I Earn Online Front Page

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.