Blogging vs YouTube: Whats The Big Difference Between Starting a Blog vs a YouTube channel in 2022?

Are you planning on starting your very own online business in order to earn money online? or are you thinking about creating an online presence for yourself or your business?

In this article we'll be taking a look at the pros and cons of starting a blog vs a youtube channel in 2022. 

Nowadays alot of people are making money online be it through remote jobs or online businesses. 

Now, people can make millions of dollars just by posting videos or blog posts online.

As time goes on people are now looking towards other sources of income leaving their boring 9-5 jobs behind.

Should i start a blog or a youtube channel?

Starting a blog vs Starting a youtube channel all depends on you and your niche. Some niches are better served via video because they benefit from visuals. 

For example; A chef trying to teach people how to cook. Something as practical as cooking would be better off in video format.

In other cases, text may be equally good or better at portraying a particular message.

What is a Blog?

A blog (a shortened version of “weblog”) is an online journal or informational website which displays information in reverse chronological order. It is a platform where a writer or a group of writers share their views on an individual subject.

What is YouTube?

YouTube has gone from being an online repository of casual home videos, to becoming a full blown search engine with over 3 billion searches per month. It has about 694 billion streams per minute and is the second most visited website in the world. 

Since its inception in 2005, it has become one of the biggest online video platforms in the world, with 2.1 billion users worldwide. It has a wide variety of content across all genres.

It's ideal for anyone looking for a way to make extra income while doing what they love.

Blogging vs YouTube; What's The Big Difference?

Should I start a blog or a YouTube channel? Short answer, it depends on your niche and your level of comfort around a camera. If you’re more comfortable writing and prefer not to be on a camera, you should start a blog. If you don’t mind being on camera and feel confident learning video editing skills, then a YouTube channel is best for you.

Start up cost.

If you're thinking of starting a blog or a youtube channel then you should know that there are cost involved. 

But that dosen't mean you can't create a blog or youtube channel without spending money. There are different ways in which people can create a blog or a youtube channel with as little as $0. It all depends on your goals.

Here is what you might expect to pay for starting your blog versus your YouTube channel.

Hosting and domain package –  In order to start a blog you'll need to pay for hosting and a domain name. A domain name is about $15 dollars and hosting is at least $3 dollars per month.

But I thought you said we could start with as little as $0 dollars? Yes, you can. You can create a free a blog with blogger its a free CMS owned by Google. It provides free hosting and domain name. 

Similar to YouTube, it allows bloggers to create content and be able to monetize it with Google adsense all for free.

This blog you're reading right now was made with blogger.

Expenses you will need on a YouTube channel to start out:

Creating a youtube channel and uploading videos are completely free. So you do not need to pay anything to join the platform. But you'll need to spend money on video gear such as a camera or a phone. As well as a good  microphone.

In order to start creating videos, you will at least need a good camera on your smartphone with a decent audio quality on it.

A good camera for filming videos and a microphone will really help take your content to the next level and will ensure that your videos are good quality. 

Remember that everything on YouTube is visual so your success depends on how good your videos are so investing in quality equipment is crucial be it a phone or a camera.

I know I said earlier that you can create a blog and, or a youtube channel all for free. Well yes you can but when it comes to YouTube it depends on your niche. 

If your YouTube channel is about education then you don't necessarily need to invest in video gear a simple whiteboard animation or video slideshow would get the job done for you. Similarly if you are a gamer you could just upload a video of the gameplay with little or no commentary. 

But if your channel is about lifestyle or vlogging then you'd definitely need to invest in quality video equipment.

Monetization.

When it comes to monetising a blog or a YouTube channel, there are multiple ways in which these are similar.

Here are the ways to monetise a blog and a youtube channel.

Display ads –  You can join an ad network which allows you to place ads in the content on your blog or video in order to make money you make money from each impression on those ads (CPM) as well as from clicks(CPC) on those ads.

Affiliate marketing – You can place affiliate links in your blog posts or youtube video description and make a commission whenever someone makes a purchase through your link.

Sponsored posts – Brands or companies pay you to create a post or quick video ad about the products or services that they offer.

Selling physical or digital products – You can also monetise your blog or youtube channel by selling merch.

Selling services – Another way to monetise a blog is through offering your services, such as online courses, etc.

The income you make on either your blog or your YouTube channel can vary greatly depending on the monetisation strategies you apply.

But blogging has an edge over YouTube in terms of ads. A blogger can join which ever ad network he or she pleases while a youtuber only has the option of using Google's adsesnse. Some ad networks pay more than Google adsense For example: Mediavine, Adthrive etc.

However, both a blog and a YouTube channel can be highly profitable, especially if you don’t rely simply on displaying ads. If you use the other monetising strategies above, you will likely see a very good income from either of these.

Engagement.

Hands down YouTube takes the win on this one. The level of engagement  is something that’s not talked about very often, but it makes a big difference when you're trying to grow an online business.

One of the harsh truths of blogging is that people don't actually care about you. Yes, when was the last time you read through a blog post and considered following the writer on social media?😕 People don't do that unless they're usual readers of your blog.

User retention is much higher on YouTube than on a blog.

When someone comes to your blog, it can be harder for them to instantly create a connection to you from reading your articles. However, when someone watches a YouTube video of you, they start to feel like they know you. And if they can relate to you in any way, this will also boosts the trust that they have in you.

Scalability.

While you might not be thinking of it now, but blogging in the long run is actually more profitable. Both youtube and blogging requires consistency.

As a blog progresses and starts generating substantial income a blogger can be able to outsource work from freelancers in order to keep up with the demands. You can hire writers and editors at a relatively affordable cost on freelancing websites like fiverr. 

You can also sell a blog for a hefty sum. Yes, some people actually grow blogs and then sell them online for as much as $1million dollars or even more and make a living from that. But you can't sell a youtube channel that easily since the channel revolves around the youtuber and the audience has already built a connection with the youtuber so a sudden change could lead to massive loss of subscribers.

It'll be hard for people to know the difference, between two blog posts on a website. but people can easily notice even the slightest change in a youtube video.

I think it's one of the prices you'll have to pay, for having such an engaged audience. So before going into YouTube you'll have to decide whether or not you'd be able to do it long term.

Updating Old Content.

Everything in life must grow old and die including the content on your blog and youtube channel so in order to avoid that you'll need to update old content. But updating old content is actually very different in both platforms. A blog is the obvious winner in terms of updating old content this is because when a blog post that has already been indexed, it remains that way and if there is any changes to the blog post it won't affect the rankings 

But a youtube channel is different if content on a channel is outdated a youtuber can't just edit the video as you would with a blog post, instead they'll have to reupload a fresh video covering the topic properly this means that the newly uploaded videos will start from scratch in terms of SEO.

Growth Rate.

Not only is it easier to get a YouTube channel set up and running, but you’ll also see faster growth. Generally, faster growth generally will happen on YouTube than with blogging.

By growth, I mean traffic to your channel and views on your videos. Traffic and views are what you need to generate any kind of revenue.

Youtube is the winner in terms of traffic hands down. As I said earlier, YouTube isn't just a video sharing platform, it's also a search engine. Not only are youtubers able to get traffic from YouTube itself but their videos can also show up in search results. So by using YouTube you'd be killing two birds with one stone.

A blog on the other hand, is different. asides from organic search. There's really no other traffic source and to drive traffic to your site, you'll either have to pay for promotion or manually promote your blog yourself.

Yes, youtube is competitive, but not as competitive as Google Search.

It can take months or years to grow a blog and start seeing traffic even if you follow all the SEO practices possible. When it comes to blogging there is no guarantee that you'll ever be able to rank or get traffic to your blog. You'll  just have to do all you can and wait.

But for YouTube its alot easier if you follow the right SEO practices then you should be seeing traffic in a short period of time.

Networking potential.

Having a blog and having a youtube channel definitely gets equal share of  networking potential and enables you to build strong bonds with big companies and other established bloggers and youtubers..