Broad Niches for Blogs

The Pros and cons of Broad Niche for Blog

Pros	Cons
Large depth of content	Might be a bit TOO much to write about if you have limited resources
Larger potential	More competition and often more organized competition

Sub-niches for Blog

For any topic, you will always have the option of either taking a broad view
of the topic or focusing on specific parts, or sub-niches. Here are some
examples of niches and more focused sub-niches:

Broad Niche                             Focused Sub-niche
Blogging                              Professional Blogging
Investment                          Tech Stocks
Weight Loss                         Low-Carb Dieting

                                    Travel                                  Travel in Asia

It is possible to break topics down further and further. For example,
“Travel in China” would be a sub-niche of “Travel in Asia,” and even more
specifically “Travel in Hong Kong.” Both broad and focused blogs have their
advantages and disadvantages.

Niche for your Blog Topic

Although personal blogs often wander through a variety of themes and
topics, for a serious blog project you will want to focus on a limited range
of topics. Defining a single main area or niche for your blog topic has three
main benefits:

1. It’s Easier to Build a Memorable Brand
The strongest, most memorable brands are the ones most quickly
and easily understood by consumers. Building a brand for a blog that
changes topics regularly is much harder as the blog becomes harder to
mentally categorize. By contrast, a focused blog is easily simplified into a
memorable idea. So for example it’s much easier to think “Stock Market
Tips” than “Covers topics like the Stock Market, Television, and Cars.”
You can in fact still build a great brand around a bizarre set of topics;
it’s just a lot harder! A good example of a blog that isn’t easily defined
is BoingBoing (http://boingboing.net), which covers many things,
including technology, sci-fi, gadgets, politics, and Disney.

2. Your Readers Know What to Expect
A focused topic attracts and retains a strong audience because readers
quickly learn what the blog is about, and if they like it, then they stick
around. They are also more likely to recommend the blog to other
people interested in the same topics. If you move between a variety of
unrelated topics, you are likely to lose readers who aren’t interested in
some parts of the blog, or who simply can’t be bothered to wait for the
next post on the topic they are interested in.

3. It’s Easier to Attract Advertising
It’s much easier to attract advertisers to a focused blog because the
topic of your site defines your audience. For example, businesses selling
financial advice are likely to see a blog about stock market tips as an
attractive place to advertise given the clear overlap in audience, whereas
they may be more hesitant if the audience match wasn’t so clear
because the stock market tips were mixed with posts about other topics.

Planning and Researching for Blog

Perhaps the most critical decision in starting a new blog is to select
your topic area or niche. Needless to say, it’s worth investing the
time to research and plan it thoroughly because while choosing the
right niche doesn’t guarantee success, choosing poorly can make
succeeding much more difficult.
In this chapter we’ll consider tools and techniques you can use to
research a blog niche, to analyze competitors, and to gauge how
much traffic and advertising potential it has.

Setting up as a Business with Blog

The first steps in creating your new enterprise are ones that virtually any
business needs to go through: registering the business, getting advice,
and opening a bank account. Here’s a quick rundown of some of these
tasks.

Legal Counsel
When setting up any business, it’s important to know a lawyer who you can
contact for legal work such as writing a privacy policy, trademarking a brand
name, setting up a business structure, drafting contracts for staff, and other
general legal work. Early on, you are unlikely to need their services often,
but it’s best to establish a relationship before the need arises.
Moreover, a quick consultation might give you a heads-up on an issue to
keep in mind for the future. When my company set up our first website, it
never crossed anyone’s mind that we had another company’s trademark
(whose products were heavily related to the site) as part of our own site’s
name. Years later, we ended up having to change the name, hand over the
domain name, and the whole thing was very time-consuming and expensive.
Had we had some simple legal counsel early on, the whole issue could have
been avoided!
If you don’t already have a legal firm or lawyer you have used in the
past, ask around for a recommendation. If you cannot get a personal
recommendation, then find out if there is a local law association or business
development centre who can assist you.
The law firm that I use at work was recommended by a small business
incubator that the government was running in my city. We visited the
incubator while looking for office space, and while we were there asked
the person who ran the organization if he knew any good law firms. As
it happened, they had a lawyer who came in on Fridays to offer free
introductory counseling for startups. We got in touch with him and years
later we still work together!

When you have a company in mind, you can ask for a consultation and give
them a rundown of what you are planning on doing (i.e., opening a blog).
Tell them you want to set up a relationship, and maybe ask if there are any
particular legal issues you should be thinking about this early on. Many
law firms won’t charge for the first consultation (though you should double
check this) so it’s a good time ask any broad questions you have. Always
ask for an estimate for any actual work you discuss before commencing so
you don’t get any surprises.
It’s not a bad idea to meet with a few different firms and lawyers. This
will allow you to find someone you feel comfortable talking to, that you
understand, and that you feel knows at least a little bit about working online.
It will also give you a chance to compare rates if you ask each lawyer to
estimate on a specific comparable job such as trademarking a business
name or writing a privacy policy.

Your Role and Blogging Experience

As an entrepreneur you should be expecting to get your hands dirty in
building your new business. If you are partially or completely bootstrapping
the operation, this may mean taking the approach that hobby bloggers take
and doing pretty much everything yourself. But even if you plan to hire staff,
it’s still good to actively work in one or more of the roles in the business.
In particular, it’s a very good idea to have experience in the writing and
editing capacities. These are the pillars of blogging and knowing them
intimately is not only important should you be short-staffed, but it will also
help you with planning and strategy.
Beyond writing and editing, your role as entrepreneur is really to do
whatever is needed. This might mean high-level tasks like marketing,
accounting, monetization, and management. It will probably also include a
lot of strategy and set-up work. This book will guide you through the many
and varied tasks you will find yourself working on.
If there is one piece of advice I can give that will serve you well in building a
business in blogging, it is to get some experience as a blogger before you
commit money and resources to the project. Even if you are a horrible writer,
even if you aren’t sure what to write about, the experience is so useful that I
encourage you to do it anyway.
It’s very easy to get started, and the difficulties and questions you encounter
will make the following chapters much more useful and interesting. So if you
haven’t blogged before, pick a topic you are interested in and set aside a
few weeks to intensively blog on the subject, to do your best to get noticed,
and to learn about the mechanics of blogging.
At the end of this book is an appendix chapter (The Blog Basics Crash
Course) where you will find an absolute beginner’s guide to blogging,
covering setting up, common terminology, and many other basics. If you’ve
never blogged before, I can’t recommend enough reading through this and
starting your own blog while you plan your larger blog enterprise.

A Simple Arrangement of Blog

The functions described above need to be accomplished somehow in order
for a blog to succeed. How those roles are apportioned between staff is,
of course, flexible. Hobby bloggers for example will often fill all roles by
themselves. However, if you’re creating a blog as a business it’s not a good
idea to tie up too many duties in a single person. Having only one person in
all capacities means you are heavily reliant on that one person not getting
ill, leaving, or otherwise putting you in a tight spot. Here’s a simple staff
structure that could work:

Editor
• Manages writers and contributors
• Edits articles
• Occasionally writes

Writers
• Write content
• Add content to the blog


Web Designer and/or Web Developer
• Set up hosting and blog installation
• Branding and design work
• Customize blog installation
• Make adjustments
• Server admin

Yourself (with the help of specialists!)
• Marketing
• Accounting
• Legals
• Business Registration
• Monetization
• Management and direction

This arrangement would require two main staff members in the persons
of the editor and yourself, one or two semi-permanent freelancers for the
design and development, and then a variable arrangement of freelance
writers depending on how much content the blog puts out each day.
Generally speaking it is best to start with a simple structure and then
expand as the blog expands. Not only is hiring many staff expensive, but in
the early days of a blog there is generally less work to do. Over time you can
specialize out tasks such as marketing or copyediting to have a larger, more
capable organization, but early on, simple is best.
In Chapter 4, we’ll look in more detail at these roles in a blog business, as
well as discuss the differences between freelance and salaried staff, where
to find good people, how to work with remote staff, and other issues related
to staffing for a blog business.

A Sketch of a Blog Business

What does a blog business look like? Who works there? How does it
operate? While every business is unique in its operation, it’s possible to
sketch out a broad set of roles to get a picture of what a blog business
might look like, what staff will be needed, how workflow might be organized,
and how a blog business might actually function on a day-to-day level. We’ll
expand on this sketch in later chapters to flesh out a fully function model of
blog business.

Roles
There are some roles that must be filled in any functioning blog. They are:

1. Writing
The most basic function of a blog is to generate content, so someone
is going to have to write that content day in and day out.

2. Editing
For a professional blog, some sort of editing will be essential to create a
consistent standard of quality.

3. Managing Writers and Contributors
Writers and contributors will need management to ensure their work is
in on time, their questions are answered, and they get paid.

4. Marketing
Until a site is a well-known destination, there is always work to bring
readers, to generate buzz, and to build the blog’s brand.

5. Monetization
Generating revenue requires planning and work, whether it’s chasing
up ad payments, comparing affiliate programs, developing products,
or implementing some other monetization plan.

6. Accounts
Like any business, your blog will need good accounting and tax records.
The bigger the business gets, the more important these will become.

7. Web Development and Server Admin
Thanks to blogging packages like WordPress, you can often get by with
very little web development. Nonetheless, even the most basic blog
requires someone to set up the server, configure the software, and make
sure the site doesn’t fall over if your traffic should spike. 

8. Web Design and Branding
A serious blog business requires some web design. Although themes
can be pretty impressive, your site will need its own brand to stand out.

9. Management and Direction
Coordinating the business is the job of the business manager. From
early questions about topic and editorial calendar, to hiring and
managing staff, to strategic direction and competitive analysis, this is in
many respects the make-or-break role in the business.

Risk and Reward

Every business investment comes with risk and certainly blogging is no sure
thing. The risks in creating a business out of blogging include:

1. Choosing a Low Potential Niche
Perhaps the biggest risk you run is creating the wrong blog. If you start a
blog in a niche that has limited potential either because of the audience,
the competition, or the revenue potential, then you create a significant
impediment to success. You can shift the blog, reinvent it, invent a new
way of finding revenue, trounce the competition somehow, or grow the
topic’s audience ... or you can choose a niche with strong potential to
begin with! We’ll deal with selecting a niche in the next chapter.

2. Not Producing a Popular Product
Assuming you’ve picked a good niche to blog in, you still run the risk of
producing a bad product. Maybe you hire the wrong staff, maybe you
don’t figure out what sort of content people want, or maybe you get the
frequency of publishing wrong. There are plenty of factors that go into a
good blog. The best way to learn about them on an instinctive level, is to
read and think about other blogs in your spare hours over a reasonably
long period of time. You’ll also get to read about what goes into hiring
and content in later chapters of this book.

3. Competition
Every business has competition of one sort or another. It might be other
blogs or it might be traditional media. If your business grows beyond
blogging, then it might simply be other service providers. Competition
vies for audience, for revenue, and ultimately for dominance. Even if
you scope out a niche very thoroughly and deduce that there is little
competition, you can never account for the competition that is sitting in
a garage somewhere plotting and planning their strategy for domination.
Aside from thorough research, the best defense is to be on guard all the
time, to always be looking for ways to be the best, and to think about
ways to differentiate your product from your competitors.

4. Running Out of Capital
The simple reality of business is that in the beginning you will burn
through your cash with little or no return. Later in this book, you can
read about three case studies from my own experience where you will
see that each blog took many months of losses before hitting break
even, and that one set is in fact still burning through cash!
To combat this you’ll need to make sure you have a reasonable amount
of capital to begin with. You’ll also need to look for ways to get some
revenue as fast as possible to help slow the losses. You’ll need to
constantly evaluate whether you are on the right track, whether you can
save money somehow, and how much longer you can last.

5. Market Conditions
No one can control the broader market conditions. At this point in time,
blogging looks to be a good bet with lots of growth potential and more
and more advertising moving online. Whether this is true, whether it
lasts, who knows? The most important thing is to keep your finger on
the pulse. Stay up to date with tech blogs, advertising blogs, blogs
for bloggers and publishers, and stay informed. If you feel a change in
market conditions coming, adjust your business plan to compensate.
If you think there are lean times ahead and you are low on capital, pull
back on your plans. Conversely, if you think there’s a boom coming in a
particular niche, then you might ramp up to take advantage of it.


While blogging is not without its fair share of risks, there are also
plenty of rewards. First and foremost is the satisfaction of running a
successful publication. Watching your readership grow, seeing
comments and discussion happening on your site, hearing from readers
who enjoy the site, and seeing link-backs from sites you respect are all
incredibly rewarding.
On a monetary level, a blog business can grow very large. One of the earliest
blogging companies, Weblogs Inc, which included powerhouse blogs like
Engadget (http://engadget.com) and TUAW (http://tuaw.com), sold for a
reported $25m to AOL in 2005. Another high-profile sale occurred in 2007
when environmental blog Treehugger (http://treehugger.com) sold for $10m
to the Discovery Network.
While a big sale to a listed company isn’t on the books for every blog, it’s
certainly possible to do well purely on operating profits and revenue. In
the case studies in this book, you’ll read about two blogs that I’ve worked
on which have been fortunate enough to hit profitability and turn over
enough cash to grow other businesses and to expand themselves to bigger
revenues and larger audiences.
In fact, later in this book we’ll look at how a blog can not only become very
successful in its own right, but can also become the engine that drives new
businesses such as blog networks, apps, services, or products like books
and job boards.

Opportunities in Blogging

Publishing is changing quickly as more and more readers migrate from
paper-based products to electronic media, whether it’s a computer, a
tablet, a mobile device, or an e-reader. Change of this sort always creates
opportunities, and in the last few years it’s become clear that professional
blogging is one of them.
The last decade saw a generation of blogs grow from being side projects
and hobbies, into sites with enormous readerships and real revenues.
Very quickly blogging has become a legitimate publishing business, and
today a survey of the top 100 blogs shows that with a few notable celebrity
exceptions, almost all of them are backed by real publishing businesses.
While today the blogging industry has some very professional outfits
operating, there is still lots and lots of room for the newcomer. To start with,
there are very few household names in blogging. While most people might
recognize and know names like Time, Wired, Vanity Fair, and Vogue, there
are significantly less who know Gawker (http://gawker.com), TechCrunch
(http://techcrunch.com), Huffington Post (http://huffingtonpost.com), and
PopSugar (http://popsugar.com), which are just three of the more high
profile sites. There are still many, many people who don’t read online but
who will eventually. These folk mean that blogging is an industry with a
lot of growth ahead of it, and growth is good for business and good
for newcomers.
Opportunities in blogging also arise from the many niches and topics
that are still wide open. If you walk into any bookstore and look through
the myriad magazines that line the racks, you’ll find there are audiences
interested in reading about everything from sewing to tattoos, boating to
cooking, movies to shopping. Can you name the blog to read on tattoos?
How about a great blog about boating? Think you can find one?
Moreover, for every niche that is big enough to sustain a real paper
publication, there are dozens more that are too small for print but big
enough online. Where the distribution costs are small and even nil,distributed groups can be clumped together to form real audiences, and
bloggers have access to audiences that have never really counted before:
the so-called “long tail.”
As was often touted during the dotcom boom, the internet is a great
equalizer. The difference between one domain name and another is just
a few keystrokes. And while you shouldn’t read too much into this (after
all, people have to know your domain name to type it in), it is worth
remembering that a new voice in blogging can quickly catch on.
Of course because blogging is so accessible, it’s a tempting first business to
get into. There is a perception that it’s a zero-cost set-up, and in some ways
that’s true. You can start a new blog with not much more than a domain
name and a cheap-as-chips hosting account. This is certainly a claim that
you could never make about, say, starting a magazine or newspaper, where
the physical costs of making and distributing the product can be prohibitive.
What isn’t so obvious, is that to build a blog that is self-sustaining and
eventually profitable, does require cash, and it can be a significant amount
at that. For as easy as it is to start a blog, it is still hard to produce
consistent levels of content, to acquire traffic and readership, and to
ultimately generate revenue. While thousands of blogs may open their
proverbial doors every day, the funnel of survival can be harsh and many fall
into disrepair very quickly.
For hobby bloggers, the costs of operating a blog are hidden in the
blogger’s own time. They do the posting, the marketing, and all the other
chores of running a blog themselves, effectively eating the costs by doing
it in their spare time. But make no mistake, those costs are there and if you
want to approach blogging with a business mindset, you need to account
for them all.
On the flip side, by looking at blogging as a business, you also bring
the longevity that blogging needs to succeed. While hobbyists and less
organized competitors fall by the wayside, your operation will keep chipping
away, building audiences, growing search traffic, creating a bigger and
bigger content archive. In many ways, blogging is an endurance race,
requiring a lot of momentum to build up to become a true success story.So building a business out of blogging, like any business, involves
investment both in time and money. The questions you want to ask are:
What costs need to be accounted for? Where will the revenue come from?
How long will it take? Along with these high-level business questions, you’ll
also be wondering about the practicalities of running a blog as a business,
planning direction, finding and hiring staff, creating content, and marketing.
In this book I aim to answer all these questions as well as to give you a
practical, hands-on guide to building a business out of blogging. Like
any business, it will take hard work, dedication, savvy, and a bit of luck.
As someone who has built a number of blogs, I hope reading through my
experience and methods will help you find your path to success.