The Definitive Guide to Choosing a Topic for Your New Blog - Part 3

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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.

If we’re to think of things metaphorically, imagine an Oak seedling in a rocky clearing. If the seedling can thrive where others couldn’t, there’s plenty of space for it to grow into something grand. Before that can happen, though, the seedling has to contend with a lack of soil to grow from. It sounds cutesy, I know, but I think it’s a useful encapsulation of the potential difficulties and rewards lying before any blogger hoping to engage a previously neglected audience.

Growing From Nothing

Ever heard that old (but good) advice: comment, guest-post and get links from other blogs in your niche? I suggest you throw it out for now. If your niche is under-served, there’ll be nowhere to do these things, or if there are, the other blogs will probably be so quiet that it isn’t worth your time.

Rather than looking for other blogs which slot neatly into your niche (of which there are likely to be few), source-out blogs which non-exclusively write for your target audience. If you run the only blog for fans of a small college basketball team, try to get links or guest-posting gigs at big blogs about college basketball, for example. If the blog’s audience is big enough, you’re bound to reach a sizeable pocket of people interested in your niche.

Some niches are also friendlier than others. For every niche that’s open to guest-posting and sharing links, there’s another niche where trying to do these things is almost impossible. One unfortunate result of a wide and varied blogosphere is that some niches have a much stronger community than others.

Let’s assume that nobody will let you guest-post, nobody wants to link to you and your comments elsewhere don’t bring in any traffic. What do you do?

The good thing about search-engine optimization, often called SEO (the practice of optimizing your blog to gather more search-engine traffic), is that it doesn’t care much what the rest of your niche is doing. If there’s less competition and your blog is cleverly optimized, you stand to net a lot of traffic. Search for SEO on Delicious to access some great tutorials you can use to learn more about this.

The self-sustaining nature of social media is also perfect for growing a blog in an under-served niche. If your niche is under-served, you’re most likely blogging on a topic without widespread appeal. For that reason, I’d suggest putting most, if not all of your efforts, into StumbleUpon. Its highly refined category system makes it much easier for niche content to succeed.

You can start using StumbleUpon to build your niche blog by voting up articles you see as high quality for your target audience. StumbleUpon users with consistent taste in a certain type of content tend to attract like-minded followers and ‘fans’. If your blog is about money-box collecting and you consistently vote up articles on money-boxes or similar collectibles, you’re going to attract the attention of other Stumblers who’re also interested in those things.

Another useful StumbleUpon tip is to erase all your previously selected interests until you have none at all selected, then pick just one: the category which most narrowly suits your niche. As you stumble, many of the sites you come across will appeal to your target audience. If you view the reviews page for the site, you can click through and ‘Fan’ the person who discovered it — a person who’s very likely to be interested in your blog’s niche. I’d suggest doing this with as many people as possible. Not only does having a wide network enrich your StumbleUpon experience, but it also allows you to send your best content to mutual friends.

Once you have a steady stream of targeted SU traffic arriving at your blog it’s entirely possible to grow and thrive almost on that source alone.

Under-served vs. Not wanted

That there are few blogs on a particular topic does not necessarily mean there’s an information-hungry audience waiting to pounce on your new venture. Some shopping strips are empty and dilapidated because nobody wants to shop there, and some niches are empty or lackluster because very few people are interested in reading blogs on the topic.

Notice the difference: very few people are interested in the topic, vs. very few people are interested in reading blogs on the topic.

Thousands of people might be searching for the keyword ‘wheelbarrows’ each day, but that doesn’t mean they want to read an entire blog devoted to them. Sure, people might want to buy them — and a blog on the topic might make a few dollars from AdSense — but how many people want to read about wheelbarrows on a regular basis?

If you’ve ever done research on potential niches with the AdWords keyword tool , next time, compare the search volume for one or two keywords describing your blog concept with the search volume for your blog concept + the word ‘blog’. The difference can be quite remarkable. It’s possible to have a thousand people searching for ‘wheelbarrows’ each day, and only one or two a week searching for ‘wheelbarrow blog’.

Under-served niches are the riskiest and possibly most rewarding settings in which you can start a blog. The space can help your blog grow quite rapidly, but you’ll need to overcome a lack of firm foundations first. You’ll need to make your own soil to grow from.

• Guest post, get links from and comment on blogs which touch on your topic, rather than being solely devoted to it.
• Learn the basics of SEO and apply them to your blog. Focus on keywords your target audience are likely to be searching for.
• Use StumbleUpon to meet and greet your target audience.