by Skellie
Photography: The Crowd Watches the Fireworks by Waldo Jaquith
Many bloggers and webmasters struggle to decide what topics they should cover. In this post, I want to answer some common but very important questions.
- What kinds of things should I write about?
- Should I focus on one topic, or many?
- What kind of topics should I choose?
- Are some topics bad for making money?
Working with your interests and expertise
There are things you like. Things you know a lot about. Things you find interesting and would like to know more about. These are all potential topics you could write on.
The next, crucial step is to work out who you will be writing for. I’m convinced that many bloggers and webmasters are not yet aware of how important this step is.
The dangers of ignoring a target audience
Let’s say you’re interested in cooking. You previously stumbled across a blog called Mark’s Thoughts and read an amazing post on making better ratatouille. As a result, you’ve never made it the same way again. You subscribed to the blog eagerly awaiting more cooking tips.
The next post, however, was on running an eBay business. You thought: “That’s alright, perhaps the cooking stuff will come later.” But it didn’t. You waited a week, skipping over posts about domain name selection, a movie review, and the author’s favorite breed of dog. Finally, you unsubscribe, disappointed.
The author obviously has a passion for all of the above: cooking, domain names, movies and dogs. But how many others have the same configuration of diverse interests?
Our friends, for example, are unlikely to share more than a few interests with us. My best friend is an Elvis fanatic, but Elvis has always left me lukewarm. If she consistently tried to discuss Elvis with me, I’d probably get annoyed. But she doesn’t. We’re both aware of our mutual interests and focus on discussing things we both enjoy.
It might be useful to think of a blog without a target audience like a friend who will discuss all their interests without fail, regardless of who’s listening. I might enjoy talking about sport with that person, but want to knock myself unconscious when he begins to discuss the virtues of a particular political party, or real estate prices, or chess, or country music.
Before you decide what to talk about, you need to know who you want to speak to.
Selecting topics with an audience in mind
To illustrate this with an example, let’s use a fictional person with a fictional set of interests: Shelley. She has brainstormed topics that interest her and the results are below.
I’d like you to think about the cloud above for a moment. Do you share some interests? Do some of Shelley’s interests bore you, or even slightly offend you? Would you subscribe to a site that wrote about all these topics?
Conscious of this, Shelley has linked up topics likely to be of interest to certain audiences. The result looks like this:
The blue line is likely to be of keen interest to a socially and environmentally conscious Christian audience with liberal political views. The yellow line will consistently have something to offer environmentally conscious outdoorsy types. The green line is likely to be of interest to web designers and web developers. Would you read one of these sites, if the writing was good?
Do the topics covered on your site connect up in this way?
One topic, or many?
More topics can mean more competition, though you might stand to receive greater traffic in the long-run.
Focusing on a specific niche often results in a smaller, more focused audience. Neither is worse than the other from a money-making perspective. If Shelley decides to write only about kayaking, she might make a small fortune selling kayaking equipment on her blog, because her audience is so well targeted. On the other hand, broader sites have a larger target audience and, therefore, the potential for higher visitor numbers.
If you have aspirations of cracking the Technorati 100, however, a specific niche is unlikely to get you there. The approach you take will depend on your long-term blogging goals.
I love __________, but there’s no money in it
Any popular or well-targeted site can be profitable, as long as you’re willing to look outside AdSense. I strongly believe that if you create a great site and employ money-making strategies suited to that site, any niche can be profitable. I’m a little like the guy on the left, below:
Before you have the same reaction as the man on the left, I want to site some examples of unusual sites that proved to be profitable.
- A site featuring homemade postcards with confessions written on them has been turned into a book.
- A blog about captioned photos of cats is one of the highest earning blogs in the world.
- Chris Garrett, whose blog contains no advertising, makes his living online through consulting and freelance work.
If you create a fantastic and well-loved site you will find ways to monetize it. Sometimes you will need to seek them out. At other times, opportunities will present themselves.
Your focus shouldn’t lie solely on picking a niche you think will be profitable — unless it also happens to be a niche you love.
There are so many monetization options around these days that you will find one that suits you, no matter what you write about.
Five reasons to focus on target audience first
- Your readers will be consistently interested in the topics you cover.
- It will give you guidance in deciding what to write about.
- Target audiences are social networks: they may help your content go viral.
- You will be able to build a profile amidst an influential group.
- It will ensure your site maintains focus on presenting the reader with content that is valuable to them.
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20 Comments, Comment or Ping
Patrick
Excellent post, Skellie.
I’m constantly wondering what my target audience is going to be searching for in the search engines, and then trying to create useful content that might flow from those keyword searches. I’m not sure if that strategy follows what you are suggesting here. I think it does, for the most part, because I’m still trying to provide value to the reader as best I can. I’m just using the target audiences search keywords as a starting point for content creation.
Oct 23rd, 2007
Jo
I’m constantly amazed how well you put your concepts into perspective. The paragraph where you compare a target audience to a personal friend with overlapping but not identical interests is just a brilliant metaphor…
Oct 23rd, 2007
Wilma Keppel
Great post, Skellie. I am deeply interested in and know a lot about several fields, have lots to write about, and have been wondering how to fit these topics into a blog or blogs. Your nifty little diagram makes it all clear. I’m going to go draw one right now!
Great blog — I came, I read a few posts, I subscibed.
Oct 23rd, 2007
pablopabla
Yes Skellie. And hence, the birth of a new blog solely dedicated to financial, legal and insurance stuffs which I deal with almost every day of my working life. I don’t foresee that it will generate as much traffic compared to say, my recipe site (where I get approximately 40% traffic from search engines). But I do see the long term potential in such a blog.
Apart from it being my little giving back to society as a working professional, it is also a potentially good income earner in the long run.
Oct 23rd, 2007
Caroline Middlebrook
This is a refreshing point of view Skellie. I have recently come from doing the Thirty Day Challenge in which we are taught to do lots of market research to test if a niche is profitable before spending any significant effort in it.
I had several ideas that were of personal interest but I ditched them as they didn’t seem profitable. I then tried working in some niches that were obviously profitable but I had no interest in. Not soo much luck so far and enthusiasm has of course waned.
Oct 23rd, 2007
jsanderz
Skellie, you have wrote an excellent article on this subject.
When I first started blogging I wrote about alot of my hobbies and passions, but after a while found it too much to keep on top of. Now I write about less topics but still not sure if I have too many. I am still not sure who my target audience are, my blog was reviewed by Easton (http://www.businessblogwire.com/2007/10/free_blogging_tips_for_my_seco.html) as he is reviewing blogs for free and he wrote:
“information/news/tips addicts and junkies are likely to enjoy your content “.
Should I still write about what I love or what people want, or both
Regards.
Oct 23rd, 2007
Alex Kay
Your metaphor about your friend is really useful for understanding the point. Everyone doesn’t have the same interest, but if someone likes A, there’s a big chance they like B, and maybe C too. Just like this blog. If someone is interested in “blogging”, they would most likely also be interested in viral content and productivity.
Target audience and goals are really important for a “succesful” blog.
Spot on Skellie!
Oct 23rd, 2007
Elliott Cross
Great post! Love the analogy of your “friend”.
This is a great thought provoking article, and as we discussed, what you are passionate about can really drive your blog to success. One of the issues that we talked about was to be really focused on one niche area, or discuss several closely related niche areas.
I really think you hit it with this article, good job!
Oct 23rd, 2007
ChrisB
When I started my blog, I decided on a “mission statement” that is basically expressed in my tagline. I frequently find things that I want to write about, but don’t because I expressed up front what my blog was “about” and that’s not it. Those who read my blog have certain expectations, and so I stick with what I promised them.
Still, it’s annoying sometimes
Oct 23rd, 2007
Michael Martine
I love the diagram with the connecting lines. That is a great idea. People get told over and over and again to choose a “niche”, but a niche can be a demographic group and not just a topic.
Oct 24th, 2007
E
The mind map is a great solution to the “I have many interests” quandry. So often, bloggers are told they need to ‘focus like a laser’ on one topic, but that’s not the way our brains work; we are constantly juggling several interests. Finding the connection between the many seemingly disconnected interests serves to bring order to our blogging goals.
On a side note, this is my first comment here. You have a natural gift for story-telling and description.
Oct 24th, 2007
skellie
@ Patrick: I think that’s a really clever strategy. It definitely applies to what I’ve expressed here: you’re anticipating what your target audience is interested in.
@ Jo: I’m glad it helped
@ Wilma: Welcome to the community
I hope your mind map goes well.
@ Pablo: Heading over there now :).
@ Caroline: Over the years I’ve also done the same thing, and it didn’t work. Now that I’ve entered a niche which is quite hard to monetize, I’m actually making a higher (indirect) income online than I ever have. Something to think about, I guess.
@ Jsanderz: I would suggest drawing a mind map of the things you love and working out which of those topics are likely to be of interest to a specific type of person. I think you don’t necessarily need to choose one or the other: you can write about what you love *and* what other people want, if you pick your topics with this balance in mind.
@ Alex: I’m glad you found the metaphor useful — it seems to have gone down well.
@ Elliott: I hope it fleshes out my answer to your question a little more
@ ChrisB: It is great that your readers know what to expect from you. Maybe you could start another blog, ‘just for fun’, where you can write about other topics?
@ Michael: To be honest, I still think most people understand niche as one single, small topic — and maybe that’s a more accurate translation. But I use it to mean the unique space you occupy on the blogging spectrum. I think it’s a more useful term when defined like that.
@ E: Good to see you, and thanks for taking the time to comment. I think you make a good point: it’s very difficult for humans to focus on one thing and one thing only. In many cases, it’s a recipe for boredom.
Thanks for the kind words — I do appreciate it.
Oct 24th, 2007
engtech
I’m still suspicious that my April 1st post on lolcats somehow hooked up the wordpress.com guys with icanhascheezburger that was about to go down because of hosting problems.
Oct 24th, 2007
Nancy
I love your cloud example - it just shows that often interests can be logically grouped which at least provides a wider choice of material.
It is so important to write about things you love (and it definitely shows out in your posts!). Otherwise, you can get going but quickly lose momentum and your blog can become a chore rather than a pleasure. It makes it so much nicer when you get up in the morning and are already thinking of what you are going to blog about that day.
Oct 26th, 2007
Thomas Flight
Thanks for the great post! Very helpful tips.
But often I think “I don’t have many interests that I know enough about to blog about” That’s a problem.
Thomas
Oct 29th, 2007
Amanda
I was very glad to have read this post today. I’m currently at the point where I know I should develop a better niche for my newest blog, and your mind-map metaphor was just the inspiration I needed to help me focus more clearly.
Thank you for writing such clear and well-written articles. Another happy subscriber has now joined the community!
Dec 19th, 2007
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