You might be thinking “Should I start a blog or write a book?”

Both projects take work, dedication, and perseverance. And for good reason!

Becoming a popular blogger or author can literally transform your life and career. With an audience, your voice will be heard and shared around the world.

Since there are so many benefits that come with putting your writing out there, naturally, there is also a lot of competition.

With this article, we’re going to get to the bottom of this frustrating question so that you’ll have a clear path to travel down in the next few months.

I promise that after you are done examining the topic of starting a blog vs. writing a book, everything will start to fall into place.

You’ll be able to stop wondering, researching, and questioning yourself. You’ll finally get down to the business of writing, which is when you’ll see real progress with your work.

Pros of Blogging

You see, the reason that I first gravitated towards blogging is that I didn’t want a traditional career. I didn’t want to have to commute to a 9 – 5 in a boring corporate office.

For me, blogging has unlocked the laptop lifestyle, which allows me to work from wherever I want. I can work from cafes, foreign countries, co-working spaces, or my home office.

Being able to work from home means that I don’t have a commute. I also can wakeup whenever I feel like it. I set my own schedule and clock my own hours.

I have a tremendous amount of flexibility with my work. Since I’m my own boss, I call the shots. I decide which projects to work on.

If you like the sound of this type of work environment, then I’d recommend starting a blog asap. Over time, if you follow my lessons, you’ll be able to enjoy the same type of lifestyle. You can get started here in a few simple steps.

Now, there are some other benefits that come with blogging aside from just the lifestyle. As a blogger, you’ll develop an audience of loyal readers. This audience are the people who enjoy your writing and have a sense of who you are. You’ve never met them in person, but they almost have the sense that they know you.

To be completely honest, I LOVE this aspect of blogging. A lot. I’ve always kinda wanted to be a celebrity. I know it’s vain, but it makes me happy knowing that I’m positively impacting other people around the world. It’s also a big ego trip (haha).

Having this audience allows me to INSTANTLY get traffic to new projects that I’m working on. Those could be books, online courses, or new articles. I can promote the heck out of them. All I gotta do is sent out an email or a social media post.

Summarized, these blogging pros include:

• Work from home and eliminate commutes
• Lots of flexibility with your job
• An audience that follows you and loves you
• Strong earning potential
• Passive income

Cons of Blogging

I would be lying if I didn’t point out that there are also drawbacks to starting a blog. These drawbacks come in the form of an initial upfront investment and work on an ongoing basis. I’ll cover these cons in-depth below.

First of all, if you want to start a blog, you’re going to incur a monthly hosting expense. If you choose to host your blog with Bluehost, that will be $2.95 per month. This is the small fee they take to keep your website up and running.

Don’t worry. You’ll quickly make this money back and it will become a trivial expense. However, I wanted to be upfront and list it as one of the drawbacks. After all, you likely are tight on funds (like most just getting started). You don’t want to break the bank.

Thankfully, once you get set up and start your blog, almost everything else is free. WordPress comes with a lot of functionality, including free themes and plugins.

Along with these hosting fees, you’ll also need to factor in the labor that goes into growing a blog that earns consistent income. Most professional bloggers will write (at minimum) one blog post per week. If you’re aggressively trying to grow your blog, I’d recommend writing 3 per week.

If it takes you 3 hours to write one blog post, then you’re looking at 5 – 15 hours per week worth of work, depending on how fast you want your blog to grow. This also factors in things like promoting your articles, replying to emails, and learning a bit about blogging.

The good news is that blogging is something that you can do part-time. The bad news is that it will take some initial work to get it to the point to where it’s earning you passive income every month.

In summary, the cons for blogging include:

• Small monthly blog hosting fee
• Writing original content every week
• Learning how to promote your articles
• Replying to emails, posting social media updates.
• Studying the craft of blogging

Pros of Writing a Book

I have written five books, which are available on Amazon. These books have been discovered by thousands of readers and earn me income every month.

As you can tell, I love writing. There are so many rewarding aspects of writing a book, that it can be difficult to boil it down to a few key points. However, I’ve given it a lot of thought and have summarized my own findings below.

Writing a book will give you massive credibility in your industry. People will look at you differently. They will assign you the coveted “expert” status that gives you authority. This can help with getting speaking gigs or consulting jobs.

Book readers are different than blog readers. You don’t really read a blog post. You skim it. We’re all ADD online, so we’re not in the right state of mine to read a blog post line by line. On the flip side, book readers are more likely to sit down, put the distractions aside, and immerse themselves in your work.

When you write a book, you have the luxury of referencing past or previous chapters. You can develop an ongoing storyline. You can introduce characters into the plot. It’s a larger body of work, meaning that you don’t have to narrow everything that you want to say into 1 – 2k words. You can cover the subject much more in-depth across 20k+ words.

Because of the sheer length of a book, it feels like you completed an enormous project when you’re done. It takes real planning and perseverance to write an entire book on a subject.

That’s why other people are willing to pay you money to read your work. You’ve conveniently assembled all this information for them in one place, and you communicated it with clarity.

In summary the benefits of writing a book are:

• Credibility, which leads to speaking or consulting gigs
• More room to say what you want
• Readers are more invested in your work
• Emotionally satisfying to complete such a big undertaking
• Passive income once it’s published

Cons of Writing a Book

While writing a book is a cathartic experience, there are also many drawbacks that come with this undertaking. I don’t want to scare you away from this, but I do want to give you a realistic idea of how writing a book compares to blogging.

Many writers have the notion that writing a book is the HARDEST part of the process. It’s not. The hardest thing is getting people to read your book. Now a days, you have to invest a lot of time and money in getting the word out about your new work. It’s good-ole sales and marketing.

You must be prepared to sell your work. You gotta do interviews, book signings, panels, and everything in your power to get your message out there. Otherwise, no one’s going to buy your book. Quite frankly, the only reason people buy MY books is because of my blog.

For me, my blog is what first attracted the audience which enables me to get book sales. I use my blog to promote my books. I don’t need to hire a marketing agency or go on panels. People discover my work through my blog.

Another downside of writing a book is that there is a long feedback process between the writing and the reading of your work. When you write a blog post, you can publish it and instantly get feedback. With a book, you have to wait months (or years) until you can get feedback.

A book is a long project that contains many steps, chapters, and editing. During that span of time, you might need to go back and change chapters or re-work passages. Heck, some of the facts that you’re using could become outdated. I have to consciously keep my books up to date, or otherwise people might choose to buy different books.

In summary, the cons of writing a book include:

• You gotta promote, market, and sell your work
• Might have to split royalties with a publisher
• Longer feedback time
• Must keep your books up to date
• Most writers don’t earn a lot of money

Which Path is Best For YOU?

Starting a blog or writing a book are both good choices! The difference comes in the person who is making that choice. A blog is a good fit for some and not others.

If you want to start a new career that allows you to earn an income from home, then blogging is a great match. You won’t make very much money from book sales, but with a blog, you can earn multiple streams of income from advertising, affiliate marketing, consulting, digital products, freelancing, etc.

Blogs require you to produce content on a consistent basis. Rather than taking on one big writing project, you’ll be working on smaller, though more frequent, blog posts. This is a different writing medium. You’ll have less space to say what you want.

Finally, a blog serves as a platform where you can release products in the future. With regular traffic, it’s easy to launch new websites or get the word out about an announcement relating to your business.

I’m glad that I started a blog when I did. If you’d like to follow my step-by-step tutorial for getting started, I’ll link you to it here. 

If you want to build expertise that leads to speaking gigs, then writing a book is a better path. While a popular blog gives credibility, it’s nothing in the way of a New York Times bestseller or even a moderately popular book.

This “credibility effect” is going to vary from industry to industry. In the online business industry, people might not care if you wrote a book. They might actually favor blogs or podcasts. With traditional industries, they’ll probably look more favorably upon an author than a blogger.

It’s pretty commonly accepted that you won’t make much income from actual book sales. After your publisher’s and agent’s share of the royalties, you aren’t left with much. Self-published authors will make more, but considering most books sell under 3,000 copies, it’s not much.

The majority if your income will come from business that you drum up as a result of the book. This could include speaking gigs, consulting clients, freelancing, or people who hire your agency. The book is “content marketing” for your business.

I hope this helps you make your decision! Reach out to me and tell me a bit more about your work and your business.