Every so often I see bloggers expressing some apprehension about stepping out of their blogging niche, so I thought it was worth chatting about.
The business-focused blogs
If the main purpose is to make money, niche matters. According to blogging guru Brandon Gaille, the blogging niches that make the most money are (in descending order) personal finance, marketing, food, lifestyle, mommy, and travel. If you want to make money, these niches are good picks. I must admit, though, I still don’t entirely understand what a lifestyle blog is.
However, most of us in the blogging world have other blogging priorities that outweigh any monetary considerations.
Semi-business blog
I’d consider my blog to fall into this loose category that I’ve basically made up. I’m trying to make a bit of money on the side with my blog, but that’s not even close to being the primary purpose. Mental health is obviously my niche, and having the majority of my content within the niche has made it easy to build up strong internal linking on my site. I’ve gotten to the point where my mental health content tends to do pretty well in search engine results.
Mental health is what I know and what I’m interested in, but I have no desire to be crammed into a box, so I also wrote about other things that interest me, like blogging. It’s interesting, sometimes my out-of-niche posts will do way better than my mental health posts typically do. I see it as confirmation that diversity is a good thing.
Blogging for fun
The world is your oyster. You can write about whatever you want. Some people prefer to have separate blogs for separate topics, but that’s totally your call.
Not every post you publish has to appeal to all of your readers. Several bloggers I follow do some short fiction posts. That’s not really my thing, so I often skip those, but that doesn’t make me any less interested in following those bloggers.
Some people will adapt what they’re publishing to match what readers appear to be interested in. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s not something you have to do, and not an approach I’ve used with my own blog. If you want to do a Turtle Tuesday series and it only gets 5 viewers on average, you keep turtling away. Embracing your turtle is likely more important than losing a viewer or two.
And if you’re concerned that your turtles don’t fit in with your poetry blog, turtle it up anyway. If your turtles turn out to be a dead end, no harm, no foul.
Release the shoulds
If you’re starting to get stressed because the should monster is telling you how to run your blog, that’s a good sign that it’s time to start ignoring it. Your blog is your space to do your own thing with. So tell the should monster to take a hike, and then have a nice little snuggle with your turtle (or turtle-tastic substitute).
Do you have a blogging niche you try to stay in? How comfortable do you feel stepping out of it?
The blogging toolbox series has tips to support you in your blogging journey. It includes these posts:
Yes
Enjoyed reading.Lots of knowledge filled.
Niche limits the out reach in my opinion.
Better to have a general approach
Thank you
That’s a good point about niches being limiting that way.
Thank you for helping us with your posts
Thank you!
This post is really helpful for me at the moment as I’ve been unsure where to focus with my blog. I’ll try not to overthink it and just write about whatever I fancy.
What interests you is also likely to shine through to readers.
Totally agree! The world is your oyster. When I start thinking too much about how my writing should look like and what topics I shouldn’t write about I often lose my motivation.
I love writing about feminism and body positivity, but I’m keeping my blog ‘fluid’. Perhaps when I mature a little as a blogger, I’ll decide to niche a bit more. 😂
Whatever works for you!
I think working on a blog with a niche works better for me. Because when you choose a niche, you have a systematic plan about your posts. Well, if you want your maximum posts to be related to a certain category, you should definitely go with a niche and if you also plan about any other post not related to your niche you can make a separate category for other posts not linked in with your niche. My niche is food, fitness and mental health, so if I want to go with some other posts too like a review of a product (completely different from my niche), I can make a separate category for it without making another site.
That makes sense.
I’m still learning which niche I feel like writing about. Still surprised about the mommy blogs, but then again i find myself clicking on some so there’s definitely good marketing around them. 👍 I don’t even have a kid but I want to find out how to make 10 dishes for picky eaters or how to get marker stains out of my clothes.
I don’t think I’ve ever visited a mommy blog except by accident. Blogs by moms, definitely, but not the mommy blog niche. It sounds like it’s thriving, though!
This post is really helpful, I must say.
To be honest, when I started my blog I didn’t even know what a niche was and I was even blogging for fun. I was just writing about whatever I felt that I needed to share. And now that I even finally learned about a blog niche, it’s still hard to decide. I think I’m just going to settle for self development. I guess I should be able to write about different topics that way.
That sounds like a good plan!
Good post. I just started off blogging. As a therapist a lot of my clients in group have told me I should start a Vlog. I figured I’d give this a shot first. I started mine on substance abuse recovery and therapy which will obviously be my niche. However, I’ll probably step out of my niche on a few things. My blog is more for myself and a way to provide insight and advice to those in recovery, if I make a few bucks from it then cool. I just want to say I made a difference. I think I kept my blog vague enough that I can write about a lot of things. At it’s baseline it is about living a life of recovery and that involves, mental health, family, activities, life skills, finance, outdoor activities, and everything in-between… I’ve enjoyed your blogs so far, great inspiration.
Thanks! And sounds like you’ve got a good approach.
I started my blogging because I believed I wanted to share my experiences as a mom who travels constantly, turns out writing about my past addiction and recovery just comes so much more natural…it’s all about trial and error and I am most definitely still in that process!!
It’s such a cool avenue for self-exploration that way!
It always intrigued me how we get roped into these “business” conversations and thoughts. I’ve never went to a department store then upon returning home rearranged my house to look like a department store because there was a lot of people their.
With 24% in personal finance I feel like I should blog about the Vampire Sanctum’s taxes now lol
I think that multi-niche sites are where the future is. These days it’s too hard to grow multiple blogs – it’s much easier to grow one super-blog
Good info. I had that dilema and chose to have two separate blogs.
Oh, interesting.
Love this info, Thank You. I currently own a lifestyle blog that cuts across multiple topics, and I just decided to divide them into 5 different categories and I target posts around each category to create balance, I really don’t think having a select niche is as important as people make it out to be.
Sounds like a good approach!