If you were going to start a blog what topic would you choose?

[marc100]

I look at a good blog as like a free online magazine. Examples are Huffington Post, Mashable, TMZ, DailyKos, PerezHilton, BoingBoing, etc.

If you were going to start one and REALLY work it, what topic would you choose?
Everything already has competitors and I'm cool with that, I do my own thing. But I was wondering what other people here would blog about with the idea of growing it big.

 

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[DeletedUser394]

I rarely quote anyone but... 'The world probably doesn't need another blogger' -MJ

Would I enter a market so saturated as the blogosphere? No. Why? Because there are so many easier ways to make a heck of a lot more money. Most bloggers are broke.

Having said that, if I was going to write a blog, I'd probably give tips on how to smuggle contraband across international borders... because as far as I can recall, I've yet to see any blogs written about that, meaning the market is wide open....or that there's no market for it at all... but at least I won't be competing with the 10 million sports blogs, or the 50 million news blogs, or the 25 million political blogs, or the 500 million misc. blogs, etc.

 

[Vigilante]

Self reliance.

 

[joona]

Its rather easy process actually, at least in theory. And no, you don't want to start a blog - you want to start a business that gets customers from the blog. There is a difference.

First you should pick up a broad topic. Let's say time management. Then you do research on the biggest blogs/sites in that industry, list every one of those in excel and start doing some research. Check out what are their 10 most popular posts, copy&paste the names of those to the excel along with how many comments/views has the post gotten. Usually this info is very easy to find from the blog itself.

Then you check how they monetize their blog. Affiliate marketing? Own products? Or something else? Write the main monetization method to the excel sheet. You can also use alexa.com and quantcast.com to evaluate the amount of traffic they get (And get some ideas for what are the demographics and terms they rank for) and from which sources. Also take note on their social media accounts and how much followers/fans they have on each. This is useful so you can see what are the key platforms where you should be active (if everyone has huge twitter following, you should use that too since the readers are already in that media) and where can you differentiate (if no-one is using YouTube, there is your chance to differentiate).

Also browse through the blog/site to get an idea why people read it. Write a 1-2 sentence description about it to your excel. One great way to learn about the "why" is to read the comments. And keep in mind that the answer is not often straight-forward. For example, the content of the blog might be good, but the real reason why people read it is because the blogger is very sympathetic person and is always available for readers.

Repeat the process for all the major blogs in the niche. You don't have to care too much about the others, since smaller blogs can be pushed aside way more easily.

Now that you have idea what others are doing, you should position your blog. These things will help a lot with the positioning:
- Target audience: who do you want to reach? how can you help them? Can you sell something to them? With the time management example the audience could be overworked 30-year old programmers who are busy with work and small kids. The more clearly you set this, the better.
- Subject: What is the main subject of your blog? In the example, it would be time management.
- Point of view: Now, this explains from which angle you approach the subject. For example with the TM, you could focus more on reducing the time they use for working, how to do mundane tasks more efficiently or to avoid doing them at all etc.

So basically your angle & target audience combination should be "unique" or then you need to produce a lot better content than the others to get their readers to read your blog too.

As to the topics... The evergreen niches would be a good place to start
- health
- money
- relationships
- DYI
- hobbies
- careers
- etc.

Just pick one where you think you can contribute to a particular target audience who are willing to buy stuff.

 

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[Vigilante]

Joona. What is your blog? Is it profitable?

 

[Maria]

Anything that provides value can grow big if you execute it right.

Think of problems you would like to solve through your online magazine, list them, and then think about how you could execute each one of them so that you are different than everyone else.

 

[CPisHere]

A blog is not a business. A blog is a way to attract traffic, but you have to have products to sell (your own or someone else's). The real benefit is having back-end sales. So you sell them on something small, deliver above and beyond their expectations, and then get them to buy something bigger.

If you don't have an idea of what products you will sell, a blog will be a waste of time and energy. I know from personal experience. I blogged for about 6 months hoping that the business would just evolve and I would eventually come up with a product idea. It never happened because I had no focus or end goal in mind.

 

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[s_sherrell]

I agree and disagree with several posts here. Blogging is a viable way to make money. You do not have to have your own product unlike what others are saying. However, you need LOTS of traffic. You then sell advertising space. There are actually quite a few full-time bloggers out there. I do not think Huffingtonpost qualifies, but others in the OP are essentially blogs. Heck drudge does not write even a single blog post, but makes millions per month. It all comes down to traffic though. If you have any audience people will pay you for access. And pay you very well. So it comes to the topic question you had asked. I would suggest you go to areas of interest and look for current forums (you can look at competing blogs later). See how active they are and what they are talking about. If you see there is a good audience and you enjoy the topics, that is where you can go.
You are going to have to play the long game though. This is very SEO intensive. Be prepared to play the game. I hate SEO personally and would rather pay for traffic. But with a blog it makes little sense to pay for traffic because you have no product to sell to pay the difference. A couple of ways you can get traffic faster is intensive article marketing and writing a unique book through createspace to sell at amazon. These wil get you celebrity status and attract followers. HTH.

 

[CPisHere]

I agree and disagree with several posts here. Blogging is a viable way to make money. You do not have to have your own product unlike what others are saying. However, you need LOTS of traffic. You then sell advertising space. There are actually quite a few full-time bloggers out there.

Of course some people are succeeding at it, but 99% of people are making little to no money. It is a viable way to make money, but it's a VERY difficult way now that there's so much competition for almost anything you could imagine.

 

[joona]

Vigilante,

No I don't have a blog at the moment, but I am about to launch few in the coming months (one where only I write and other that relies a lot on guest posting. On the first one I will sell my own products, on the second I will sell products as an affiliate. They are both in the same niche, but with different focus). That is why I have been thinking about the topic a lot, doing research and the above message kinda summarizes my approach to the whole blogging thing. Not saying that it is perfect or ideal. Just my approach. And as I said in the beginning of that message, at the moment it is still on the theory level. Coming months will show how does it work in practice.

And to the reason why I don't have a blog at the moment: I have been writing an ebook to be sold in Amazon. Will publish it hopefully during this weekend. Besides the ebook creation I have been working on client projects (I do SEO for Finnish clients).

 

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[Braintrust]

Whatever you decide upon, learn SEO. Grab some e-books and video courses on proper tactics. Avoid the spammy SEO guides that you might find on Warrior Forum or that other place with 'hat' in its name. Also, quality content on an almost daily basis is crucial to keeping people interested. I tried a few approaches with various blogs and the only ones thatI ever made money on were the ones that I (or a hired writer) updated it with relevant and well written articles regularly. I tried the whole funny video/quick joke posts on other blogs to no avail. I also messed around with auto content generation and using canned content from affiliate marketing providers. Neither of which worked. Google is smart enough to know that what you're listing is duplicate content and will bury you.

For reference sake, a friend of mine and I recently started a blog for fun...with no real bend on monetizing it. we hit 1000 Facebook fans yesterday and the traffic trends are looking great. Funny thing is, we might actually do some more SEO and place a few ads on it now. It's not my Fastlane, but considering it's a very minimal time investment, I'll take it.

 

[AsherS]

That's a good question. I just started my first blog a few weeks ago and have been working it slowly but surely. Just from the outside looking in I think the most important thing about a blog is that the content is about a subject that you actually care about, and are passionate about, and not just what seems popular at the time. While a catchy name might work short term, I think what's really important is that your content is consistently good. The only way to make content consistently good is to be consistently passionate about the subject matter. If I were to start a blog about the Hilton sisters with a catchy name to it I may initially get a little traffic, but long term, that would never work for me because I simply don't give crap about the Hilton sisters or what they're doing. This lack of interest in the subject matter would surely come through in my writing. On the other hand however If I am truly passionate about a subject (ex. service in the hospitality business), I can simply be better then the competition (regardless of market saturation), BECAUSE I actually care about it, and the content I'm contributing to it. So, my conclusion is that while important, I don't think the name of a blog holds nearly as much wight as the content itself, and the way to make the content good is to actually care about it. Those are my thoughts initially. Again, I've only been a blogger for about 3 weeks so take that for what it's worth!

-Asher-

 

[AdamMaxum]

I agree with ryandrake for the most part.

A blog should be used to bring traffic to your core site. A way to lead visitors somewhere else, or sell them something in the process. Depending on what your advertising would determine what the blog is about. To answer that question, you'll have to do research on your own.

If you're going to start a blog for purely information, I would advise freelancing the articles/blogs out to others. It's going to require a good chunk of time to consistently write 3-500 word blog posts all the time. Since time is a commandment to follow as part of CENTS, blogging on your own is a waste of your time. It's difficult to capture an audience, and bring consistent traffic to a newly formed blog. It can take years, and you won't want to waste that precious time writing everyday.

 

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[AlphariusOmegon]

I actually just launched a new site/blog. When I first started blogging in 2003 I didn't even know the term "blog". It was something I did for fun. Roughly 40 people read it a day, pretty good considering it was the ramblings of a high schooler on life, the universe and everything. Flame wars would start and drag on for hundreds of comments, giving me dozens of emails to delete overnight. In 2 years I manged to get close to 4000 comments on it.

I've kept a personal blog since, with only a few friends being able to access it. However, site/blog I just launched is an entirely different affair - my own personal development blog, where I work on becoming the man I want to be. The site itself will have how-to articles posted on it as I learn new skills and guest authors come along (already have 2 lined up). When I launched it before work on Friday I managed to get close to 200 hits in one day (largely from linking from facebook), and I received about 300 over the weekend. I'm planning a huge post this weekend that will hopefully bring twice those numbers in.

So far I've gotten a couple offers for post exchanges - "you write about me and link to me, I'll do the same for you" and I had 6 people repost the link to my site on facebook saying something like, "My buddy Osiris is cool, and he's taking his life to the next level. Check it out!"

On the site portion I have a statement of intent (a what), a contact page (a who), a home page, and a site store made with zazzle. It's ambitious, but that's the whole intent of what I'm doing. The site/blog is all about being cool - I have to become a cooler person myself and I figure I can help some other people along the way. If I can get the site to pay for itself through the store or (in the future) advertising, all the better.