Blog (With Wordpress) or Self-Built Website?

First off I want to thank everyone that has contributed to all the information on this site. I have searched through so much and read so much that at times it felt overwhelming. However I am posting this question because I couldn't quite find the material I am looking for in some areas. If you know of a thread that I missed you can just paste the link for me and I will go back to reading. First before I ask my question I will tell you my current objectives/status or my vision if you will.

Facts-

1. I currently have a blog through wordpress that is hosted by hostgator.
2. I currently have a set schedule so that I can put an hour or two in a day for the website (goal is at least 1 post 400-600 words a day)
3. I want to keep it simple and productive at this point and just develop the content of my site and make money in one or two ways at the most starting out.

Questions-

1. Should I create a website or keep my blog through wordpress? My long-term objectives is to do affiliate sales or dropshipping directly from my website. I also want to create a donation tab on my website so people can donate to me if they really like/appreciate the information I present to them. I just read on paypal that it was only for non-profit through them (on the merchant section), how do I set it up so it can become my profit? I recently bought a video camera and do plan on putting self made videos/pictures on my website.

2. How do I actually setup a dropshipping/affiliate sales to my site? I want solid newbie step by step guide information as to how you go about all this. Any links to threads/websites that do this is really appreciated. I spent an hour today looking and couldn't find the information I am looking for.

My current objectives is just to work on SEO (Which I found great information on) and providing the best quality content that I can. My goal is $500.00 a month at this point. I really appreciate your help in helping me reach this goal.

I am happy using Wordpress for my small business. I try to post 1-2 500-1000 word blogs a week and trying to use 5-6 pictures per post. The whole site is using wordpress cms. I would read up on silos as that's what I am doing to figure out how to do better onsite SEO. There are a lot of options to go through on certain plugins, like yoast SEO.

First of all congrats for your efforts,

Answers:
1) If you have proper website for the business process most of the people can get trust-worth, because you can elaborate your achievements and services in websites in various innovative schemes. Where as the blog can't do that process.

2) Make your site popular using various medium like social media and provide offers to get organic traffic from people. This will give you good response and also conversion of leads in to sales....

Ok next quick question then.... How do I convert my blog to a website? Do I have to re-type all the information I have posted so far? Or can I create a website somehow then swap it out?

reliv55 said:

Ok next quick question then.... How do I convert my blog to a website? Do I have to re-type all the information I have posted so far? Or can I create a website somehow then swap it out?

Click to expand...

AFAIK you would be manually replacing content.

I use pages for the main website, and posts for the blog.

Well I am a fan of wordpress since there are themes and plugins for almost everything, if I were you I would just go with Wordpress and if I ever need to create something with a custom code then I ll hire a programmer to do his magic on wordpress, simple as that

Ok so I still can "create" website stuff on wordpress then? It doesn't limit me in any way?

Well you can easily meet your goal and objective by using wordpress. As with click of a button you design everything on wordpress so honestly I dont like you to waste your time on coding (developing new website) better write content and sell it and that's what your goal is to earn 500 Dollars.

reliv55 said:

Ok so I still can "create" website stuff on wordpress then? It doesn't limit me in any way?

Click to expand...

You create the static webpage with pages. Home-Page1-Page2-Page3. Then you edit the menu system to pick what menus to use for the pages from the previous sentence.

Reading about silos they say to create the static with one wordpress install and the dynamic blog with a second wordpress install under the blog directory.

Okay im glad you searched forum before posting a thread

affiliates
wordpress is the most powerful system i ever used for affiliates, its much better for SEO and every thing.

dropshipping or E-commerce store
However if you are serious on dropshipping, there are some wp plugins that can make wp a clean store, though they are not very nice or powerful like other ecommerce systems (my fav is magento). so decide if you want it to be an affiliate website WP is perfect or go magento

I dont suggest convert later, its better to plan early what is your strategy for long term

Personally, I would stick with Wordpress for a few reasons. You already have it set up, and you can focus on content - you dont have to focus on creating a whole new site or paying someone to do so. There's also tons of plugins out there that deal with e-commerce/drop shipping.

I've heard a LOT of good things about WooCommerce, though I havent really used it.

That's just my thoughts - I like to keep things simple.

You can do what they call Flatten to HTML. Basically converting Wordpress to HTML. Not really sure I would take this approach with an ecommerce site though. Depends on how often you are updating/adding products and if you are crossposting to social media.