Dump that Web Site and Just Build a Blog!

What’s the fastest way to get your Web startup launched without having to raise capital, hire programmers and spend countless hours developing a Web site?

Do it yourself with a blog.

Why a Blog?

When most people think about blogging, they conjure an image of someone’s personal Web diary or a site bubbling with celebrity gossip.  

But blog software has much greater potential,from selling a product to building an entire community.  Sure, you could use a blog to give a long-winded report on your last vacation, but you can just as easily (and more effectively) harness its power to keep customers updated on your offerings.

A Web site is most valuable when you can to get it up and running quickly and edit the content on the fly.  A blog facilitates this for you by having all of the design templates, content editing, and publishing features built-in.  

Simple tools like Blogger.com or TypePad.com will allow you to setup a basic site with a good looking template, and even your own unique URL, for less than $10 per month.  They take the site design, programming and hosting issues right off the table in one swoop.

Learn to Fail Faster

Launching a blog quickly also allows your idea to fail a lot faster.  You see, your Web business isn't going to fail because you didn't raise enough capital or you didn't design a sweet enough set of buttons.  It's going to fail because you don't know how to get customers to show up to your site or because your product just isn’t that amazing.

The inherent speed of launching a blog brings you closer to the point of potential failure, and that’s a good thing.  

You want to quickly find out whether your idea is getting traction.  The sooner you are in-market and getting customer response, the sooner you can either bet the farm on growth or pack it up and move on to the next idea.

You may find that your initial approach to the market was flawed, which is often the case.  Creating a blog allows you to quickly evolve your concept so that when you do go to build a full Web site, you’ve got a better idea of how to spend your time and capital.

Master Web Marketing

After you get your product on the Web, mastering the art of attracting traffic is extremely important.  There’s very little difference between marketing a blog and marketing a full blown Web site.  Frankly if you can’t figure out how to get traffic to a simple blog, your Web company will have much bigger problems!  

The Web is a big place these days with over a billion people on-line.  It used to be the case that you could simply make a mark by being the one company in your industry that had a Web site.  Now a website is compulsory and marketing them competitively is the greatest challenge.

Removing the build phase of your Web site by focusing on your blog will free your time to learn how to optimize your content for search engines, build effective cost per click campaigns, and leverage the various social networks to get your word out there.  You’ll need every waking moment to figure this stuff out and orchestrate your campaigns. Having a hassle free site will be a huge blessing.

Total Content Control

Which brings us to the next point – easily editing your own content.  

Your Web site isn’t a single static document that you build once and forget about.  You’ll need to change your offers and messaging constantly to hook new customers and respond to existing ones.  It would be nearly impossible to write effective copy for an entire site on your first attempt and never have to change it again.

This is where the beauty of blog publishing shines through.  A blog is ultimately a word processor with a few extra features, so editing content and making site changes are easy.   If you need to create three different versions of a product sale page to test different messages, no problem.  You can and should take advantage of easy changes to adjust your product strategy as your learn about your customer.

An Ongoing Pilot Program

The days of front-end investment in a product that never changes are over.

The Web enables, and requires, that innovation is iterated for a demanding, changing and hopefully growing audience of consumers. Eventually your brilliant idea will probably outgrow your modest little blog and explode into the next Amazon or YouTube.  

If you can come to terms with the fact that your idea isn’t a business until you’ve tested it in front of enough customers to prove the business case, then the concept of using a flexible tool to build from should make a lot of sense.