Let’s be honest, is Blogging dead? I don’t think so.
Why?
Because I have the data to prove it to you.
Yes according to WordPress more than a million blog posts are being pushed out on their platform.
That’s only counting WordPress.
There are more CMS available in the market then WordPress like Wix, SquareSpace, etc.
They currently don’t have much data about it still now.
A Million that’s too much content out there.
But what does it tell us?
It simply shows that blogging isn’t dead.
If blogging were dead then mega publications like Forbes, Entrepreneur, CNN, etc.
What is dead is creating and pushing out Mediocre (Average Content ) content.
Bottom line: if you create super high-quality content which is mostly detailed guides along with effective and smart SEO strategies you can still generate massive profits from blogging.
Now, the biggest reason why people think blogging is dead is because of the meteoric rise of YouTube and video content.
And yes I won’t deny it, Video has a much higher engagement rate then Blogging.
But this doesn’t mean that Blogging is dead and that Video or YouTube is the next big thing.
Both Blogging and YouTube are best in certain fields and perform badly in certain fields.
That is the reason we decided to create this post so that you can choose what is best for you based on the data and research we have done.
So what is blogging?
For those who are complete beginners in the field of both blogging and YouTube, we have two Super Snippets you can go through.
Jump To...
Super Snippet
Blogging is the writing of content on websites that are hosted on google.com. Bottom line: If you write on a website then you are blogging.
Read Next:- How To Start A Blog From Scratch in 2020 [An A To Z Guide]
Super Snippet
YouTube is creating and publishing Video Content instead of writing on websites. All the videos you make are hosted on YouTube.com. Bottom line:- You are a YouTuber if you create Video Content on YouTube.
Let’s now Explore each of the fields in more detail.
Blogging [ Captain America ]
In simple language, You write content on websites for the reason of earning money or as a hobby of yours to discuss your ideas with random people.
Content Creation
The term content creation refers to researching, outlining, writing, and editing a blog post.
Often this is the step where most bloggers give up.
Because it is quite hard to regularly publish great content when you are just starting, cause you have to manage production and marketing on your own.
There are mainly 4 steps in content creation, let’s get into them in more detail.
Content Delivery
Now that you have created the best article out there it’s now time to publish that article into some sort of place.
And that place is WordPress.
WordPress makes it super easy to publish and design your content on your blog.
To Be Embedded YOUTUBE Video [ Publish Article On WordPress ]
It is quite good and provides a large variety of customization you can do to your website.
Audience
The audience which you will find in blogging depends on your niche but a thing will always be in common between them no matter whichever niche you are in.
And that is love for reading.
Why do they prefer blogging?
Because they love reading and find it more consumable and much more detailed and easy to understand.
This is because while reading blog posts they can read at their own pace, which in video form of content cannot be done that effectively.
Also reading blog posts is much less distracting than watching youtube videos.
And you always have to meet their needs or you will be left out of the competitions as no one will come to read your hard written blog posts.
But that isn’t always the case.
I am sure you might have noticed embedded YouTube videos in blog posts of many pro blogs like Neil Patel, ahrefs, and Moz.
And this is because their target audience somewhat likes consuming video despite reading their blog posts.
That might have confused you right?
But it is simple. If your Target Audience is different from the above characteristics then it is good.
Do what your Target Audience prefers and not what is prescribed by Gurus. [ Because Gurus have different Audiences ].
Skills Required
This is where Blogging loses to YouTube.
This is because unlike YouTube, blogging is much more competitive.
Because all the mega publications running their own blogs are there on google for quite a long time.
Also big companies like Moz, Forbes, Quora always dominate the SERPs which make blogging much harder to master then YouTube.
But you can still make it to the top and earn well by learning these skills.
#1 SEO:- This is the most valuable skill you have to learn in Blogging.
Because without learning SEO, you cannot rank on google and thus cannot bring traffic to your posts and make money.
#2 Graphic Design:- One of the most valuable skills is to have complete knowledge of tools like Canva and Infogram.
Mastering these editing tools will help you create superb quality infographics that get shared and bring you traffic.
In addition to these, you will also need skills like Elementor, Affiliate Marketing to make a good fortune in Blogging.
Freedom and flexibility
There is no way YouTube is going to beat blogging in terms of freedom and flexibility offered.
WordPress platform gives you tons of freedom and flexibility or the right to customize your blog till you are following their guidelines.
Also in WordPress, you are the king of your mind and you don’t have to be scared of WordPress removing any feature soon.
Monetization
Monetization in blogging is rather harder than that on YouTube.
But that doesn’t mean Blogging has Zero Earning potential.
Bloggers tend to make more money then YouTubers.
Because there are tons of ways to monetize your Content and Audience.
You can use means like Affiliate Marketing or Adsense or you can even develop and sell your products.
Also if you master the game of SEO then you can open your consultancy service and offer clients high-quality SEO service in exchange for a huge sum of money per month.
Expenses
The Expenses in Blogging is way less than YouTube when you are just starting.
Unlike YouTube, you don’t need high-quality equipment to get good results to form your efforts.
You can buy a domain from NameCheap for 10 bucks and start on super-cheap hosting and then you are off to the races.
But as you grow in blogging you can no longer be cheap. Because being cheap will decrease your brand value and recognition.
Once you scale up then you will need to upgrade to costly hosting providers and buy plenty of tools to survive the competition.
You will need tools like Semrush for keyword research and tools like Yoast for OnPage Seo work.
But overall if you scale up then you can easily manage the costs of the tools.
Time To scale-up
This is another factor where Blogging falls VS YouTube.
To scale a blog to at least $2000/month it can take up to 3 years of continuous hard work with dedication without paying off.
But once you reach that milestone you can automate the process of blogging and take a chill life.
Blogging can be a good way to make money and another of the features of blogging is that you can do the work at your own pace and publishing at least 1 post per week is enough to rank in Google and so you can chill and do your work.
Ok, now that’s enough talk about blogging now let’s get into the topic of Video Content or YouTube.
YouTube [ Iron Man ]
In Youtube, you create video content and upload it to YouTube’s official website through your Youtube channel.
That’s a basic introduction but let’s get into more detail.
Content Creation
The way how content creation works on YouTube is quite similar to that of Blogging.
The only difference is that you have to always keep an eye for new juicy keywords coming up in your niche.
This sometimes makes it quite annoying that you always have to keep yourselves updated to what’s trending in your niche.
You can use tools like Google Trends to know what’s in trend in your niche and create content around that topic.
And yes there is research involved in YouTube as well and now we are going to cover how to research video on YouTube.
Let’s Begin.
Assuming you are in something informative niches like Digital Marketing or Studies or say top 10s.
You need to first join spaces, subreddits, online communities around your specific niche.
By doing this you will know what type of content the people in these communities are craving for.
You will get all sorts of questions about your niche like Best Digital Marketing courses or How to do Algebraic Expressions for study channels and say top 10 keyword research tools for YouTube for Top 10s channels.
Now that you have all the questions listed up the next thing would be to install a keyword Research tool for YouTube.
When it comes to keyword research for YouTube two extensions come to mind.
#1 VidIQ
#2 TubeBuddy
Both of them are great and I know this because I have tried out both of them but I like vidIQ better then TubeBuddy because of their variety of data and extra features.
Now what you have to do is type the question you have got from other sources into YouTube and hit the search button.
What this will do is [ if you have the vidIQ extension on ] that it will show you the number of searches the keyword gets per month and also show you the difficulty for those keywords.
You now have to type in your Keywords and see the ones which can be targeted by You.
I know I can’t go in much detail in these but you can always go to vidIQ’s YouTube channel as they share some super great content about their extension and YouTube SEO and best of all it’s free.
For more information refer to this video.
Then you create video content using Tools like Filmora 9, Adobe Premiere Pro.
Suggested Reads:-
7 ways to create more engaging videos that rank higher on Youtube.
VidIQ Blog [ The Best One For YouTube SEO ]
YouTube SEO: The Definitive Guide
Content Delivery
Phew! The tiresome work is done and now the only thing left before you can publish your dream video onto YouTube is doing some Optimizations so that the YouTube algorithm picks you up and ranks you at the top.
This used to be tiresome work earlier.
But now vidIQ makes it super easy to do these on-page optimizations as it suggests the optimizations you can make so that your video becomes a masterpiece.
As I am not an authority on YouTube SEO I will suggest you watch this video so that you can get an idea of how to optimize your videos for higher rankings.
Audience
The Audience on YouTube is also similar to blogging.
They like consuming video content as they think that reading blog content is not good.
Because watching YouTube videos gives you a practical tutorial instead of textual which is according to them not engaging and easily consumable.
But again you should not take any decision yet.
You should know what your target audience wants and follow it.
Remember “Audience is the King”
Skills Required
To excel on YouTube you need to be a master in some fields.
One of them is being good on camera. If you stammer or don’t talk naturally on camera then your audience will think of you as a noob and might just not trust you and your YouTube career will go down like a rock.
So you need to practice how to be natural on camera.
Your equipment also plays a huge role in your YouTube videos.
If you try to shoot with super cheap or no equipment at all then you are wasting your time and effort. You need equipment to perform well.
But just having equipment isn’t enough you need to know how to use the equipment at their best so that you can bring an X-factor to your content.
In addition to that, you also need to be good with YouTube SEO.
This means you need to learn YouTube SEO so that your videos rank on YouTube.
The sources which I will refer to learn YouTube SEO are:-
Here Are The Starters For You.
Also to ensure your videos have that X-factor and are of the highest quality you can provide you will need to have superb Video editing skills.
Assuming you are on a budget and decide to try out Filmora (Which I heavily recommend) you can learn editing from Filmora’s official YouTube channel.
Freedom And Flexibility
This is the field where blogging leaves YouTube in the dust.
On YouTube, your monetization is always at risk.
Say your main source of youtube income is Adsense.
And then one day YouTube decides to stop paying Adsense money to the content creators at YouTube so, within some hours, you won’t have any source of income from YouTube.
Also, YouTube does not enable too many Customization options.
The only things you can customize are your channel art and icon and everything else will remain the same as YouTube wants it to remain.
Monetization
Monetization in youtube is mainly the revenue that comes from Adsense.
But there are some other ways you can monetize your videos some of them are Affiliate Links in Description or selling your merchandise.
Overall, the monetization options in Blogging is better than that of YouTube + Blogging has less chance of Demonetization of its platform.
But If you want my suggestion I would probably go with Adsense in this case because most people don’t check out affiliate links in the descriptions of the videos.
Expenses
The expenses on YouTube are much higher than blogging when you are starting.
In blogging, a decent laptop would do and a domain and a hosting are the only two things required to start blogging.
But on YouTube, an average laptop won’t do.
You need to invest in a high spec laptop and equipment which can run powerful video editors with ease.
Also, you need to invest in cameras, Mic’s, and Video Editing software to make high-quality YouTube videos.
And just purchasing these won’t guarantee results.
You need to also master how to use this equipment correctly so that you can get the best out of them.
So overall starting a YouTube channel requires both your time, effort and money.
Time To Scale Up
But here is a good thing about YouTube.
It can be scaled up fast. Unlike blogging, ranking on YouTube is quick and fast.
In blogging it would take 7-8 months to rank whereas on YouTube it only takes a week to rank.
So overall the money can be brought in faster than you can bring it in on blogging.
Wrapping Up
Before I end the post I want to share something with you.
No matter whichever you choose be it blogging or YouTube consistency and Patience is key for both.
My duty was to list all the ins and outs of both fields of work so that you don’t have to waste time doing research.
It’s not like this that today you will start 1 week later with no results and you will leave it.
No, you have to be consistent for at least 2 years in a row and then whether it works for you or not.
Otherwise, there is no use of doing these things if you are searching for a get rich quick scheme.