The pitfalls of not finding a niche

When I started my blog, I had 3 niche topics: linguistics, tech tips and humor. It turns out that readers preferred my humor pieces more than anything else, so I turned the focus there. I'm glad I did because my readership almost instantly increased when I had just one topic. I always read you should have only one topic, but I thought "I can have three!" I was wrong.

The niche thing is important. It keeps you focused as you write, it also help you stick around, endure. When some blogs are fading away cause they got bored, ran out of things to say or spun off in another direction you can fall back on your niche and hold onto that. Not being very clear though I know exactly what I mean.

I've done a lot of niche writing. Maintained blogs and weekly columns, most often about writing. Kind of ironic in a way. :) I did a newsletter for 3 years which had great reviews from readers, built a nice reader base. Then I let someone else take a turn at it and the newsletter flopped in two weeks. Never perked back up.

In a lot of cases having the niche is one part of the battle. But, bringing your personality, your thoughts and that something extra from you is what gets readers. It also keeps it personal and interesting for yourself.

When you get to the point of having nothing to write about, feel you have covered every topic available in your niche... post something which does not seem relevant at all. The trick as the niche writer is to show how it is. Bring it into your focus. Make something out there part of the learning experience, part of the creative element, whatever your little devious mind can come up with. But always stay true to some element of your niche. Having a stray post keeps you fresh and brings you awareness of how much more really is out there if you stretch your mind. That's how I wrote about one topic for 3 years and did it well. :)

I'm not very focused today but I'm having a very nice day. It's sunny outside, I'm finally and happily unemployed. What are you all doing in here reading blogs?!! :)

@Kathy - As you write in a niche you will find areas which you are especially great in. Your topic evolves as much as you do. I missed it that's why I brought my old newsletter posts out of mothballs and then started Word Grrls. Now Word Grrls has become mostly creative writing exercises. Those are quick for me to write and drop in there each day. But, I still intend to make it more, with posts geared to web publishing. I haven't had the focus myself to do that but now I should be able to get back to it. Will be fun to do the newsletter plan again. I had missed it.

Yup, obtaining focus is important. I just recently folded my reviews site into my other blogs as I realized that reviews as a niche just wasn't what I wanted nor my real forte.

One other advantage of being in a niche: even if you think you'd get drowned out by others, you are also buoyed by others. You are inspired by them, and you can link out to others, and if they like you they can link back, and so on.

No matter where you are, though, content is king. And quality content takes effort, which is why spreading yourself thin across multiple blogs can make your content thin if you aren't a super-inspired and super-fast writer.

I'm still not sure WHAT I think about niches. Personally, I like a bit of variety in a blog. Although I can certainly see the merit in keeping the bulk of the blog centered around some sort of theme.

Rating well in search engines seems to be harder with a broader topic base too. :/

Kathy, it's good to hear how you saw better results when you changed to have just the one topic. I did the same when I changed my personal blog to a site with blogging/website tips. :)

Laura, I like the idea of throwing in something unexpected and relating it back to your niche. I might use that!

Out of interest, can anyone name a very popular site that is very unfocused?

Edited: May 25, 2008 22:01

Ben, I can't think of one right off hand, unless it's mine! LOL. Really, to answer a couple of questions. Niche. What a word, what a concept. I try to write about the things that irritate most people but with humor. I feel like my blog is doing all right. I just got a PR3. That really made my day. I find that posting pictures that are relevant in some way to the post gets attention. My biggest traffic is on Tuesdays when I do my link love stories. Everyone seems to enjoy them. My problem is I am very unorganized and I work outside the home as a Manager over 80 plus people and I work about 60 hours per week. Very hard to juggle right now.

One site I can think of that's unfocused and yet successful is John Scalzi's Whatever.

But then again, he has some things going for him that very few people do:

1. He's been a freelance writer who writes well in just about everything;

2. His style of writing is very personal and engaging;

3. He has that strange combination of both charisma and common sense that keeps both him and his comments amusing;

4. He built up a community of excellent folks over the last several years.

There's also Making Light, which has multiple people behind it, and works via the same principles.

So basically, to make an unfocused site work, you have to be both patient and know how to entertain people. Very few people can actually do that on a casual basis.

ettarose, you should check out the following discussion: How do you balance blogging with your job?

AJ, good call. I'd add that very few people are in the "blogging thing" for the long haul, but they won't know it's not for them until they try it. Patience is very important and I do wonder if some blogs would last longer if the author gave it a bit of time to grow.

I think blogging and niche's are somewhat mutually exclusive. Given that blogging can be a very personal exercise, it's hard to limit yourself to just one topic. Even a somewhat broad one. I've always struggled, with blogging for the pure benefit of self expression vs writing for a single purpose (be it to make money or whatever).

Having just one niche can be limiting, but having a few can make it harder to draw in new readers. There may be a certain amount of repetition even if you write on a few different subjects.

One way to approach this is to choose a broad topic with a specific focus, or with a specific style. That's what I do here. Blogging tips is a broad niche, but jargon-free tips (or tips where the jargon is explained clearly) is something that people seem to benefit from.

If you're struggling, could you improve by finding a more specific angle for your niche?

Edited: May 29, 2008 10:50