So DroidAfrica recently crossed the 1000 subscriber mark on YouTube, a milestone we couldn’t meet after so many years even though our website leverages thousands of pageviews per month. Now, that brings us to the ultimate question: Blogging or Vlogging; which of this is the right platform for you, and which is the better route for your creative ideas.
I’ll make this article simple and straight forward, hoping that by the end of the post, you should be able to clearly decide which route to take and why. One important thing to note about these two creative platforms is that both requirements extreme consistency, and you would want to have that in mind before deciding for either of the platform.
Our Blogging and Vlogging History and Journey
I’d want to see this section more of a personal journey, than as an organizational trip. This is because I was blogging on other platform before the creation of DroidAfrica.net. In fact, I had own few other blogs, including a job and career website, before starting out with DroidAfrica. Although I gave out some of these sites afterwards, to focus on the increasing demands of a tech blog. So because of the little background experience I already had before DroidAfrica, it was easier for me to setup the new tech project easily and to get daily traffics rolling.
Sadly the same is not true with Vlogging, in fact, www.DroidAfrica.net is the reason for the creations of our YouTube Channel. Now these were the problems:
- I had no prior idea of video creation or editing, and
- I lost concentration along the way, and became super inconsistent.
The Ultimate challenge of Blogging and Vlogging
CONSISTENCY, that is the ultimate challenge of both Blogging and Vlogging. It come ahead of every other variables you would want to consider. You may be creative, you may have the ideas, or even have the perfect tools, but take away consistency, and all of these will amount to nothing.
This was the issue; while I was consistent on the website (www.DroidAfrica.net), publishing minimum of 20 articles or phone specifications per week, I was not consistent on YouTube. Our first video, a simple camera sample video of Tecno Spark K7 was published in January of 2018. We later added 13 other simple videos which gave us around 440 subscribers. But we stopped creating videos until the close of October of 2020; a wrong decision indeed.
Like part of the title rightly said, we just touched 1000 subscribers few days ago, and this is majorly due to our lack of consistency. So before jumping on any of these platforms, ensure you pick one that you can be consistent on: If it is blogging, ensure you are writing, and if it is Vlogging, just upload, given that copying other peoples content is not the case in either of the platform, and you can combine the two as well.
Blogging or Vlogging, which is better?
I’ve searched this question on many platforms and forums, but have not been able to find a right answer. Well, here is an answer from my own personal limited experience. Yes, I used limited experience because there are aspect of Vlogging I don’t know yet.
For example, even though YouTube is showing ads on our videos due to some recent policy modifications, the channel itself is not monetized yet. So I can’t really tell you about the earning prowess of both platforms. But since both platform monetize primarily using AdSense, I don’t think Vlogging is going to be “Rocket Science” in terms of it earning potentials. So I’d simply expect almost similar earning capabilities from both platforms, depending on your niche and demography of course.
Now here is why you might want to consider Vlogging instead of Blogging
GROWTH IS EARSIER WITH YOUTUBING / VLOGGING
It is easier to start and grow a YouTube channel, than starting and growing a blog or website. Think of it like this;
Sourcing out a section in a large and established supermarket or departmental store to display and sell your goods could attract and bring you more customers and sales, than renting out a shop and starting from the scratch in some outer town. The supermarket is already established with much larger audience, which you can easily convert to your own audience. NOW SEE YOUTUBE AS THIS ESTABLISHED SUPERMARKET AND THEIR AUDIENCE AS YOUR POTENTIAL SUBSCRIBERS.
One amazing thing about YouTube is; even if you are just opening your mouth and laughing hahahahah… trust me, you’d get audience if you keep laughing consistently. You can simply modify the laughing style; today you go hahahahahah, tomorrow you go hehehehehe, another day huhuhuhuhu and so on, then you can name your channel as “Amazing Laughing Tricks”, you’d be shocked. This may never be possible in blogging or website creation, and that takes us to the next point:
RANKING
How do you intend ranking your new domain name in order to attract traffic as a blogger; through adverts or SEO content creation? This is a major problem for all new bloggers in recent times. You can search for Domain Authority on Google.com, so you can understand more on this.
On the other hand, YouTube is among the top rated site with highest domain and page authority, so creating any channel or page on YouTube could start you from above 50 DA already, instead of 0 DA in the case of starting a blog. VERY IMPORTANT!
RECOGNIZED INFLUENCE
The last thing I want to mention is Influence. Your Influence on YouTube could be easily recognized, and even appreciated more than blogging. Am saying this from a personal experience side of view. For example, if you are starting out in technology niche, your influence could be more recognized and appreciated by brands and OEMs when Vlogging, than it would with Blogging.
Let get more practical; if not for the current turbulent in Google Algo modifications, DroidAfrica had tipped between 400k to 500k pageviews in the past, but even with that number, only few brands have contacted us for collaboration and reviews. But surprisingly, after crossing 1K subs on YouTube just few days ago, a wing of a popular phone maker in this region contacted us, specifically referencing our channel with just 1K subs; isn’t that amazing?
So a YouTube Channel with 5000 or 10000 subscribers could be more valuable and influential in the eyes of brands than a blog with 200,000 pageviews per month. You can share your experience with me in the comment section below if it is different from mine. Now, let me answer one very important question before I round off.
Should you combine Blogging and Vlogging?
Very important question indeed. Can you combine, and should you combine Blogging and Vlogging? Absolutely!. If you’ve already started out in Vlogging, I’d advise you continue Vlogging to avoid Blogging frustrations (trust me there are some many of them). But if you are already blogging, then adding videos to your existing content in 2021 is almost none optional.
Many recent and past Google algorithm updates have pointed to the importance of adding videos to your existing content. Now since this is not more like “How To Blog” or some SEO Tips website, I will save you some details, but here is what Google seems to be saying in summary:
Are you blogging about food, show food; are you blogging about animals, show animals; are you blogging about technology, then show techs. This will go a long way in increasing your website overall authority in a long run.
As you would have noticed from our experience, it won’t be easy trying to be MKBHD and GSMArena at the same time (I’m sure those within the tech space will understand these names better). But you can split some target for yourself; focus or writing and creating more engaging articles, and try to convert some of these articles to videos as much, and as often as you can, and if you don’t know where to start from, START FROM YOUTUBE.
Watch as many videos as you possible, and learn as much as you can. Gather different ideas from different videos, and use it to create your own idea which will be unique to you, and if YouTube turns out to be too crowded for you to learn on, you can try other third party platforms.
Conclusions
This post is supposed to be a simple appreciation of all our users, and especially to all those who have subscribed to our YouTube Channel. It is so unfortunate, that it metamorphosed into this detailed platform comparison between Blogging and Vlogging. Now I’m sure you learnt one or two things from our experience, and hopefully, you’d strike the code right when you begin your own online creative journey. Let me know your thoughts via the comment section below.