Should I separate websites for blog and business?

Question

I am a freelancer for web-development and I have currently 3 customers but no own homepage.

I want to create a blog in English. The main reasons for that are given in this short talk.

Secondly, I would like to create a page where my customer can log in and use a ticket system and where I can advertise myself.

Now, since I am from Germany I am thinking about using a domain like my-name.de which contains my blog and my business like this:

I only want to offer my blog in English to prevent writing each post twice. Thus if blog and business would share the same domain together, I would do everything in English. Here is what I don't like about the idea:

• I would use a .de domain for English content only.
• If I want to write something about me in German too, but provide my Blog only in English language, then my site is inconsistent.

On the other hand, I could separate blog (myBlog.com) and business (my-name.de).

This would have the advantages that

• Blog would be only in English (.com domain)
• My business would be only in German (.de domain)

but it has the disadvantages that:

• I would need two buy separate domains and SSL certificates
• I would need somehow two distinct logos for the pages
• I would need to invent some random blog name

I am just not sure which way to go. Also, the blog would be for other developer, so I am not sure if this would make sense because my 3 customers so far have no developing-background at all.

Any recommendations which way is the best to go here? Or should I maybe create a blog & business domain in English like that: my-name.com ?

Answer 1

I have two main URLs that I share with people: my blog, and my "professional" website. They use the same certificate, issued by my proxy, Cloudflare (not affiliated, just like them).

I recommend separating it out. Your blog can potentially include contributions from other users, especially if it gets to be a bigger blog! It also helps having different personas to be known as - the Founder of BigBlog Company, and as the great Adam of Adam Portfolios! It gives you a separation of responsibilities, and allows for leniency one way or the other if you decide to go full time into only one (or none) of the two sites.

Having a .com for most people means English-speaking people are welcome. If you're blog is just in English, that would help. If you want to only work with German clients, then keeping adam.de would be beneficial, as users going to a .de domain are expecting it to be in German.

Again, the SSL issue is a non-issue if you have a proxy (i.e. Cloudflare), or if you use Let's Encrypt for your certificates. They are both free for small to medium sites.