You probably have some friends with
personal blogs that are smorgasbords of all their interests—pictures of their
kids and movie reviews and talk about their favorite sports team, and everything
in between. While this is fine for a personal blog, if you want to blog
professionally you should narrow your focus.
A blog that has a clear identity is
more likely to be successful than one with a broad focus. A personal blog is
about you while a professional blog is about the topic. You can and should be
personable and share your story, but only as it relates to the topic at
hand.
Before you start doing anything else to
start your blog, you should figure out your topic. Your niche will impact the
domain name you choose, the design of your page, and your ideal posting schedule
to appeal to the most readers in your area.
Research the market
Picking the right market for a new blog
can be tricky. You want to find a topic that is popular enough to attract
interest and earn money, but one that hasn’t already been oversaturated with
bloggers giving their opinions.
Finding a new perspective on a topic,
something that people aren’t already blogging about, gives you the best chance
of making it in the business long-term—if it’s a field where interest exists,
and the reason there are no bloggers on the topic isn’t because no one wants to
read about it. The only way to know is by researching the field.
The larger the interest in a given
topic, the smaller percentage of the total market share you need to capture to
be successful, and the more specialized your niche will be to provide a new
voice. Let’s use a food blog as an example. Food is a topic that interests a
broad range of people—the overall potential readership is massive, but there are
an accordingly high number of blogs already talking about food. Even if you
narrow it down—say, to a blog about cooking—you’ll already find thousands of
other blogs already doing that.
The interest in the area is so high
you’ll need to narrow it down again. Maybe you’re a vegan and want to share
recipes for making traditional comfort food that’s vegan-friendly. You’ll
probably find there are quite a few vegan bloggers out there, but the comfort
food angle will make you just different enough to be a new voice in the
conversation, and there are enough people interested in the topic that all of
you can share the readership and be successful.
Now let’s say you have a less popular
topic—we’ll use musical instrument repair as an example. Instrument repair is a
practical subject that lots of people will be interested in, from professional
musicians to band directors to people who play instruments for fun, but it won’t
encompass quite so broad a group as cooking.
You might do the research and find
there are a lot of musical instrument review blogs, but not as many that focus
on repair. Not only do you not need to break your topic down further into “wind
instrument repair” or “on the fly repairs for rock musicians” but focusing on
more will probably narrow your topic too much.
There isn’t as much competition for
instrument repair blogs as there is for food blogs, but the group of interested
readers is also smaller, meaning you need to attract a larger percentage of
interested readers to be successful.
Another way to think about this is to
have a target audience size in mind numerically. Let’s say you want to reach
1,000 unique subscribers. On the surface, the larger audience seems to give you
the best statistical chance of being able to find more readers. If there are
100,000 people interested in X and only 10,000 interested in Y, that might seem
to give you 10 times as many opportunities to make an impression on a unique
reader.
But if 1,000 people are already
blogging about X and only ten are blogging about Y that means the smaller group
will nonetheless have more available readers per blogger. With X, you’d have to
fight other bloggers to take away some share of their readership if you want to
reach your goal; with Y, you could theoretically reach your target readership
without having to share readers with any other blogger. The market may be
smaller, but it’s also less saturated.
Of course, things rarely work out that
cleanly in the real world, but the ultimate point remains. The best niche for a
new blog in 2016 isn’t necessarily the one with the biggest following or the one
that’s the most unique; the best niche is the one that allows you to be a new
voice for a community that will be able to support you.
You shouldn’t assume what kind of
activity exists on a given blog topic before you start doing your research. Some
topics might seem like they’d be immensely popular but turn out to be relatively
rare once you’ve done your research, making them perfect potential niches for
you.
Conversely, you might think you’re the
only one interested in a given idea, only to find the blogosphere already
overrun with people scribbling on your esoteric niche. Take notes as you do your
research to kill two birds with one stone.
Bookmark blogs you like, either because
of their look or the writing style of the author, then study those for ideas
once your site is set up. If the blogs are in your niche, sign up for their
mailing list, pay attention to their posts, and consider commenting and become
part of their community once you’ve got your blog set up. It’s never too early
to start building goodwill (and good habits) in your blogging career.
Why you?
The blog itself is not the product
you’re selling to the consumer. The blog page is more like the storefront. The
products that are up for sale are your ideas and expertise, as conveyed through
your posts. To attract readers to your blog, you need to give them a reason to
listen to what you, specifically, have to say about a given topic. Why would
someone want to read your blog instead of the ones already
established?
For an example, let’s use the topic of
professional baseball. There’s a huge target audience, but what value do you
have to offer to readers? Do you have an inside connection to the players? A new
method of analysis for the games? Talking about how much you like something
might be fun for you, but it’s not very interesting to read.
The best bloggers have either a high
level of expertise about their topic or bring a unique perspective to the table.
Even if a given niche has a large potential audience and not many competing
voices, you won’t attract any readers if you don’t have anything interesting to
say about the topic. Before you make your final decision on which niche to delve
into, ask yourself that simple question: why me? You should be able to provide a
one-sentence answer that would make someone interested in reading what you have
to say.
Logistics
If your blog fits naturally into your
daily schedule and lifestyle, it’ll be easier for you to put in the effort of
maintaining it, and you’ll be less likely to feel overwhelmed or give up due to
burn-out. Make sure that the research, writing, and marketing you’ll need to do
in your chosen niche is realistic for your life before you settle on a topic. If
you want to write about the local music scene, you’ll have to make a point of
going to a lot of shows—maybe not the best idea if you have to wake up early
every day for work.
If you want to write a financial blog,
you need to be able to keep up with market trends and deliver timely advice to
your readers who are counting on you to guide them through a quickly changing
landscape.
The niche you choose will also have an
impact on how you earn profit from your blog. If you’re writing in a larger
niche, your ratio of fly-by traffic to repeat readers might be higher. You’ll
get a lot of page views that would appeal to advertisers, but may have a harder
time selling products.
Conversely, a blog in a small niche
that has a loyal core of followers might not get as much traffic, but the
per-visitor profit could be higher because those visitors buy products and
services, whether they’re original to you or sold by an affiliate.
Blogging success story: Joe
Gilder
Joe Gilder is the owner of
HomeStudioCorner.com, a blog aimed at helping people set up home recording
studios. Within six months of starting his blog, he had 500 subscribers on his
e-mail list. By the time he sat down with Yaro Starak for his EJ Insider
Interviews Club series, Gilder was on track to make $300,000 a year, with 13
different income streams all working for him through his blog.
Gilder is an example of someone who’s
found success by focusing in on a relatively small niche. He doesn’t have as
many readers as the best-known “celebrity” blogs, but the readers he does have
are more loyal. More of his income is from his product range than it is from the
traditional blog revenue sources, like advertising and affiliate programs.
He can continue to make a living
through his blog even though he has less traffic than larger sites because he
makes more per visitor, offering high-quality products that his readers benefit
from buying.
