This is my first post here about the How to Make a Blog series. Instead of going directly to the set up part of creating a blog, I will first talk about one very important factor about starting a blog and which is often overlooked by new bloggers. It’s about choosing a blogging niche intelligently!
Everyday about 400 new blogs are created. Some of them last long while some of them last for only a few months but most of them last for only a few weeks. Many of these blogs die because they didn’t choose a proper blogging niche or didn’t consider the importance of planning before starting a blog.
How to choose a blogging niche?
You need to know what you are going to write about. You can create a blog to talk about anything (without any defined niche) or you can create a blog around a niche. The later is recommended and here is why I recommend a niche blog.
To choose your new blog’s niche, ask yourself the following questions:
Am I passionate about the topic or niche I am going to write on?
Never take a niche only because it is more popular than another one.
Do I have the basic knowledge about the niche and topics in it?
You do not want to sound like an idiot while talking about your favorite topics. So always go for one where you know what you will be talking about.
Is there much to write on it?
Your niche can be really interesting but if after 2 months you have nothing more to say about it, then your blogging story ends unless you expand it to other topics.
Always take a niche in the broad sense instead of limiting yourself to a sub section of a niche. Eg: Better talk about Green Tea than Green Tea From Madagascar. The latter can be a blog post but do not limit your blog to it.
Is there a readership for my blog?
If you want to know about the potential readership of your new blog, simply go to Google Blog Search, and look out for blogs in your niche. Check out their readers interaction level via the comments. If people are talking about it, then people will talk about it at your place too!
Go to Google Adwords Keyword Tool and try to see how many people actually look out for your main keywords per month. Do not let yourself be carried away by the those keywords having millions of monthly searches. Try to go for a reasonable keyword where you can join in the competition.
Finally don’t take it too hard. If you cannot choose a definite niche right now, leave it and come back after some hours to think about it.
Now that we have talked about choosing a niche, we will see the basics of starting a blog in my next post in this series.
This article was contributed by Kurt Tewin
Kurt is a webmaster, blogger, and PHP developer who lives on the Paradise island of Mauritius and who has a crazy obsession for everything Wordpress and Blogging. He founded Icy Tips to share some of his tips with the community. He is also the owner of IC a famous multi-niche daily updated community blog and the C.E.O of Icy Evolution Ltd.
Kurt has written 24 awesome articles for us at Icy Tips
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Niche blogging is the most difficult one and hats off to bloggers who choose niche blogging because the person will have to be patient.
.-= priscus´s last blog ..Enn Premier Minis Mauricien =-.
Nice article..Thanks for sharing
.-= VISHAL´s last blog ..Tech Bucket Monthly Roundup & Traffic Report, March 2010 =-.
Quite true. Another thing on planning is to take some time before launching a niche blog and write a base of about 2 months’ publication to be able to catch some time on the plan. This will help to get some time to write other articles during the time the planned articles get published.
Rightly said. Well, I have not written for 2 months here, but I do have enough post for 1 month because I am planning to post 1 to 2 posts here per week. (IC rips away all my free time lol). We’ll come to the blog launch topic in the coming weeks and talk about it more.