Photo by Cia de Photo.

This is the third and final part to a series on choosing a topic for your new blog. In it, I’ll discuss how to grow your blog even when you’re pioneering a topic that hasn’t properly been covered before. Read Part 1 of this series, Read Part 2 of this series.

The best aspect of launching in an under-served niche is access to an undivided market. If you’re the first quality blog on a topic a lot of people have been searching for, you’ll generally become the biggest blog in that niche because you were the first — as long as you stay consistent. ProBlogger.net, arguably the first blog about blogging, is still the biggest. FreelanceSwitch, arguably the first blog dedicated to freelancers only, also continues to remain the biggest in its niche.

While it’s increasingly rare to find a blog that is the only one of its kind, it’s still possible to find yourself in an under-served niche (meaning there aren’t enough blogs to meet demand). Because there’s less competition, it’s easier to stand out as one of the best. As long as your leading position in the niche is unchallenged, you’ll grow at a rapid rate. Tapping into an under-served niche is what many bloggers dream about when brainstorming blog topics.

While the potential gains are great, surviving in an under-served niche can present a host of difficulties. Though the challenge is a tough one, it’s certainly not unbeatable. In this post, I’ll show you how to succeed in a tough, frontier niche.

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Photo by Pink Sherbet Photography.

This is the second part to a series on choosing a topic for your new blog. In it, I’ll discuss how to grow your blog even when there are a lot of other blogs on the same topic. Read Part 1 of this series.

Starting strongly in a crowded niche will involve emphasizing strengths and minimizing weaknesses. You can use the other blogs and websites in your niche as footholds to growth. Here’s how:

Let your peers provide a platform. Let’s begin with the obvious: your target audience is reading other blogs in your niche, so that’s where you should try to attract them: by commenting, guest-posting, pitching links or becoming a contributing writer on one of your niche’s most popular blogs.

A crowded niche indicates a strong demand.Make the most of this. If no-one is doing quality blogging on a particular topic, it might be because the target audience for such a topic is incredibly small. An empty niche does not automatically indicate an under-served niche.

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Photo by Untitled blue.

Many things go into building a house before the first drop of concrete hits the soil, and before the first brick has been laid down. Surveyors pore over a prospective construction site and take measurements, confirming that there’s enough space for the construction, and that the ground is steady. They consider the surroundings, the views, and other environmental factors long before the building tools leave their pouches.

If you’re thinking about launching a new blog (or your first ever blog) I want to suggest that you should approach choosing its niche in much the same way.

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Image from ajourneyroundmyskull.

There are no new ideas. When we create, we dig into our well of knowledge and experience, grab a handfull of stuff, mash it up and recombine it in new ways. But the idea is still built out of other ideas that came before - ideas we’ve consumed.

The quality of our ideas depends only on what we build them from. What we’ve seen, what we’ve heard, what we’ve felt. To have better ideas, we need richer experiences. But most importantly, like stoking a fire, we must constantly add more fuel to keep the fire vigorous. When we stop, old materials build nothing but old ideas.

What does this mean for the mantra we hear humming beneath all the advice we read online? The mantra that says: “Don’t watch TV, don’t spend too much time reading, don’t play games, don’t waste time on Twitter. Stop consuming other people’s ideas and creativity - if you want to be successful, you have to produce.”

If you want to have stale ideas, follow this advice. Put nothing in, get rubbish out. Get burnt out. When you burn more creative fuel than you add, what do you expect to happen?

But if you want to build something truly creative and meaningful, do the opposite. Great stuff in, great stuff out.

Watch breathtaking movies and mind-bending TV shows. Read incredible books. Listen to great music, with the volume up loud. Play exhilarating video games. Study your idols. Drench yourself in ideas. Go somewhere you’ve never seen. Walk to the top of a mountain and breathe in strange and wondrous air. Consume, consume, consume, and do so unapologetically. Become a connoisseur of the best things other people have done. Absorb everything the world has to offer you. Do this for as long as you can bear.

Only then will you have collected the raw materials needed to produce something you can be proud of.