YouTube or Blogging: Which One is More Profitable?

Blogging and YouTube can both be highly profitable and passive if done properly.

While in most cases you should be doing both, the answer to which one you should focus more on will depend on you and your niche.

Related: The Top 10 Richest YouTubers That Inspire The Most

Here are some things that you should consider when comparing YouTube vs blogging:

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1. Which One Has Lower Competition for Your Niche?

In our niche, SEO, there are a lot of decent videos, but for certain long tail keywords there are not quite as many articles.

Therefore, we have decided to focus more on articles for our content marketing strategy.

If you are looking to figure out which one has lower competition in your niche, we recommend doing some basic keyword research to identify keywords that you can create content around.

2. Does the Topic Benefit from Video?

Some niches are better served via video because they benefit from visuals. In other cases, text may be equally good or better at portraying a particular message.

3. Which Platform Is Better Suited to Your Monetization Strategy?

One of the reasons we like blogging is that you can go back and change the text if you need to.

For example, there might be a situation where you realize some content provides a great opportunity to promote an affiliate offer you just discovered.

If this content was in article format, you could simply go back and add some links in the text.

If on the other hand this content was in video format, it’d be much harder or impossible to go back and change your video to mention the new affiliate offer.

Another monetization benefit that blogging on your own website provides is that you can select which ad networks you’d like to monetize your traffic with. On YouTube you are forced to use Google Adsense.

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4. The Pros and Cons of Creating Content on Other People’s Platforms

Cons

When posting content on a platform like YouTube, you don’t have full control over the platform and how it distributes your video.

Additionally, having all of your followers as subscribers on your channel, rather than on controllable assets like email, can be risky.

Just think about what Facebook did to organic reach in 2015 and its new changes in 2018. Before the 2015 changes, you could reach a large portion of your audience organically by simply posting to your Facebook page.

….YouTube or Blogging: Which One is More Profitable?….

After the 2015 algorithm update, it became significantly harder to reach your own audience without paying for ads.

Pros

While it is nice to own the asset you are publishing on, here are some of the benefits to publishing content on websites that you do not own:

• In most cases it will be easier to rank on search engines due to the high authority of the domain.
• High authority platforms have more trust with people than those that are lesser known.

These are two of the main reasons that we currently blog on Medium.

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5. Do You Have Experience Managing a Website?

While keyword research and on-page SEO are helpful to know for both blogging and YouTube-ing, managing a website still requires some technical knowledge.

If you are not good with technical SEO, you might find it easier to publish most of your content on platforms like Medium and YouTube.

6. Do You Want to Outsource or Hire People?

While it is possible to outsource YouTube videos, outsourcing article writing is generally easier and cheaper.

Related: How to make a YouTube video: 16 tips for beginners

You can hire writers and editors at a relatively affordable cost on freelancing websites like Legiit.

On the flip side, it is generally more personable for you to speak with your own audience via video recordings. This can be particularly helpful if you are looking to build a personal brand.

7. Equipment and Editing

While professional video equipment is not required when creating content for YouTube, it can be helpful.

Also, editing and post production usually require some basic knowledge, something that is not required with articles.

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8. Which One Comes More Naturally to You

While it is possible to get better at something that you may not naturally be good at, it is easier to do what you are already good at.

If you consider yourself a good writer, go with blogging. On the other hand, if you love being in front of the camera, YouTube is probably a better option for you.

We recommend that you start by giving both blogging and YouTube-ing a try to see which one comes more naturally to you and which ones ends up driving more results.

Just make sure to make at least 10 articles and 10 videos in order to more accurately judge which one is working better for you.

9. Where Does Your Target Audience Hang Out?

When comparing blogging vs Youtube, you want to consider where the people in your niche hang out.

For example, if you are in the fashion niche, Instagram and YouTube are probably popular platforms for your audience.

If on other hand, you are in the SEO niche, Instagram is not the greatest platform to be on. Most SEOs are looking for content on Google, YouTube, and Facebook.

That being said, you don’t always need to follow the status quo with your platform selection. It may be a good idea to try creating content on an underutilized platform due to the low competition.

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10. Are You Looking to Run Ads?

While Google search ads generally cost more than other forms of online advertising, in our opinion, YouTube ads are currently underpriced.

This makes it easy to utilize them when growing your YouTube channel. That being said, you may have trouble with other ad platforms if you use YouTube.

For example, you can’t run Facebook remarketing ads to your YouTube audience.

11. How Fast Do You Want to Get Traffic?

Blogging is generally slower than YouTube, but it can still get you traffic relatively fast if the authority of your domain is high.

You can rank on YouTube pretty much immediately if there is low competition for your keywords and you meet the criteria of their algorithm.

12. Are You Willing to Use “Clickbait”

While using clickbait is not a requirement for blogging or YouTube, it is more commonly utilized on YouTube.

With both, you should take time to craft your titles and thumbnails to get a better click though rates and rankings.

Blogging vs Youtube Conclusion

While you should focus on doing both in most cases, blogging and YouTube have their pros and cons. Let us know your thoughts on this topic in the comments below or by joining our Facebook group at this link. YouTube or Blogging: Which One is More Profitable?

Related: 

• How To Become a YouTube Affiliate and Make Money Online