When bloggers start getting interested on monetizing their blogs, one of the basic concepts that they have to learn would be the concept of niching. Before starting my business classes in college, I only hear the word niche in my science classes wherein our teachers defined it as an organisms occupied habitat. In the business perspective, a niche is a specific field or area on which your product or service is focused on. Your niche would be where your expertise lies in.
However, niching for bloggers is sometimes difficult due to different circumstances. One reason for the difficulty would be the saturation of the niche on which a blogger is interested in. For instance, if you tried to search Google, you will notice that there are many money making online blogs that exist in the web today. Although you are not discouraged to try it, you must understand that you would have to work hard on your blog if you decide to push on with this niche, because there are also many other bloggers striving to get on top of the searches for this niche. If you continue to provide good and quality content from which your readers are able to learn and pick up valuable insights, chances are you’d be able to gather a good number of followers and subscribers.
Its just like running for office. If the people in your neighborhood think highly of the opinions, platforms and points you present, they will most likely support you and vote gor you. If however they think all you say is garbage and not worth listening to, they won’t exactly be lining up to vote for you.
A second reason for difficulty would be determining a niche on which you are familiar and are knowledgeable in. People are used with multi-tasking especially in the workplace and even at home, that when they start blogging, they take that habit into the blogosphere. With the multitude of blogging subjects available for bloggers, it is at times hard to sift through each one and choose the best niche for our blog. The temptation of starting many blogs on different topics is great especially when you are new to blogging. However, each blogger must remember that you must be able to provide a balanced attention between your blog collection or each blog will suffer and eventually die. You must keep in mind that your loyal readers go back to your blog to read your contents. Even your most loyal readers will leave and forget your blog if they continue to see no updates at all every time they visit.
If you for example were to visit for example Vacuum A store, on which you’ve bought all your vacuum cleaners since you got married, because you wanted to buy a specific vacuum cleaner. What if each time you go there a continuous no stock available sign exists, and after going there each week, after the 8th time of visiting that store will you still go back there next week? Or will you go and find another store which can offer you what you are looking for?
The third reason I can think of, which is shifting the blogs voice, would be more for bloggers who have their blogs established already. Most likely if you have an established blog already, its a personal blog. Now having your personal blog and niching it would be difficult in terms of defining what exactly would your niche be. Since a personal blog is well, personal, it would contain random entries about your life, views and other bits if everything that happens in your life. If you have readers already, it would be a bit hard to shift your blog’s voice into a specific niche which is quite different from your old blog voice.
If you usually post about your cat and your dinner, your readers who are used to reading about your cat and dinner, would likely be surprised and think they were lost if you suddenly talked about cosmetic surgeries, and discussing each operation exhaustively.
If you want to succeed in monetizing your blog, you would have to treat your blog as a child. A child needs the right attention, care and nurture for it to blossom into an individual that will possess the qualities that will enable them to become successful individuals in the future.
Will you neglect your child and leave them to fend for themselves?
niche… niche… niche… precisely the reason why I balk at monetizing. my blog’s niche does not really go well with the concept of monetization. it boils down to a choice between maintaining my blog’s niche and earning from it. well, given these choices, the former is much much heavier.