5 Reasons Your Blog Needs a Niche

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Starting a blog is not too difficult, and in all likelihood you already have one if you’re like many readers out there. But finding a blog niche can be a harder task. Every blog needs a niche—a specific and unique focus that drives all written and visual content and the blog’s brand. Having a niche has many benefits which will ultimately help drive more traffic – and ideally, revenue – to your blog. Here are just a few reasons why your blog needs a niche.

  1. A niche makes your blog unique. Yes, yes, every blog is unique, but some more than others. Nearly every blog fits into one of these crowded categories: celebrity gossip, politics, fashion, music, and sports. There are over 180 million blogs out there right now. What separates yours from the other 179,999,999? Choosing a specific niche weeds out other competition and gives your platform something unique to offer. Many bloggers write about generic trendy music, but how many focus on East London electronic artists? Be specific in your niche, and choose a topic around which you have a lot of knowledge and insight.
  2. A niche helps your blog be part of a community. Though I mentioned competition earlier, blogging isn’t so much about ruthlessly elbowing into a community; rather it’s an opportunity to be heard (and also to hear others.) Earn respect as a trusted voice. Show that you know what you’re talking about amongst a specific group of ravenous fans, and you will have built-in readers for the long run. Plus, by engaging in dialogues with other bloggers, you’ll not only earn them as followers but earn their followers as well through link-backs and commentary on your posts. The more discussion, the more readers. It’s that simple.
  3. A niche allows for more exclusives. A boost in blog traffic is often the result of getting exclusives that cannot be found elsewhere, whether that be new tracks from popular bands or scoops on breaking insider news. If blogging within a niche, it is much easier to get exclusive content (simply because fewer people will be asking for it.) Getting exclusive interviews, videos, etc. adds useful content to a niche community and will have other bloggers talking about your work—and ideally attracting their readers’ attention as well.
  4. A niche attracts advertisers. Advertisers are always looking to reach specific demographics, and there are surely some who would want to target the niche community your blog is a part of. By advertising on a respected niche blog in an unobtrusive way, advertisers can align themselves with a respected expert and benefit. Find a niche, build a following, and advertisers will come calling.
  5. A niche makes it easier to earn. Too many bloggers want to be the next Huffington Post or Perez Hilton. Those bloggers have already carved out their niches, and it takes extraordinary talent and effort for a new blogger to begin to carve out even a sliver of their territory. There’s more room for bloggers writing about specific, less-discussed niches, and as such, there are more opportunities to earn revenue from advertisers seeking to reach a niche audience that is currently under-served.

DiTesco

DiTesco is a Business and Inbound Marketing Consultant, and founder of iBlogzone.com. iBlogzone's main objective is to help startups and small business owners achieve success in their online ventures. | More About Me and my Digital Marketing Services in SP Brazil.

12 thoughts on “5 Reasons Your Blog Needs a Niche”

  • Hi Edward

    I blog in a small niche and there are pros and cons. Less competition but have had to work hard to get my blog out there and be noticed cos there can also be less traffic.

    The blogging community I am a part of sure helped in that respect. Tweeting my posts, mentioning me in their posts and commenting on my blog.

    Now that my blog is more established, I am working on my marketing strategies. Haven’t contemplated advertising on my blog for the moment. However I like what you say about advertisers are looking for niche sites.

    Will now have to go and explore that more. Thanks for sharing. You have brought up some salient points here. Much appreciated Edward.

    Patricia Perth Australia

  • A niche is also important for SEO purposes, if your blog is too broad, the search engines have difficulties index your pages and rank you within a specific keyword range. If one post is about car accessories and the other post is about fish food, it takes longer for search engines to rank you well for the keywords you are targeting than when all of your posts circle around a specific niche.

  • A niche is very important, the big mistake I made when I started out was I was trying to cover every single subject under the sun on one blog. It became confusing to the readers to be seeing an article on football and then the next one would be about gardening or beekeeping. 😀

  • I love this post it’s exactly what allot of us bloggers are missing and being more specific is always better with whatever anyone is doing.

  • Excellent post. Point no 1 and 4…like it the most. I agree niche blogging makes it look unique and very rightly stated, it attracts advertisers. It is one of the top reasons why niche blogging is so profiting in the long run. And that’s why I have also decided to move into the same. Hope it goes well for me. Thanks for the heads up.

  • Hi,
    I am of the opinion that unless someone is starting a “newspaper” or a large site full of knowledge, an individual or group of people should concentrate on niche site.
    There are problems with niche site though of generating content as time progresses but it can be resolved by slightly broadening the niche.

    Thanks for sharing
    Ashvini

  • All the points you made are exactly right.
    I even know this on my own example having a niche website (not a blog thought) that is making money.
    The best thing you said is about the community. I have never seen a better community but the one between bloggers.
    In general other niches are more focused on themselves and don’t connect as much, since they see everyone else as competition.

  • I niche definitely has its advantages and by “limiting” the number of blogs you are competing against for your niche instead of all blogs, it is also more attractive to advertisers and easier to find content match.

    But, if you don’t have a niche and your “identity” is your blogging product, then there are also plenty of successful bloggers who carve out their personality as the niche, whether they rant about politics one day to games the next.

    My personal blog is not a niche unless you consider personal blogs a niche in itself 🙂

  • Choosing a niche, can help you might it might have some side effects, one of the most important being(only if you choose wrong), choosing a niche with a very low interest from people. This not only limits your expansion but invalidates points #4 and #5.

    On a better note, like you said choosing a niche can make you more focus, thus accomplishing more then being all over the place, trying to do everything but excelling in nothing. Even more, if you know your thing it can even propel you from an average blogger to an authority in your niche, thus profitably gaining more mentions = more visitors and more everything :).

  • You can also blog about various topics from a really offensive standpoint. This drives other blogs to criticise you but also link to your article.

    We personally would never do that but I have seen it.

  • Some nice points Edward..
    Here is a simple example from me:

    When you know you have to buy certain products, you will go to specific shop and not a super market.. reason being that specific niche shop has best of products (similar) which you are looking for..Same goes with blogging.. If I know I’m looking for a perticular gadget review,..I will prefer going to niche site and not any general blog which covers tech, gadgets and blogging…!!
    More over when one start a niche blog, over the time he gets an expertise..!!
    Good post mate!!

  • five brilliant tips you are right having a niche sometimes sets out the direction in which your blog is going this allow you to focus on a specific topic and makes branding easier

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