Authors and Blogs - Still Good Marketing?

A friend of mine forwarded a Business Week article to me which concluded that Blogs are no longer the Holy Grail, and not worth the effort to anyone who wants to present themselves professionally on the internet. In response, I sent her back my "Top 11 Reasons Why a Blog is Still a Good Idea":

#11 - It's free. Websites are not.
#10 - You can set it up in 5 minutes without a web designer instead of sitting on a domain name for months until you get the time and money to get somebody else to create a website for you.
#9 - Users have MUCH lower expectations about the LOOK - layout, graphics, photos, videos - on blogs than they do on websites.
#8 - Crawlers only pick up website changes once or twice a month. Blog updates are recognized many times every day.
#7 - The statistics on how many people read blogs is probably very skewed because most people can't tell the difference between a blog and a website. ("Business Week" stated that only 25% of people said they visit blogs once a month.)
#6 - Visitors can subscribe to be notified every time your blog is updated. No one would ever subscribe to be notified every time your website is updated even if there was an easy way to facilitate that (which there isn't).
#5 - Because of the "subscription" feature, blog readers are very loyal and it's easy to keep your site in front of them.
#4 - Blogs are viewed as "giving." Websites are viewed as "wanting something from you."
#3 - Blogs have more creator-friendly tools, processes, and functions.
#2 - Blogs may not be the best places for e-commerce transactions, but they are definitely great places for conent, which can help you sell things if used in the right way.

And the #1 reason Why A Blog Is Still A Good Idea...

Because I took my e-mail response to my friend and created this blog with it in 22 minutes while pretending to pay attention to a workshop I'm attending right now. And I couldn't have expended the same amount of time and attention and produced a website.

If I use this blog wisely it will become both a great resource for authors AND a great marketing tool for my company.

What about authors? A blog is easy to write, but will it really help you? I interviewed an author recently who was approached by a publisher to write a book based on the writings in her blog. SHE was approached to write a book. Because of her BLOG. She had a book contract signed before she knew what the book would be about, and because she averages 20,000 visitors to her blog EVERY DAY, she had the most successful book signing events in the history of her publisher. (Her book, by the way, is laugh-out-loud funny "Drunk, Divorced, and Covered in Cat Hair." Her blog is a hoot too... crazyauntpurl.com)

So, authors, what are your opinions about blogs? Post a comment and let me know. (I guess that would be #12 - there is no easy way for website users to comment about your content and communicate with other users without special programming/software.)

And, by the way, if you love to write on blogs and wish someone would pay you for doing that, check out this site where they DO pay people to blog.