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Posted by ruby on September 19th, 2008 in Blogging / Marketing, Content Writing, Niches in Blogging

So you’ve read my previous post and now have an idea what your blog is going to be about. You are now struck with another dilemma: what to talk about within your chosen niche?

How to Narrow Down A Blog Topic

The ‘categories’ feature of a Self-hosted Wordpress blog comes into play when you need to narrow down your blog topic. You can split your general niche into several smaller, more specific subject areas that will get displayed on your sidebar.

Anyone who comes to your blog for the first time will wonder what topics you talk about, and they will be able to narrow down their search for a particular post just by viewing your category list. The category names must be succinct and specific, so that there’s no mistaking what the posts under them are all about.

Example: Food Blog

For example, you have a blog about Food and you want it to stand out amongst all the other food blogs in the blogosphere. What are the categories that you could go for?

1. Sort your posts according to region of origin - French, German, Asian, Filipino food… the more specific, the better. e.g. Spicy Filipino Food, Sweet and Sour Asian Dishes
2. Ingredients - Some visitors could be looking for recipes according to the raw materials they already have. Helping them brainstorm what to cook for dinner by categorizing your posts according to the main raw ingredient in the recipe will lead to more subscribers.
3. Dish Type -  Soups, Main Dishes, Appetizers or Desserts?

Running out of Topics?

If you have been blogging for a while and you realize that you have covered every single recipe that you know, is it time to stop writing on that blog and just let the residual income from ads and affiliate links collect? The answer is NO.

An active blog has a lot of regular readers, and these readers comment on particular posts. This will give you an idea on what your regulars want to read on your blog; the topics they keep coming back for. A bit of research won’t hurt. For this, you will need a good visitor tracking system like google analytics. This will tell you where your visitors come from, which pages they visit and what they typed in the search bar to get to you.

A niche blogger must trust his gut feeling on the way his topic is slowing down or speeding up (e.g. are there new developments or research related to some of the things you have been posting about?). When the post ideas trickle rather than surge, it’s time to introduce another category; one that your regulars can relate to.

In our food blog example, your visitors could be those who are just learning how to cook, advanced cooks who are looking for new stuff to experiment with; or really homesick expats who want to know more about the dishes in their home countries. Some recommended topics to expand your food blog with include cooking wares, preparation techniques, famous chefs (and their cooking styles) and nutrition details of the different food groups.

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Posted by ruby on September 9th, 2008 in Blogging / Marketing, Content Writing, Niches in Blogging

The idea of placing your thoughts on the net is attractive, as I’ve been discussing with a friend a while ago. It’s gratifying, completely affirmatory and overall quite fun!

The only question is: What is its purpose?

Adding Value

We’ve all used the nifty tool called search and more than once, we’ve found what we wanted. But there are times when we arrive on a page and become disappointed that there isn’t much info about the topic that we intended  to look up. Using a personal blog, one could be talking about experiences and things that aren’t meant to be “helpful”, but we all work under the assumption that someone, somewhere could be looking for that particular topic and when he finds it on YOUR blog, he shouldn’t be disappointed at the lack of thought put into the article. At the very least, he should be entertained.

I Know Something Some Don’t Know… You Know?

When another blogger friend told me that someone asked him to post the rules of a sport he is passionate about, he was shocked to realize that certain things we previously thought to be “common knowledge” aren’t as commonly known. Every blogger is a resource person of sorts, and we can all share a part of what we know to those who don’t.

Why Do People Go to the Internet?

If you are really clueless about what you want to talk about in your new blog, this is the question you should ask yourself. Why do you, or anyone you know, hit the net? Some come here to find recipes, some to find out prices, reviews of household items they want to purchase, or just to ogle photos or videos of things they desire. If you don’t have a domain name yet, here are some nice words to include:

• About
• Best
• Easy
• Howto

While one may not know the exact reasons why people go online, we can start second guessing their intentions by catering to what WE would go online for i.e. needing a convenient way to do something, and wanting information on the best and easiest ways to do things.

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Posted by ruby on September 3rd, 2008 in Blogging / Marketing, Content Writing, Online Cash Sources

If you’ve been online for a while and you know a few other things besides blogging that could get you some serious cash over the internet, will you still do this blogging thing?

What other things, you ask?

1. Ebay - simple, can be done by anyone brave enough to put their products out there for some serious trading. A tip to those Filipinos who do this is to sell really rare books about presidents, particularly coffee table books about the “controversial” presidents (wink).

2. Game character selling - I played a massively multiplayer role playing game for a few years and I know how difficult it is to manually get your character to a certain level. Some of my friends do this and earn a lot from WoW characters.

3. Content Writing - Simply put, writing for others. Using your writing skills to help other people increase their sales, update their sites and etc.

The answer to the top question is YES, you could still blog even if you engage on these other money online activities. Blogging does not take up too much time when you get the hang of it, and more importantly, it’s an almost passive cash source once your blog is established and you are down to your routine weekly updates.

What is Your Icing, What is Your Cake?

Sometimes blogging pays a lot and for the moment it is the cake that feeds you. Sometimes it doesn’t, and it becomes the icing, and the other sources of income becomes your cake. Either way, blogging becomes your hobby. It’s where you put your personality out here in the web. To earn money from a hobby is wonderful right?

think about it and remember to have fun!

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