Building A Blog To Compliment A Website?

Personally I would convert your existing site to wordpress. Then you get the best of both worlds. If you don't want to do that then just do a blog separately and drive traffic to your main site.

Don't know if it helps but I am just starting to experiment with adding comments to a standard css/html site. Using the XCommentsPro package that means I have to convert pages to php, but other than that, I should get my 'blogging' added for less overhead than shifting to new platform.

Any others out there using XCommentPro who can comment on this approach?

With big sites I always create blogs to compliment them. It's a more dynamic platform and i can use it to funnel visitors from places like youtube and facebook. Once I build the initial following I add the forum platform. It's more and more about leveraging the social world that we live in. And creating a community around your site is where the leverage is.

Even if you don't build a forum, there are still to many advantages to using a blog. Definitely build one.

alexbbbh,

My two cents, for what it is worth, is this:

You have a basically, static site that makes about $200/month from some form of passive traffic source. What I would tend to do is to make the blog part of the main site. It does not have to be part of the main page, just a note about the blog and a link will help. On the blog, you can highlight the benefits, etc. of several of your products. WordPress and most other blog scripts I have seen allow what is known as drip-feeding. Create a number of product information articles and drip feed them every so many days apart. It is still just as automated as your site is currently, but you have the added benefit of, say, once per week, your customers will get information about one of your products. When you update your product list, if you select the top 12-24 products and write short blurbs about them, how easy they are to use, etc., then you have enough content to post between 1 and 2 articles per week automatically. Your customers get ticklers about the products they want, and when you are ready to launch the new product line, build it up so they are coming in to learn about it. Get them excited about the products before you let them know what they are, and they will have their wallets out anxious to spend their money. The fore-warning may permit some of them to budget the cash so they have it available on the launch day.

Just a thought.
Buck

I forgot to add that WP has pinging built in. Every article alerts something, somewhere that you just posted and anyone watching for the keywords in the articles will come running to see what you are doing. New traffic?

Why not develop blog on your domain instead like yoursite.com/blog and add a link to it on main page. Your blog would derive traffic which you can use any way you want and at the same time it would push up the ranks of your whole domain.

So it seems YES build the blog LOL...I already have a link on my main header (where it shows on every 3,000 + pages) but now with a real theme it will look nicer.

On the plugins however, If i choose a free WP template from an outside company who lets you DL free wp templates, can I still do all the plugins and such that WP has to offer?

Your plugins are not necessarily connected to the WP theme. I have seen some themes where special features are part of the theme, but relatively speaking, those are rare.

I use free themes exclusively. I look for the ones that are closely related to what I want and then tweak the graphics, the php or the css files until it is what I want.

If you go with the free themes, check the license and check out the footer code. If the footer code is encrypted, can it! I have seen several themes that appear to provide links to the source of the theme, but they have hidden code that allows them to change the links at their own discretion. If they don't like you, they can point the links to warez or porn sites and your site will get banned from Google search results, or worse, you will lose your adwords/adsense accounts. In some cases, you will get dropped from your hosting company.

With WP3, they have a new theme I have not examined yet. At first glance, it looks like you can easily add your own graphics and change the colors of the site. There are plenty of gadget boxes to help you customize your site with ads, rss links, text or pictures.

Well, I hope this helps.
Buck

Thanx all...blog is up...seo'ing now