Comments on: Blog Topics: Blog About Everything or Find Your Niche?

By: Richard

Richard — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 16:23:18 +0000

M, thanks for stopping by. I just checked out your general blog and find it much more interesting than blogs with a single theme.

I think that, in the beginning, it may be easier to monetize a niche blog. However, over time, you will have a vast array of advertising possibilities while a blog about cameras will still only be advertising cameras.

In just looking through your blog, I see that you write about music and books. You can become an Amazon affliate to promote each of those topics. And you wrote about Vacuums??? I like that…now find a place that is a vacuum affliate like here: http://www.oreck.com/customer-service/affiliate_program.cfm

I do believe it may be harder to build traffic to a general blog because each day you may write about something different. For example, this article was about blogging. People may like it and want to come back. However, tomorrow I may write about Politics and not Blogging which may turn off that visitor.

I am slowly forming ways to deal with that. For instance, I am in the process of creating and publicizing an RSS feed for each topic.

Check out my “Living in Uruguay” category page to see how I accomplish this.

Anyway, best of luck. I’ll swing by your blog to check it out often.

Cheers,
Richard

By: M

Sun, 21 Sep 2008 21:44:41 +0000

Thanks for this article. You are the first one I’ve seen online say it’s alright to have a general blog. While I don’t think general blogs are going to be able to monetize as easily as niche blogs, I certainly don’t think I could keep up the enthusiasm necessary to write just about one topic for years and years.

By: Richard Cummings

Richard Cummings — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 05:06:29 +0000

Lorelle, thanks for the comment and for your great site. As I mentioned, I visit often when I am tackling a new subject of which I’m unawares….be it Wordpress or blogging in general

I agree with your assestment above and it probably not only applies to blogging but life. If you don’t have passion for what you do, you’re doing the wrong thing.

Again, thanks for all and I’m sure I’ll be on your site shortly.

–Richard

PS: Mr. Rose is now Mr. Rowse

By: Lorelle

Lorelle — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 22:44:26 +0000

While you are right that I am one of the long standing proponents of specialization, I’m the first one in line who said, “Writing about WordPress isn’t enough.” Within a few months I changed my tagline to “WordPress and blogging” which gave me enough to chew on while staying fairly niche driven.

More importantly, I tell my readers and students to blog your passion. Write whatever you write with strong keywords, as John Pozadzidies and Darren Rowse explained (misspelled in the article), and write with passion and energy for your subject matter.

The worst stuff I see on the web is disconnected writing, writing that comes from the wallet not the heart. You can spot it in an instant. People are attracted like flies to honey with passionate writing, no matter the subject.

But if you want to be considered an expert in something, you must have a name for that expertise.

Great work!