inexpensive (I would stay away from free hosts except what I noted above as you always get what you pay for). And if you use coupon code HTEMB201107 you can even get 25% off the package price. With a typical website, if you don’t know HTML or how to put a web page together (like building your own headers and footers, navigation links, contact forms, etc…), then you’ll probably have to hire someone to do it, which could cost you quite a bit.

This site is in fact a blog site created with WordPress. I’ll go over exactly how to use WordPress soon, and then we’ll get into the good stuff of how to actually make a profit from your blog sites and turn them into cash machines. If you’re really interested in learning more about blogs and their history, you can always check out the wikipedia article on it. I’ll be back with more information for you, so check back again soon!