This guest post is by Ronique Gibson of Freshome.
After one year, I have written 773 blog posts about one topic: your home. After 240 posts for Freshome, 430 posts for Stagetecture, and 103 posts for various ghost writing and personal blog clients, the numbers don’t seem real to me, but I feel I have at least 250,000 good posts still left in me!
I am daily asked how I come up with new content and topics, and my response is always the same, “When you are passionate about a certain area of your life, you can write about it for the rest of your life.”
The real question isn’t “what niche should I write about?” It is, “what moves you to write for an audience that may or may not be there, forever?” Here are my tips to help you be happy with writing for yourself, and choosing a blogging niche that you can expand on for life.
Write for yourself
When choosing a blogging niche, choose a subject that you don’t need an audience to listen to. Instead, write for yourself. While this may sound crazy, many bloggers fall into the trap of worrying about what readers will think, how they will respond, and how they will seek a high approval rating to validate their writing.
Image is author's own
My remedy to this is to create my own self-validation: write for yourself, critique yourself, and give yourself proper respect when you create a masterpiece! The more you enjoy your own writing, the better, and the more your blogging audience will appreciate you for your unique self.
Choose an expandable niche
What seems on the surface to be the hardest challenge, may actually be one of the easiest to solve. And that challenge is: How can you find a blogging niche?
I’ll tell you why this is an easy problem to solve: because you already know the answer. Now, if someone asked you that question right now, you may not be able to spit out an answer. Instead, look through the magazines on your coffee table, the television shows you watch in your free time, and the influential figures in your life. I bet this will help you figure out where your passions lie.
Finding an expandable blogging niche is about choosing a niche that you already know about, or are dying to find out more about. You don’t have to be an expert; you just have to want to immerse yourself into it enough to want to share your knowledge with others. Once you find it, you will know it, and you won’t be able to stop writing
about it!
Fundamentals for choosing a blogging niche
As you choose your blogging niche, consider these fundamental elements.
Is your blogging niche broad or narrow?
Your goal should be to choose as broad a niche as possible, to provide full range to your mind, abilities, and to your audience. Let’s look at some examples.
If you enjoy writing about dogs, are you only going to write about how much you love them and the different activities dogs enjoy? That would be a narrow niche. Can you expand that niche to include: dog species, how to train your dog, planning your dog’s home space, dog diets, websites for dog fanatics, preparing your family for care of a dog, owning puppies, aging dogs, and more?
You’ll need to be able to expand upon your topic in multiple directions for lifelong blogging interest and success.
Could you talk about your niche morning, noon, and night?
While this sounds excessive, speaking and writing about dogs will need to become second nature for you, if that’s the niche you choose. This is why you need to have a passion about your blogging niche. If you find you aren’t passionate about it, consider finding another, undiscovered niche that other bloggers aren’t writing about.
For example if you’re a dog trainer, think of all of the knowledge you can share with fellow dog owners! This could be a great niche for you.
Don’t be afraid to tweak your niche along the way
Believe it or not, you don’t have to know your blog niche on Day 1 of your blog. In fact, it takes many bloggers years to discover what they truly love. Step out on faith, and just start. You will learn as you go what excites you—and what topics you can’t stand to write one more post about! This is all part of the blogger’s life. Accept the challenge, “go big or go home.”
I’m sure you’ve heard the old cliché, “Find your inner voice to guide you.” That’s my advice to you when you’re choosing a blogging niche. Write as though no one will ever read your blog, and as though everyone will read your blog. Therefore, be happy with yourself before you try to please the masses. Once you can do this, finding a niche will come to you easily.
Lastly, enjoy yourself. Don’t start blogging as only a means to an end: sales, increasing a following, or for marketing purposes. Enjoy writing your blog and have fun with it, every time. Then the late nights, and 773,000 posts later, you will still be able to write for a lifetime and love it!
Ronique Gibson is an Associate Architect and a LEED Accredited Professional, who has been in the design industry for over 13 years. Her writing at Freshome and Stagetecture encompasses her love for architecture, interior design, and family solutions to help make your home the best place it can be.
really nice post and good words to live by. I don’t think I could have made it past the 2 month barrier if I hadn’t loved the topic I’m writing about and if you choose something you don’t enjoy then I’m sure most other people will become unstuck as well. I especially agree with the point about tweaking your niche along the way. With my blog I started off purely in the making money online niche but now I have expanded to the blogging and internet marketing niche as well and it has worked wonders for me. Enjoying it more than ever!
Thanks John – I think it’s no different than your personality, your hairstyle, you grow into it, you learn and you tweak and adapt. I find your blog should be an extension of yourself. When it just becomes words, it’s time to stop, reevaluate and determine why are you doing this? If you don’t know the answer, examine a new direction.
A very nice post Ronique, I carved a niche out of the business blogosphere and now specifically focus on finance and investments and is working very well for me
Great to hear that Anthony, keep it up and all in all, enjoy yourself. :)
although for large part I agree with this, but I believe for other niche, this may not be true especially when you plan to monetize your blog. Then it is your visitors’ wants that should always come first
What a great post! This paragraph resonated with me the most:
“My remedy to this is to create my own self-validation: write for yourself, critique yourself, and give yourself proper respect when you create a masterpiece! The more you enjoy your own writing, the better, and the more your blogging audience will appreciate you for your unique self.”
Sometimes it’s easier said than done to write for yourself, especially when you start gaining followers that you want to keep happy, but at the end of the day I have to remember I blog for myself.
Thanks,
Flora
Thank you Flora!
When I first started, I thought to myself.. “who wants to read about homes all the time?!” Then I thought.. I DO!!! So I literally told myself, if I was the only person who read my own blogs, I was good with that! :)
Thanks Flora, good luck to you!
Good post Ronique. I love your approach on how we should select a niche that we want to blog about and how we can tweak our niche along the way.
But I have questions…
In case I have selected one niche to blog about and along the way I find it hard for me to come out with new idea for new articles. What should I do?
Should I make a decision on stay/leave the niche or stay/tweak the niche? How can we now that’s the right decision at the moment of time?
Hi, a simple thumbrule is if you started the site just with profits and mind and have lost interest, get out as soon as possible. You can sell it to some one who is more interested.
But if you started the site with the passion, then continue to write. Also research the problems people face in your niche and solve them.
Do what I did and create a few broad categories. Having concrete concepts to tie your ideas to will help you come up with things to write.
For example, trying to come up with an idea for “Blogging” would drive you mad. Something narrower like “plugin development” would give you a starting point for exploratory research.
I went and looked a bit closer at your site, and I see what the problem is.
There’s already a hundred great blogs for every one of your categories. You inevitably get stuck trying to figure out how to differentiate your posts from the other blogs.
Make the categories more concrete–“Make it Better” vs. “(Plugins,Themes,Inspiration,How-To & Hacks).”
And “Make it Easier” vs. “(Tools,Freebies).”
It’s not clear what the difference is between many your current categories at a glance, and that can’t be making things easier on you. Give each category a direction. You can always expand later if you find more distinct categories.
Helmi – In response to your question:
Take a step back and evaluate is this the only way to talk about this subject? You don’t always have to have the answer that day. It’s ok to have other interests, but keep a focus that your readers can follow, and that you enjoy blogging about.. constantly! :)
—– Your question below —>
But I have questions…
In case I have selected one niche to blog about and along the way I find it hard for me to come out with new idea for new articles. What should I do?
Should I make a decision on stay/leave the niche or stay/tweak the niche? How can we now that’s the right decision at the moment of time?
You’re absolutely right, Ronique. The idea of writing about what moves you should be a no-brainer. But it’s easy to ignore that voice inside. I’m a writer who has hesitated to blog because of the tension between what I should write about professionally and what I’d love to write about personally. Thanks for reminding me that passion always makes for better writing.
Hi, amazing post. Write for yourself is a good point especially when you are starting blogging. One of the mistakes people do is to find blog niches by top adsense keywords. This can result in total disastor.
Thank you Rison, yes Google can be your friend, and your demise. Let adsense be a tool to assist in you, not lead you. Thanks again for the nice words.
Great post. I completely agree that you just need to start blogging. Your voice evolves over time. In fact, readers sometimes help shape the direction blog. Based on their questions and feedback – you may discover a niche that you wouldn’t have found on your own.
Good point Piper! Often times feedback is what cultivates a niche and interest in you that you didn’t realize was there. A good example for me is that I love solving projects on my own, putting things together, etc… but I realized I am not a skilled tradesman – like a carpenter. So after many months I was reading a DIY blog, and realized, aha! – I need to start a DIY Saturday segment where every week, I have a new project for homeowners to learn a new project. When I first started, I thought I would just talk about home staging. Now – DIY Saturdays are my most trafficked day!
I like the Write for Yourself advice. You have to have the heart for it, whatever ‘it’ is!
A very useful post Roniqu. I have just started a technology news blog. I think I can expand on for life :). One has to choose the niche, he knows about and is passionate about.
True finding ablog niche that you can write about forever is a real challange. The most important thing is that you should love, love it, love it till you can write about it forever without being tired…
This is so timely! I just started a blog, *just for myself* because I was starting to obsess about taking our family back to Walt Disney World – I’ve challenged myself to earn enough money freelancing (above and beyond what I contribute to our family budget) to pay for the trip.
Yeah, I’ll be honest, I’d love for the blog to take off, gather a loyal readership, and – what the heck – earn enough in affiliate/ad revenue to pay for the trip….and give me enough breathing room to quit my less inspiring projects so I can blog about Disney vacations full-time and write off our trips as business expenses LOL! But whether that happens or not, I’ve found something to write about that fulfills every one of these criteria. Thanks for posting this – if nothing else, it’s validation that I’m not completely nuts!
Tricia – I’m so glad this post helped you. Exactly, if all you do is enjoy writing about WDW (my favorite place to go of all times!) – the fact of the matter is, you were able to do it for yourself.
Did you see that movie Julie & Julia (about the food blogger that goes through Julia Childs cookbook, and blogs about it along the way) – if not, make sure and see it. It was an inspiration for me. It was that “aha” moment that made me realize, find what you adore, love and dream about it, and write.. it really is THAT simple.
Thanks Tricia!
I blog about topics that are interesting to me and that are also useful for other people. My blog is about personal development mainly, yet the blogs I read the most are about tips on blogging like Problogger.
Bravo, Ronique! This is the best, most sensible advice on the writing aspect of blogging that I’ve read on problogger. Often, aspiring bloggers get intimidated or sidetracked from the reason they want to blog by all the hoopla about marketing, making a profit, leveraging SEO and the best frequency for posting. Setting all that aside, blogging, as you’ve made it clear, boils down to communicating your passion. No passion, no posts.
Amen! You hit it on the nose. Love, Love how you put it! Thank you for the kind words.
Definitely enjoy yourself! :)
Don’t go and choose a niche that bores you to death just because you want to earn a bit of cash.
I’m at a crossroads today, in writing and in blogging. This is exactly what I needed to read to help me keep going in both. Thank you!
Ronique,
I Heard somewhere that to really be successful in niche you should be prepared to spend three years there writing about it. If you can’t do that is probably not a niche for you. This is automate a lot of sense to me and really goes along with what you’re saying.It takes a while to become branded, and authority, and create a bulk of links to make your time and effort worth it.
I think it also takes at least a year to see if that topic is going to drive you crazy, or if you feel like you’ve only touched the “tip of the iceberg”! Thanks Steve.
I think mind also expand with your blog age. Mind automaticall catch the topic for should write. Niche is important factor for every website.
This article is perfect for a friend of mine who’s asking for “direction” in her blogging career.
Thanks for the information as a beginner, I found it helpful.
You are right we should choose such a niche on which we could right throughout our life. If a teacher choose education then he can write on this topic. If he choose how to make a house he may write 20 -to 100 articles but after that he would be exhausted and thus kill his/her blog. Thanks for sharing this great idea.
The concept is simple you need to passionate about your niche. That is ultimate success for your blog journey.
Every paragraph is acceptable and it is guiding to be passionate.
Great post Ronique! I read your post with full concentration and I noticed you are very experienced. For me, I believe with a blogger been creative, he/she would be able to expand a niche. I blog about entrepreneurship because its in my blood, its expandable and finally, I’m passionate about it. Thanks Ronique.
Thank you Sam! I love that you say it’s in your blood, I definitely believe there is a passion in every single person that walks the Earth. Regardless of what it amounts to in our society, every single person has it, but it takes you to pull it out of yourself. Keep it up Sam, I can sense your passion.
Thanks you for the useful advice in this post. I think writing for yourself and for what you are passionate about is very important to a successful blog. There is a lot of good information here.
Thanks again,
Matthew
Well we really can’t write for ourselves. Yes, we can put our 100% while writing a post, but we need to consider the readers in mind while writing. Because after all a blog is for the readers.
But your readers will more likely to read your blog if they’ll get the felling that you write about the things that you like. Off course you should write your post for others to read it, but the main concept should be your thoughts.
Blogging can be real fun when you write about stuff you are comfortable at.
Thank you Ronique. After 2+ years of working on the internet, your blog post resonates so much with me, and puts it very simply, straight to the point.
As some of the other commenters say, if we’re looking to earn a living from the blogging, one’s blog does have to be giving stuff that people want. In addition, we need people to be able to find our blogs, which means learning SEO and getting traffic.
So there has to be a happy medium between writing for ourselves & writing for others.
Exactly Isha. I also find that when blogging we got caught up in the traffic, the numbers, and how many people left comments. Obviously this is validation, but we need to learn to validate ourselves first. It’s kind of like what parents teach their children “As long as you like what you’re wearing, that’s all that matters” – same concept. :)
I write about my family, but if I stop being passionate about them, I will just give them away and start a different blog about baseball. Because family comes and goes, but baseball is forever :)
Very interesting article Ronique, as long as you do not write for google you will never get tired and bored and will always produce quality content. The biggest mistake people make is to write based on google keywords, it is ok to use them but write to create impact, to change people’s perception and help others do things they could do before.
Elias
Hi Ronique,
I skimmed the post once and read it three times. Not for clarity, but I liked to read it. You write from your heart and I can smell the passion in your writing.
As you say, I very strongly believe in writing for myself. I think I am starting to enjoy more and more writing. As I make more and more guest posts and articles for my blog, I feel a lot more recharged and ideas never drain. The more you write the more ideas you get, that’s for sure.
Thanks for the nice post. You rock and will.
Cheers,
Jane.
Thank you Jane, what kind words, I appreciate that. To be honest, I wasn’t always passionate in my writing, until I kept doing it, and started realizing how much I loved to really get my point across to help people love their homes, environments, and to take pride into beautifying it. When I look back Jane, I see now it was always there, but needed to be groomed out of me. Kind of like a great written song, I feel like writing can do the same thing. Once again, thanks Jane.
I’ve been working on a blogging strategy for months, moving from a simple desire to explore ideas in a public place all my own (vs. Facebook) to a grandiose plan for an on-line magazine. Of the nine subject matter areas I’ve defined for the magazine, I think I’ll just pick one and start small. This post nudged me in that direction. Thanks.
This blog gives me the “now I get it ” moment.
The graphics add so much to the engaging feeling; why don’t we see more
graphics in blogs ? I have seen many of your posts on Freshome and am always
inspired by them.
Thank you Norma. I think everyone has their own style, and while pictures and colorful graphics makes me enjoy writing and reading them, many people don’t use the same strategy. I do agree that pictures make you want to keep reading, and they also engage the reader. That’s what I love about Freshome and Stagetecture, beautiful photos that make you want to catapult yourself into the picture! Thanks Norma for the nice comments!
Never a truer bunch of words have been said.
I remember when I started my blog – the actual writing of my thoughts were probably the most challenging – the subject matter though was and still is something I’m incredibly passionate about as well as talk about all the time – relationships!
Traffic started slow and is slowly building as more and more people discover my little slice in the blogosphere.
And it’s also fantastic therapy for myself and my own experiences – so it’s of immediate benefit and value to me which is also vitally important.
Have an awesome day everyone
Martin
Martin, love what you said about “a great therapy”…ahhhh, isn’t that the truth! THAT is where it makes YOU be the benefit and not just the reader. Great words, thanks Martin.
Writing for yourself is the best way to write. If you’re writing about someting that inspires you and something that you love than your readers will see that and you’ll get more trust. And beside that, you can wrtie a lot more and learn more about the stuff you like. So my advice is to not just write for sales and SEO but write about your passion and after some time, people will notice this and those who share the same passion will realte to your blog and maybe become your loyal reader :)
Proud to be your co-worker, Ronique! :D
Hi Ronique
Love it. The passion and desire for your believe in blogging as a mechanism to share your views and not worry too much about writing for yourself rather than the reader is prominent in your post :)
You are quite right – if you write for yourself, your own style, subject … then by inference you will write more confidently and those readers will come.
The thing I took from this was that brilliant graphic – most excellent and I’l printing it out and putting it on the wall in the office.
Thanks for sharing
Barney
Thank you Barney – I appreciate your great response. My husband did the fabulous graphics! I will let him know how much you enjoyed it!
One way to come up with posts in your niche is to take a look at the things that YOU think about during the day, and how they affect you. You’re almost certainly not alone.
Hi Ronique! Yes, we should choose a niche that we love. I chose cancer topic as my niche as I’m doing cancer research. Therefore, I will have a lot of things to share with my readers.
Thanks for this truly great post Ronique!
Indeed – I am so happy to pass your “test”: Could you talk about your niche morning, noon, and night?
Yes, yes and yes!!
I adore children’s books and reading them aloud to my kids!
I feel as if I found my niche was perfectly – yet I may still need to tweak how broad it is.
Loved your post
Read Aloud Dad
Thanks for this post, and for the wonderful diagram at the bottom. I love it!
You’re welcome Danny. My husband did the graphics, I’ll share with him how great it is. I thought so too.. but of course I’m biased! :)
I couldn’t agree more about writing for yourself – I have struggled with what to write, how to write and who to write for (is my target market reading? what should I say today?) on my copywriting blog for the past three months. Truth is, what mattered is writing from my heart – speaking my passions and showing that through my words. You have to be true to yourself, and, I’ve found, when I pour my heart out (as I do on my sister’s missing persons blog), people respond.
Ronique:
I have been reading and following PRO BLOGGER for some time now. Out of all the great posts and the vast amount of information on the internet about blogging or successful blogging (however one defines “successful”), yours has truly feed my soul. Your post expresses in words what I have felt inwardly for years. I am in the beginning stages of developing the strategy for my internet marketing business, which my blog will be the center piece. Thank you, thank you, thank you! Your post is answered prayer and affirmation of my “call” in life. I especially love your word pictures via your graphics. Well thought out and to me it must have come from deep within you. Thank you, thank you, again!
I’m not sucking up here. This is a brilliant post. I write for boomers and other people in transition at http://thisoldbrain.net and have put out (closing in on) 500 posts. Some I am very proud of, some I wish I hadn’t written. I was lamenting over the weekend on what the heck I could write about this week. I think you pinpointed my problem. My goal is always to be helpful, so I write on subjects that are timely (I hope), but that often don’t particularly interest me. I just looked back and noticed that those ‘not really interesting to me’ posts are the ones that I regret writing. They always seem draining, boring, and not very inspirational (which is the goal I try to meet) so I am in a way writing against my own interests. Interesting, eh?
Good point Mike! I’m glad I could help you bring out your own inspiration! :) Very, interesting.. it’s in all of us.. just have to bring it out. Thanks for your comment.
I couldn’t agree more. When I decided to start blogging 3 years ago, I knew my passions were pop culture and technology. However that was way to broad a topic and too many blogs were already writing about those things. As I thought about it, I realized that I loved the fact that my sons and I always bonded over that passion, and I came up with “Connect with your Teens through Pop Culture and Technology”, advice for parents on keeping up on all the latest that their teens are into. I love what I do, I have a very unique but interesting niche.
Yes i agree with you if we are to worried about what our readers think about the post, we will suffer from the writer blocks, which will stop our creative side. It’s better if we feel free about our post, we are own the blogs and we decide ourself what we should write on it (unless we get paid to write the post LOL)
That’s a very good blog post here. I have websites in both big niches and small niches and the small niches are terrible as I’ve ran out of stuff to talk about them after sometime. There isn’t much search volume as well.
By the way, how do you create the graphics you’ve used – Expandable, Passionate, Tweak? It really enhances your blog entry tremendously! The best I could do was through ms office smart art but they ain’t as good as yours.
I love this. After blogging for 8+ years, I’ve always been baffled at the “what to write about” posts and discussions. Sincerely, if you can’t figure out what to write about, I think blogging is not for you!
Ronique offers some great advice here for folks in it for the long haul.
There was never any question what I would write about when I first started blogging. I always wanted to write about travel in the Midwest…I always took photos with stories/articles in mind when I traveled…I occasionally got a travel article placed in print…so I always saw blogging as an opportunity to become the travel writer I always wanted to be.
We take a lot of little day trips and weekend getaways, so I had a lot of material from my immediate area and in a couple of adjoining states. Plus “Midwest” is fortunately a pretty subjective term, so I can expand as my travel opportunities expand.
I’m still going after more than 2 1/2 years and over 400 posts, and I yet to run out of topics! :)
“Write for yourself” – extremely right point. I never realised this until I read the article.
Ronique, thanks for giving confidence!
You bet! Hey, if you don’t please yourself.. then WHAT IS THE POINT!!!?? :)
Perfect timing! I needed to hear these words at this moment in time. Thanks.
Hi Ronique,
Job well done…. as usual. You truly captured the essence of creative writing especially the part about writing what you are passionate about. Keep you the writing. I know you are inspiring others to be their best.
(smile)
Thank you Janel! What very kind words, I appreciate it, and inspiring is what we all do! :)