Is Blogging, Or Vlogging Better For Making More Money Online?
Both blogs and vlogs are eventually created for making money, unless it’s a purely hobby endeavour. Also both of them revolve around content. The main distinction is that a blog generates written content, whilst a vlog covers information through video.
Blogs and vlogs engage and expand online audiences but the revenues from both vary. Blogs earn through affiliate marketing, sponsored content, AdSense ads, email marketing, and own products. Whereas, vlogs have lesser monetization options. Today, blogs are more popular than vlogs, and also earn more revenue.
But before anything further, what’s a blog and what’s a vlog?
Brief Difference Between Blogs and Vlogs
Blogs
A blog is an online web-log that presents text based articles along with visual content. The aim is to provide a regular update of fresh, relevant, and high value content for readers.
Large-scale websites frequently use blogs to provide content and postings to their subscribers.
A blog is usually a website or a section of a website, however people can also start a blog on social networking sites. Text, photos, and other types of content, such as animations and PDFs, can all be found on blogs.
The best way to use a blog is to actively contribute content that your readers love and enjoy.
Vlogs
A vlog is a video blog that presents information in a video format. Whether it’s on YouTube or another online platform, a vlog is invariably a video of someone chatting to the camera.
Vlogs can range in length from a few minutes to many hours, depending on the subject and coverage.
Vlog articles cover different topics such as documentation of daily life occurrences, cosmetics lessons, video game ratings and tutorials, or customer reviews, among others.
To start a vlog, you’ll need an explainer video where a topic is explained in a brief format.
When you keep creating newer vlogs,due to regular visual interactions with the audience,they frequently form a personal attachment to the vlogger.
Crucial Truths On Popularity Of Blogs and Vlogs
Popularity Stats About Blogs: Here are some interesting facts about blogs.
# Every day, around 7.5 million blog articles are published online and 77% of internet users read blogs, which proves the popularity of blogs.
#According to Databox.com’s recent study, 68 % of marketers believe blogging is more effective than it was a few years ago
# Here are some intriguing nuggets from Semrush.com :
1.Blog posts still remain the most effective form of content over email, ebooks, and white papers.
2.There are more than 500 million blogs out of 1.7 billion websites on the internet.
3. Content marketing is predicted to be an industry worth $412.88 billion by 2021.
4. The average monthly salary of a blogger is $8,000. And this often becomes a key decision point for many to start blogging.
Popularity Stats About Vlogs:
According to statistics, 44 percent of internet users watch vlogs at least once a month
1.Though vlogging is not limited to YouTube, YouTube creators account for 86 % of vlog material on the platform
2. In 2021, 89 % of video marketers intend to use YouTube as part of their video marketing strategy. (up 1% over the previous year).
3.It’s no surprise that a vlogger is often mistaken for a YouTuber (though this is a restrictive view, as vlogging can be done on a variety of platforms other than YouTube).
Annual Earnings Compared Between Top Bloggers And Vloggers
Currently, the world over, an impression is being created that blogging is losing its popularity and that vlogging or “YouTubing” is the next in thing that’s going to storm online revenues.
While it’s true that vlogging has picked up in recent years, but real life facts and data do not seem to suggest vlogging exceeding blogging in popularity disproportionately.
In fact a cursory look at the top most blogs and vlogs clearly indicates the contrary. The fact is that even today, blogging is way more profitable than vlogging.
Take a look at the annual earnings of top 4 blogs and vlogs on the internet today:
Top 4 Bloggers On The Internet
Here are the earnings of the top 4 blogs on the internet
1.Arriana Huffington $ 250 M / year
2.Peter Rojas (Engadget ) $ 50 M / year
3.Rand Fishkin ( Moz ) $ 35 M/ year
4.Pete Cashmore (Mashable) $ 30 M/ year
Top 4 Vloggers On The Internet
Here are the earnings of the top 4 vlogs on the internet
1. Ryan Kaji $29.5 M / year
2. Mr Beast (Jimmy Donaldson) $24 M / year
3. Dude Perfect $23 M / year
4. Rhett and Link $20 M / year
Popular Ways To Earn Money From Blog and Vlogs
Making Money From A Blog
Affiliate Marketing (Most Popular)
Affiliate marketing is a successful option for bloggers who don’t have any product for sale to make money.In case you’re interested you can also learn more about important actions to monetize your blog in affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing allows you to make money by promoting someone else’s product or service on your blog or website.
You’ll be paid a fee every time one of your readers goes through to the advertiser’s site and makes a purchase.
The Affiliate commission is calculated based on the number of times the links are clicked.Find out how affiliate payments and commissions work.
AdSense
Essentially, the AdSense program allows you to earn money by displaying advertisements. Just for info-this program is also owned by Google.
AdSense lets you determine where ads will show up on your blog, which eventually affects how many clicks it receives as a result.
You can also customize the ad’s style to match your blog.
And you can choose which kinds of ads you want to see or even block advertising you don’t want to see.
Depending on the sort of campaign, you get money when the ads are seen or clicked.
Sponsored Content
You can make a post that promotes a certain business, product, or service using sponsored posts.
For this post, you will be paid a commission as a blogger.
You are compensated for the actual post, which includes a link to the product being marketed.
Developing Your Own Products
AdSense is certainly very effective, but AdSense will only pay you if you get thousands of visitors on your site. As a result, this can be a stumbling block for newly launched blogs.
To overcome this barrier, you simply turn your blog into an enterprise.
You then need to develop your own digital product (or a physical product). Only make sure your chosen product should be of interest to your target market.
The only disadvantage of own products is the requirement of initial capital to develop the product.
However, many blog owners are attracted to this option because they get to have complete control over their products and business model without having to share profits.
Marketing Via Email
The highest conversion rate (number of views/clicks on advertising) is found in email marketing.
A suitable mailing list, and a good record as an e-mailer are all that’s required for a successful email campaign.
Furthermore, the ability to produce engaging and credible emails, as well as the capacity to market things, can help you succeed.
The biggest advantage is that you can individually interact with your readers after you have their email addresses. You may either advertise a product or use affiliate links to start making money.
And in case you want to do even better at making money blogging,I recommend these unbeatable strategies to make money blogging.
Making Money From A Vlog
Earning from a vlog is similar to earning from a blog
But how do vloggers actually make money?
Well, they devote all of their resources to create interesting, informative, or entertaining videos, which they subsequently distribute for free on sites such as YouTube.
There are three basic ways for vloggers to make money:
1.Sponsorship
Potential sponsors for your YouTube channel could include brands that you enjoy. And in a short period of time, you could begin receiving free products and money.
In fact, the majority of YouTubers obtain YouTube sponsorship by contacting potential sponsors.
How do you do that?
By making a great proposition to the sponsoring company.
All you need to do is to make your proposition specific to the company to whom you’re writing and make it about your sponsors rather than yourself.
To put it another way, don’t explain why you want a YouTube sponsorship. But assure them about how it will benefit them in terms of publicity, and reputation.
2.Affiliate Marketing.
Because your major goal in posting a video is to promote your affiliate links, make sure you include them as captions (annotations) in the video.
Annotations makes it easier for your viewers to access that link at any time.
Keep in mind that viewers don’t always pay attention to the annotations in videos.
In that case, the links in the description will suffice.
Interestingly, the majority of visitors look through the description to learn more about the video. As a result, including affiliate links in the video descriptions is a good idea.
Affiliate marketing is a great means of providing high demand content for viewers on your vlog, such as:
1.Reviews on products
2.Videos of unboxing
3.Tutorial videos
4.Other inventive ways to display goods
3.Advertising.
Advertising is by far the most popular revenue generation method because it is used all the time.
Allowing people to advertise on your YouTube channel helps you earn a lot of money. You can achieve this by locating and contracting with your own advertising clients.
However, this can be time-consuming and difficult.
Meanwhile, Google AdSense helps you out here. You only need to allow Google to display adverts on your YouTube videos, which is a quick solution to monetizing your YouTube channel.
This tool is completely free to use, and it allows you to earn a portion of Google’s profit every time someone sees your ad.
Equipment And Technology Required For Blogging And Vlogging
Equipment Required For Blogging
Virtually no big technology or equipment is required for blogging. All you’ll need is:-
1.A desktop computer, or a laptop.
2.Connection to the Internet
Equipment Required For Vlogging
Initially, when you want to make high-quality videos, there’s a lot to learn.
But the most important thing is that you’ll need tools to do so.
The basic gear you require is:
1.Camera
2.Microphone (if not integrated in camera)
3. Tripod
4.Filters
5.Illuminating Equipment
6.Green Screen Effects (optional)
And all this can be expensive, starting form about $ 1000 to $ 5000 and more, depending on how advanced your stage is.
Yet vloggers who invest in these bare essentials for vlogging, profit a lot later on.
Long Term Potential Of Blogs Vs Vlogs Based On Scientific Study
Attraction For Video Content
The typical person watches 18 hours of internet video every week, according to Wyzowl
So typically when do people like to watch videos?
When the impact of a viewer’s decisions based on the content is not too critical, video will always be the preferred format of information.
Also, video is always a more favoured form of information since it needs less cognitive strain.
And, interestingly, humans are hard-wired to dislike heavy work, while preferring more cognitive comfort.
One undeniable scientific fact, however, is that videos simply spoon-feed us information. They don’t boost our creativity.
So those audiences who want a shot at deep thinking and creativity, prefer text based content.
Preference For Text-Based Content (Blog)
Scientific studies indicate that reading is preferred over watching videos for a variety of reasons, which include:-
1.The increased use of our cognitive senses.
2.The ability to work at our own pace.
3.The development of our sense of creativity.
According to research, Wondermouse.us states “that when website visitors must make an important or consequential decision — such as purchasing insurance or financial products, for example — their more rational, detail-oriented modes are activated and they want to feel in control. In this case, text will provide businesses with a better outcome than video”.
In the face of such strong scientific proof of preference for text based content, it’s only right to conclude that text based blogs are here to stay. No wonder their earning potential is higher compared to vlogs.
Blogging vs Vlogging (Google Trends)
Over the last five years, blogging has consistently outperformed vlogging, as proved by this Google Trends comparative graph.
And this tendency is likely to continue in the near future due to a variety of impacting factors discussed in this article.
The most significant evidence of higher blog profits is provided by a blog like Huffington Post, which earns $250 M/ year. Whereas the topmost vlog on the internet, by comparison, earns only about $ 30 M/ year.
The Future Potential of Blogging Vs Vlogging
For a number of reasons explained in previous sections I would venture to say that blogging rules over vlogging currently and will continue to rule for a long time.
Here are a couple of facts to grasp this:-
# Firstly there’s the huge scientific body of evidence on cognitive ease in comprehending text-based info (blog content).
# Also studies clearly establish that a user’s decision making for long term,high value transactions is better supported by text based content.
# Tangible evidence of the popularity of blogging compared to vlogging is proved in Google Trends comparison over the last 5 years.
# Currently, in sheer terms of money making, blogging leads by a huge margin. Huffington post is the top most blog that earns $ 500 m per year.Whereas the topmost vlog (Ryan Kaji) earns $30 m per year.
Despite this, we must admit that vlogging has picked up rapidly in recent years.And it’s popularity will only increase in the coming times.
Yet it’s unlikely that vlogging will replace blogging for depth of content and value addition to the audience in the future.
Combining Blogging And Vlogging For More Profit
Even if blogging is currently outstripping vlogging in terms of making money, it hasn’t stopped smart bloggers from taking the next logical step- combining blogging with vlogging.
For example Ileane Smith runs a vlog with blogging and social media tutorials, YouTube tips, and even a playlist of Chrome extension tutorials. And as a result, of integrating blogging and vlogging she has doubled her ‘discoverability’ factor online.
Similarly, Marc Guberti is a successful blogger,author and podcaster. He offers expert tips on blogging and growing an online business. Interestingly, he maintains a YouTube channel along with his blog which aids in his internet visibility.
And these are just two stand alone examples of integrating blogging and vlogging, but there are scores more.
So what do these examples say?
This may sound hard, but it just means you should multiply your marketing channels, and use them to promote one another.
Many people don’t realise that blogging and vlogging work well together as part of a comprehensive content marketing plan.
You can utilise your blog to drive visitors to your YouTube channel or blog.
Moreover this has another tangible advantage. Integrating video on your website can significantly improve your blog’s SEO as well.
Conclusion
The goals of vlogging are similar to those of blogging. These include engaging, expanding, and monetising an online audience for your brand. Also, the commercialization of a blog or a vlog is similar, but the amount of monetization varies.
Affiliate marketing, sponsored content, AdSense ads, email marketing, and personal product promotion are just some of the ways a blog might make money. A vlog, on the other hand, has restricted monetization options.
Interestingly, consumers still prefer text material over video information, according to scientific studies. And a Google Trends comparison of vlogs and blogs, over the last 5 years, only seems to reinforce this.
In the real world, the most popular blog on the internet, the HuffingtonPost earns a much higher revenue as compared to the most popular vlog on the internet.
That’s why combining blogging and vlogging makes sense for making money.
However, if you’re still eager to make a single choice between a blog and vlog then here’s the thing…
Going by the existing evidence on the subject, blogs will invariably earn more than vlogs in the long term, even when both are created with the same diligence, and attention to quality content.
what’s your choice – one of them? Or both?
Let’s hear from you.