Comments on: So You Want To Be A Blogger, Part One – Choosing A Topic

By: Words on a page » Blog Archive » A few links for the end of the week - A blog about writing, in its various forms

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 11:37:25 +0000

[...] to be a blogger? Then you’ll find this advice on choosing a topic [...]

By: Present Day Nomads » Blog Archive » Weekly Roundup #2

Present Day Nomads » Blog Archive » Weekly Roundup #2 — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 14:12:04 +0000

[...] Choosing a topic to start your blog [...]

By: jdbentley

jdbentley — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 07:51:16 +0000

That's true. By choosing a niche, I'm meaning to say you can't make a blog about "travel" or "food" and expect it to succeed. It's too broad. You'll be lost in thousands and thousands of voices. The topic should be narrow enough that you have an easily targeted market and big enough that there's enough interest in it to necessitate a blog.

Thanks for stopping by Karlil!

By: Karlil

Karlil — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 06:12:43 +0000

This is certainly a good reference for inspiring bloggers. However, i would differ my opinion on narrowing your niche too much because sooner or later they will run out of topic. It is important to know that you will have topic to write on even say 1 year later down the road.

By: jdbentley

jdbentley — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 05:53:48 +0000

That's exactly what they want. I'll tackle how to come up with original inspirational work later on in the series.

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 04:28:32 +0000

Hey JD---

This is some great info for a new blogger. It has always been tough to be creative at all times but if you are writing for an audience you need to understand they want original inspirational work.

Thanks for sharing the great advice with fellow young bloggers.

Dave LifeExcursion

By: bobbessette

bobbessette — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 11:32:24 +0000

JD, I am impressed with your subscription rate. I tend to agree that you have had great success for only 2 months. Good luck with taking it to the next level. There are so many innovative voices in this arena...

Best, Bob

By: jdbentley

jdbentley — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 23:53:02 +0000

Yeah. Patience is necessary if you want to make a blog work. You really have to build it. But I believe that if any blog churns out quality information at a consistent pace (1 or 2 posts per week on scheduled days) for three months, it can be successful. Of course, this depends on your definition of success. To me success means having built a steadily growing readership and getting 10 or 15 comments on each post.

I've been publishing at WSR since July 13 so I'm coming up on almost 2 months. In that time I've gained nearly 100 subscribers (waiting for the last few to push me over the edge), taken my page rank from 22 million to 900 thousand and get a decent amount of comments on each post, not to mention being able to take part and be heard in this lifestyle design/entrepreneurship/location independent community. For 2 months, I would consider WSR a huge success. It just takes some patience and consistency.

By: jdbentley

jdbentley — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 23:44:18 +0000

Corbett is a great writer and I love FreePursuits. I was happy to get a retweet from him today!

Anyway, you're totally right. A good addition to this post might be that you need to seem to choose a small niche. For example. WSR is about lifestyle design and self-employment. It seems like a narrow enough niche, but in reality lifestyle design can mean anything from travel to blogging to productivity. It leaves me open to write about lots of things as long as its skewed with this "own your life" perspective.

I hope to see you back here again, Bob. Thanks for stopping by!

By: Karen

Karen — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 22:36:47 +0000

Hey JD,

Great advice for blogging, here. I find out everytime I write that if you try to force it, or write about something that doesn't excite me, it doesn't work. People can see through your lack of passion, and dishonesty, and there's no way being fake can succeed. I like how you talk about building up an audience slowly before monetizing. That's my long term plan, and I have so much respect for the bloggers that did this successfully- it takes so much time, effort, and patience. But… it's awesome when you see people that have worked hard and it ends up panning out.

Looking forward to part 2! Karen