Choosing a Blogging Niche

I tend to approach blogging from a “passion” angle and not so much the “money” angle. I don’t think I’m alone, either. I know there are women out there who want to have their voices heard and the income (if any) is secondary to that goal. (Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great perk, but it wasn’t what made me start blogging and it isn’t what keeps me going.)

My feeling is if you write about your passion, you’ve found your niche. Choosing your niche based on its potential profitability rather than your passion will lead to burn out and dissatisfaction. The key behind every successful blog I read (and the authors I’ve met) is this: they love their topic. These people didn’t choose their topic or niche because it was profitable; if it is, that was most likely a happy coincidence. Blogging is the closest I’ve come to the adage Do what you love and the money will come.

Finding Your Niche

What if you have many passions and no focus? What if you’re not sure how to find your niche? In Finding Your Niche Online and Succeeding In It Amandalyn advises making a list:

If you have a hard time finding your niche, then ask yourself a few questions and write down all of your answers to make a list.

• What are your hobbies?
• What things do you like and enjoy doing?
• How do you spend your free time?
• What are your favorite topics to talk about?
• When you were young, what was fun for you?
• What topics do you know more than most about?
• Are there certain classes that you have taken extensively?

Finding your niche can be daunting at first because, truly, there are blogs in every niche. You are not going to be the first. However, if you look, you’ll see that there are holes to be filled. Find a need and fill that need. I started Blogging Basics 101 (at the urging of Shannon at Rocks In My Dryer) because there are many intermediate and advanced tech sites for bloggers, but there wasn’t a place for beginners. Blogging about blogging wasn’t my first niche, either; it evolved from my first blog (a personal blog where I certainly didn’t even consider a niche as part of my blogging plan) where I was receiving a lot of questions about how to do specific things with a blog (like crossing out words or adding things to a sidebar). Let that last part be a lesson too: You may start out with one thing and move to another. Sometimes the best-laid plans are just a stepping stone.

Dominating Your Niche

Now you have your niche, but you want to do even more. What’s the next step? In How to Dominate Your Niche, Brian Clark suggests

What you’re looking to do is intensify the niche by doing something more, or differently (or maybe even better) than the existing players. You do this by first evaluating and understanding where the niche is currently, and position your content in a way that pushes the envelope.

You can evaluate your niche simply by being part of the community of that niche. (Is it me, or do I always come back to community in my articles?) As you read and comment at other blogs in your niche you’ll have a sense of what is being covered and what is not. You can start to fill the holes in the niche or take a new approach to an old issue.

This, I believe, is where you’ll start to position yourself to make some money from your passion. As I wrote in my article Advice for Making Money with Your Blog, if you have a product (via your blog) or are representing a business niche, it’s easier to sell that product or specific niche to advertisers. Advertisers know who they want to reach and if your product or business is complementary, then they see the value of advertising with you more readily than they would if you were just a blogger without focus.

You Niche & Your Network

How does being in a particular niche translate to being part of a network (something many bloggers are doing these days)? Deb Ng cautions you to be careful. In Earning Money as a Blogger: Are You Too Nichey for Your Network? Deb writes

[S]ometimes being nichey in a network isn’t always the best career move. . .If you do want to touch upon a niche, my recommendation is that it will probably be just as profitable, if not more, to start your own niche blog. This way you can post on your own schedule and keep all the profits for yourself. Yes, it’s slower getting started, but if you rock the promotion and know what you’re doing, you’ll do well.

This article is cross-posted at BlogHer.com.

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