The major difference between a blog & a conventional website is that a website just sits there. Once you’ve got a website up, you then have to promote it. A blog, has the capacity to announce itself, & can keep doing that every time you update. Right now there are millions of people out there actively looking for blogs. Blogs are used to opine, to review, & to sell. In fact, many Internet marketers base their entire business around blogging.

Blogging is really just basic communication. Its flexibility is also one of its outstanding features. Many people feel that blogs create an intimate atmosphere for learning & research. A blog can create a simple credibility that can help sell your products because it helps create an “Everyman” aura, a stripped down, hype-free way to talk about products. If your opinions get read & respected, you might find that your credibility will begin to increase around a particular subject. People will begin to look to you to offer your opinions on forthcoming issues. And once you are established and considered an expert in a niche, your ability to sell from your blog will increase dramatically.

Once you are established, don’t be afraid to ask people to sign up to your list. This will be a list where you can reach your readers at a moment’s notice. A great way to utilize this list is to send a message to it when you have made a new post to your blog, and encourage your readers to not only read your new article but comment on it.

Blogs are hot. You probably have read success stories about them as marketing tools. Whether you are a small business owner or independent professional who works at home, you can tap into its potential and immediately become an expert in your niche.

But, is there any drawback? What should you know before deciding if you are into blogging?

For the uninitiated, there are approximately 175,000 blogs created on a daily basis. The number is increasing — more than double — compared to last year.

It cannot possibly maintain the growth at such rate forever. Afterall, there are only so many people on the earth, especially who are online. Everyone can only start and blog about so many things at once.

Still, the rate of which the blogosphere is growing astonishes all of us.

A blog becomes popular as a marketing tool because firstly it represents the human face of what used to be faceless companies and websites. End-users demand more nowadays. They demand interactive communication between themselves and real people from the company they are going to do business with.

E-mail newsletters and traditional websites serve this purpose only partially. Both of them convey information to the consumers, with no way to interactively give feedbacks.

That is why although a website and a blog could complement each other, small business owners and solopreneurs who are just going to build their first web presence, often choose a blog as the only solution without a traditional website.