I have gotten several questions regarding my guide to making money online. One of the most frequently asked questions is why I recommend blogging in the guide versus just throwing up affiliate landing pages and using PPC to drive traffic.

I have five core reasons:

1. Conversion: Building a relationship by adding value is one of the highest converting ways to make money online. Most people fail online because they do not spend the time building a relationship, they just go directly to convincing people to buy a product.

Blogging is conversational which makes it perfect for building relationships with readers. This will drive high conversions and help you build a long term business/brand.

Certainly you can build a relationship via e-mail by throwing up a landing page and capturing email addresses. But why would you want to publish all the content via email when you could have that content rank in the search engines and drive traffic to you?

2. Traffic: With a little work, building relationships with other bloggers will reap you traffic benefits for years and grow your subscribers. You want to associate yourself with other blogging experts in your field, which intern helps your brand evolve.

Getting out from behind your computer and picking up the phone can really help you build relationships with other bloggers. Also attending events is a great way too.

3. SEO: The SEO benefit is huge with blogging. By far the biggest factor that influences your blog’s search engine raking is links from other authority sites in your niche. By other bloggers linking to your blog it will make it much easier for your blog to consistently rank in the search engines.

Authority sites are not going to link to your 1 page affiliate site. Plus if you are marketing via PPC you can still build a landing page off your blog. Google will reward you with a much better quality score since your blog has lots of authority.

Updating content is another huge factor in your search engine placement. Blogging makes it easy to keep your content fresh which will have the search engines loving your blog.

And don’t forget about the SEO for WordPress plug-in that makes on page SEO for your blog a cinch.

4. Feeling Proud: Statistics show when you feel proud about your work you will be more successful. Blogging provide you the perfect opportunity to build a long term business and brand you can feel proud of.

You have a choice online, build a long term brand or jump from one short term affiliate opportunity to another. Either way you will spend lots of time. The difference is with building a blog you can create a long term business versus just a short term money making opportunity that will get copied by affiliates.

5. Technical Hurtle: I have noticed many people online fail because they get caught up with html and technical issues when creating a business website online. With blogging systems like WordPress, the technical hurtles to succeed are significantly reduced. This is a great reason to start blogging especially if you are not a techie.

I hope this helps you see why blogging is a great method for building your online business. Sure you have to write a bit, but in the long run building a long term business is much easier then jumping from niche to niche trying to make short term money!