For example, ShoutMeLoud is a Blog for Bloggers and Internet marketers. It’s niche is Blogging, Affiliate Marketing, WordPress, SEO and so on. I know it sounds like many topics, but if you look closely all are part of online marketing and internet. Similarly, your blog need to have a niche from day one and in this article, I will help you to choose the Niche of your Blog.
- Read: Why being a Niche Blogger is more profitable
- Why Nicheless Blogs can’t compete with Niche Blogs
Few tips to Decide Niche of your Blog
Brainstorm, brainstorm, brainstorm
What are the topics that interest you? Cricket? Bollywood? Country music? Make a list of all
of the topics that are interesting to you. Don’t worry about the length
of the list at this stage. It can also contain 20 different ideas.
Passion vs Profit
“But shouldn’t I be blogging about the hottest
topics? Things everyone is googling?” Hmm. Good point. For example
technology is something people all over the world are googling like
crazy (No wonder 90% of the top Indian blogs are tech blogs owned by
geeks from the IT dungeons! Like this one. 
No Harsh, ‘geek’ is not a bad word. Especially if it nicely puts you
in the chair of India’s top 5 bloggers, but I’ll stop rambling now.).But you’re a lit grad with zero interest or expertise in technology. Should you start a tech blog just because it’s the hot thing? Sure if you put in the hours you’ll be able to find enough information on technology to blog about. But achieving blogging success is a long process.
You will get three visitors per day for the first three months. You’ll be scourging the Web for blogs in your niche, reading them (no you can’t fake it) and making meaningful comments on them. Are you sure you’ll be able to do all this day in and day out, without fail, besides producing quality content, on a topic that’s NOT interesting to you, for 1 year, 2 years, 5 years?
So rule #1: Don’t include topics that don’t interest you, in the list of possible topics.
Cricket or how to take care of the hair of my German Shepherd?
So you’ve got your list of interesting topics and cricket tops the
list. You just eat cricket, sleep cricket, dream cricket. So should you
just go ahead and start your cricket blog? There’s a tiny problem with
that. Maybe you’ll have a bit of competition from cricinfo.com. And
cricketnext.in. And OneIndia Cricket. Okay, so you strike off cricket
understanding the competitive scene. Now what? You go straight to
another favorite topic of yours-taking care of the hair of a German
Shepherd.You do a Google search. Yes! There’s zero competition in India. So can you go ahead and create your blog on the German Shepherd thing? Think again.
There’s zero competition, but what about the demand? Will sufficient number of people be Googling it every month? Yes, you’ve guessed it right. The key is to strike a balance among your interest, the popular trends and level of competition. I chose love and relationships as my niche because I was always passionate about improving people’s lives through inner development and no dedicated information-based Indian sites existed in the love-and-relationships domain (unbelievable I know).
Then I made my proposition even more unique by adding sections like free counseling, dedications and complete your love story. But there’s a bit more to my story. More about that later.
Does my niche have long-term potential?
‘Current events’ is an area which is obviously very high on
popularity. It may also be high on your interest levels. But don’t start
a blog site called www.westbengalelections2011.com – something that’ll
cease to hold public attention for long enough for you to make any
money! Choose a topic which is timeless.
Why would people listen to me?
So now you’ve narrowed down your list to 3 to 4
topics, based on the above criteria. Now you have to think in which of
these topics you can offer something unique.
It may be domain knowledge (think Amit Aggarwal and technology),
experience (travelling extensively is the only qualification that you
need for a travel blog) or even plain writing style (the popular
personal blogs in India).In my case it was a combination of the second and the third. I had already been through a string of wrong relationships, when I met a charming man, who soon turned out to be an abuser and eventually the relationship took me to the brink of not completing my MBA. This catastrophic affair was a life-changing experience for me which made me realize many truths about life and stop getting into wrong relationships permanently. Since then I had dedicated myself to helping people in similar circumstances as mine by giving them the information, advice and support that I so badly needed in the past but didn’t find.
At the moment I’m also in the process of getting proper education in psychology so that I’m better able to help people.
So in nutshell, when you choose your blogging niche, you think of long term. You pick a topic that you can constantly write about and at the same time you love reading about to enhance your knowledge. Blogging is not only about Knowledge sharing, but it’s also educating yourself and getting better understanding in your niche. Here is one more articles for further reading and to help you in deciding your next Blog niche:
Do let us know if you have any other idea which help you to choose the blogging niche?
This is a guest post by Sualgna who blogs at LoveInIndia. If you would like to write for ShoutMeLoud, check our guest posting guidelines.
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