Pro Blogging

mtmfx

A client wants to start a blog with the goals of reaching a lot of people, making money with adsense and selling ads. He wants followers to be able to post their own articles and responses. What platform is the best for this? Is there a preferred blogging platform that most blogging pros are using? Any suggestions?

tsilva

Wordpress is regarded as the most widly used blogging platform.
It can include Adsense. For connecting to a built-in social media market, Tumblr is a good choice and is experiencing rapid growth.

mtmfx

Adsense seems to be the most important thing to the client. When you say it can include Adsense what do you mean?

tsilva

@mtmfx,
Wordpress has a plugin module that enables Adsense:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/adsense-manager/

Tumblr can handle Adsense as well:
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/22559/how-to-add-google-adsense-to-your-tumblr-blog/

Part of the decision is how hands-on will your client be in the blog. Tumblr is more intuitive to manage than Wordpress. Wordpress has many more options that will require a certain learning curve.

Also keep in mind that setting up the blog is the easy part. Attracting meaningful SEO and traffic will require quite a bit of work on an ongoing basis.

mtmfx

I know it is a lot of work but he wants to do this for a living. He is a well known person in his profession and wants to work out of his house. He is reading a book called "How To Build A Successful Blog Business" and he thinks he can do this. His questions to me have really sparked my interest and the little research I have done and your advice has has taught me a lot. But your right it is not as easy it it seems. Thanks!

tsilva

@mtmfx,
You may want to scroll down in this forum to a thread called, "Adsense." The last tip mentioned would be relavent for you too.

mtmfx

What about a Rapidweaver solution if there is one? I have the Tumblr stack from JW and I know a little about Rapidblog. Do you think Blogger is as good as Wordpress or Tumblr for what my client is trying to do? Is self-hosting your blog better than not? From what I understand you can not self-host any blog other than Wordpress. Do you know if that is correct?

tsilva

Rapidweaver has a few blog solutions. Its own blog page is simple but ties you to blog from the Rapidweaver program on your Mac. Not ideal for those on the go. Tumblr stack 'pulls' the Tumblr blog content that is hosted by Tumblr. Good if you want a nicely integrated blog to match the styling of your website and affords content to be added via Tumblr from any internet connected computer. RapidBlog: similar. A relatively new RW platform that is getting notice is Armadillo. This is a real "CMS" platform. It is integrated into the RW site, but like Wordpress, it resides on your host's server (and not on your computer's hard drive) so essentially, any page can be set up and edited by your client anywhere. Great for adding content on the go, plus, the entire RW website can be set up from this platform, unchaining RW from a single computer. It's user interface was clearly designed to be intuitive and easy for non-techies, but is a robust platform on its own right.
Can it accept Adsense? I would assume so but if @Nimblehost is listening, Jonathan can chime in.

So, what to choose? It's really a matter of what your client wants: if he wants to be hands on, deliver dynamic content, but is not that tech savvy, and you are itching to dive into RW, then Armadillo may be the answer. If he wants an infinite variety of theme options for styling plus a friendly interface with a built-in social network, Tumblr is hard to beat. If he wants a multitude of plugins, and theme choices, but willing to look "under the hood" at times, Wordpress is always there too. Note there is also a way to integrate Wordpress into a RW page if that is desired, but it will require getting your hands dirty so to speak. You said he wants the visitors to post articles and content. Will he be actively hosting and delivering the majority of the content? This may also be a clue as to to decide which is best.

As for "hosting": This is a good primer:

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/website-hosting-technology-explained/

peterdanckwerts

I've just moved from using RapidWeaver's blog page to Armadillo and I'm most impressed, not least by the fact that the new page is almost identical to the old one without extra work. I can't imagine there's any problem includingAdSense - it's just a matter of dropping in the code.