Net-based Income-generation Course 5, Lesson 1

Shastri JC Philip is an acknowledged Guru in numerous fields of studies, and has a worldwide following. Join the mailing-list today itself so as to be the first to get his free courses.

People who wish to set up an income generating site repeatedly ask whether one should opt for a conventional website or a blog setup. I strongly suggest that they should opt for a blog. There are several reasons for this suggestion, and the reason will become clear as you read this full write-up.

What Is A Traditional Website: A traditional website is made mostly of a scripting language known as HTML. It might contain graphics, audio, video, flash and many other things. It is usually developed from scratch by a person with a good knowledge of coding.

Traditional websites are generally rugged, with very few bugs, and stable. However, once programmed and set up, there is no way to keep on adding articles and information unless the owner has some knowledge of HTML. Worse, even if the has such a knowledge, changing a given article or adding a new one is neither easy nor automatic. He will have to download the page he intends to change, for which he will need FTP (file transfer protocol) software. Once he modifies the program, he will have upload it back in the correct folder and with the correct name. While FTP programs have become increasingly user-friendly, doing it all is cumbersome and the chances of making an error and messing up the whole website is high.

If a new page is developed and uploaded, it has to be connected properly to the menu. A mistake here can result in the page not being found. What is more, it is a difficult task to connect it to the menu if every page displays the menu, because this will mean connecting this page to every page (hundreds, sometimes) that displays the menu.

Thus a traditional website is good only where no substantial modification or addition is needed after the website is set up. Such a setup is not good for advertisement income on the internet because static sites find it impossible to compete with dynamic sites that keep adding to their content.

What Is A Blog: Blogs were originally developed as dynamic sites where the owner could add material, and revise it, without technical hurdles. These blogs also provided a facility for readers to interact with the blog owner through comments. No FTP was required for anything after the blog was set up.

Once blogs came into existence, numerous people discovered the advantages of such software. No FTP was required and all the housekeeping such as creating links to new articles, updating the menu, formatting the article, etc. was automatically done by the blog software. This saved the owner much time, while at the same time it increased the reliability and integrity of the entire site. This realization made them to develop newer blog software that were more rugged, reliable, flexible and easy to us. One of them is WordPerfect which I strongly recommend in all my course material.

How Does A Blog Function: Most blog software is free. They are coded in PHP which is a highly reliable language. The PHP-based software keeps all its data in a database known as SQL (mostly MySQL) which is again a rugged program. What is more, the PHP program that forms the blog is able to access the data only if it has a username and password. Thus a blog software offers several levels of protection. One has to log into the program to use administrative functions. The program itself has to login to the database to use it. This double layer of protection makes it difficult to hack your blog (though it is not impossible. There are no impossibles in the world of hacking).

Once the blog is set up, one can post information the way one writes an email simply by logging into the website. Material already posted can also be revised in this way. One does not have to worry about the menu and the links. Users can easily post comments.

You can change the appearance by changing the "theme". Thousands of free themes are available for WordPress. If you choose a good theme, it will give you plenty of strategic positions to display your advertisements.

Thus a blog is a dynamic website that helps you establish a site that you can change arbitrarily, which increases your competitiveness and ultimately brings in better advertisement revenue.