Choosing a Niche

Zara is a budding writer. She has dreams of making a career out of doing what she loves. Being creative and coming up with topics is not difficult for her. Writer’s block is an occasional issue, but she handles it reasonably well. However, she has a problem. She does not have a steady readership. Some of her articles get a decent number of reads but most don’t.

She knows she won’t be able to earn any meaningful income without having a steady readership.

Zara does not know it yet, but her lack of readership is not because she lacks in skill but because she does not show herself to be an expert in any subject. She keeps writing on a variety of topics without focusing on any one of them. While this in itself is not a bad thing, it indicates that her articles generally don’t deal with any subject deeply enough.

If you are like Zara, you need to know that it is better to write a few deep and meaningful articles on one subject than many articles that lack in depth on a variety of topics. A deep dive yields more than a shallow swim.

The prospect of having to select a niche to focus on fills many aspiring bloggers with dread. They think it is a cumbersome process involving a lot of time and thought. This is not entirely true.

Choosing a niche does involves serious thought and the dedication of time, but it need not be cumbersome. In fact, it can be an enlightening process shedding light on who you are as a person and where your passion lies.

Give yourself a few days to complete this process. Use a note-taking or mind-mapping app to help record your thoughts and ideas as and when they arise, which will often be at the most inopportune of times!

Sit down with yourself and think about the things in your life that fill you with happiness. What are the activities you enjoy the most? Which part of a newscast do you follow most closely? Who are your role models and why do you look up to them? What causes do you wish to put your weight behind? Note all your findings on the app you have chosen.

Go through a few sessions of this activity with breaks as long as required between each session.

Once you have noted down all the things that matter to you, start removing the ones that are at the bottom of your interest, passion, or priority list. Be cruel to the list you have made and leave only three items standing.

From among these items, choose the one you think you enjoy or like the most. This will be your primary niche. The other two items can be your secondary and tertiary niches. Voila! You have arrived at your destination!

Although this process takes a fair amount of time, allowing yourself to go through it will help you discover where your passion as a writer truly lies. This is a one-time exercise that will benefit you for long. Going through it halfheartedly will be of disservice to you. You will end up choosing a niche that you don’t totally enjoy, and, as a blogger, you won’t last long writing about things that don’t interest you.

This article is by no means exhaustive. Share your thoughts on choosing a niche in the comments section below.