Is Your Writing/Blogging Business Niche Too Small?

It is always the same writing/blogging story: One decides to blog about a specific subject niche and eventually finds out the hard way that there is just so much topics one can blog about before they run out of topics to write. Eventually one branches out from their niche which could alienate their established audience and cause their blogging business to get offtrack. How does one prevent this?

Begin with the End in Mind

The first thing to do is to have plan from the start. Write down as much as you can all the topics you can think of about your current niche. Do not write/blog anything first nor do anything else. If you cannot even write a hundred topics about your niche in one writing then you are already in trouble.

Begin with the end in mind. Your ending or normal routine is to write at least one topic a day for the remainder of your days if you want to keep your blog as relevant for a long time as possible. If you cannot even think of at least a hundred topics in one sitting then you may run out of things to write along the way and this could pause the progress of your blog along the way.

This is especially disastrous when you are for example over a year in your blogging and you suddenly realised that you cannot write about anything else in your niche that you need to expand or face the reality that your blog is nearing or has reached its end. By building a list of topics for 100 days or more than 3 months one ensures that they can continue writing without running out of a topic to write for a specific day.

By sitting down and writing as many topics as you can before you even begin blogging you begin to see the final form of your blog especially its limitations. This should be in the form of a branching tree. Your tree is your niche and the branches are your topics that keep expanding and branching out to several different and cohesive topics altogether.

You begin to see what you will or will not include in your blog which is especially helpful if you are designing the visual outline of your website. Nothing is as bad looking and confusing as a website that has a bloated look when the menu options do not coordinate together because new menu items and topics have been added which conflicts to the original design of the overall website.

In the end you might be forced to do a costly and time consuming redesigning of your website if you do not make plan your topics in the first place.

Your Blog/Website Name is Important

This shows especially in the name of your blog or website. If you choose a domain name that is to narrow for a niche you might find your audience confused or shutout from your website. For example if you named your website “cutepuppies.com" thinking that you will never run out of articles to write about cute puppies then you might find out one day that you just did.

Also if for example there is an internet fad going on about “cute cats” then you might miss the opportunity to capitalise on this if you do not feature cute cats in your website because you concentrate on cute puppies as the name of your website suggests. If you do post articles and images of cute cats then your audience may brand you as either a confusing website or a sellout.

A better website name would be “cute pets” or “cute animals” for example. Then you can dedicate your website to puppy and kitten sections or some other animals. This way it allows your niche to be wide enough to almost have an inexhaustible source of topics without being too wide that people will not know what your website is all about.

This not only applies to websites domain names and content but to actual physical products themselves. For example going back to cutepuppies.com which hopefully you have renamed cutepets.com and would have grown a following from people who adore cute pets and not just puppies...

Your Products and Services Niche

You might by now be offering downloadable images of cute pets for sale to your customers but again might be tempted to niche your product line too narrow that you miss the important market of pet food and toys. Again thinking too narrowly might limit the potential income you might get from merchandising the contents of your website.

Again sitting down to plan first before you create your blog or website is helpful when it comes to thinking about the possible ways you can monetise your website. If you followed my advise to branch out to pet food and toys then you add this to the list of your merchandise. But one rule you have to remember is that merchandise and service go hand and hand together.

This means that besides merchandise you can also services. For example going about the downloadable pet images products you can also offer social media branding services for your audience’s pets for a fee.

This is why it is important to write your 100 plus products and services list before you even write your first blog. If your intention only is to get your message out then by all means blog away to your heart’s content and do not concern yourself about any money you would earn from your past, current and future years of blogging.

But if you are blogging with the intention of being compensated in some form from your effort you have to think about this even before you begin blogging especially if your dream is to make enough money by blogging so you do not have to worry of doing any other work besides blogging which is your dream job and the one that gives you most delight.

A Specific Goal to Monetise Your Blog

So you have made your list of 100 plus topics you will write plus another list of 100 plus products and services you would offer once your blogging takes off. The next thing you would do is mix the two list together until you begin to see a clear picture of your blog articles as products that are worth value and not just a group of words that come from your head.

Remember that unless you have achieved a level in life such that you do not need to worry about earning money and just be blogging to your heart’s content then you need to earn from your blogging.

This does not mean that you have to be a sellout and just think of earning as much money as you can without regard for anything else in your blogging. You should balance your blogging such that you inform and possibly make money at the same time.

I have watched many YouTube videos of people who make their money in the speaking circuit who if you watch a couple of their seminars you would found out that they speak of the same things over and over again which could cause many of their audience to tune out to them after a while. They never diversified their subject niche and I think just stuck to the most profitable topics.

Reach All Your Intended Audience/Clients

You have mixed your topics and products and services list and have made a completely new list that has a purpose for you. But there is another list you need to make. This list again needs to be at least 100 items. This list is a list of the audience you want to reach with your writing or blogging.

Why this list? Let me use again your cute pets blogging subject. You might be fooled into thinking that you only need to cater to those audience who like cute pets and the companies that cater to these audience. But you might need to reach another audience to grow your blogging site like influential animal and plant experts.

They might not be as interested in everyday cute household pets but might like your blog enough that they promote your blog to their own audience which is definitely a good thing for your blog.

So in your niche think about the 100 plus specific people too you want to reach. Do you want your blog to reach the president of the United States or the head of the UN for example? Then add the these people to your list and make a corresponding blog. This would again ensure that you niche would cover as much as the audience as you intended it to be.

Of course presidents for example are too busy to read blogs but if you write your blog is such that your normal audience will know who it is directed to might find a way to make the president aware of your blog for example by making it viral.

Conclusion

As you can see by just taking the time to do a few lists before even making your first blog you ensure that you not only ensure that your blog will continue for a long time before you even reach a stage where you start to run out of topics to write.

You also ensure that you are always heading to a goal to write blogs on a full-time basis by ensuring that you have a goal to monetise your content.

You also ensure that you have a goal to reach all your intended audience by specifically having a target list and not just a small audience niche.