On Your Blog – Go Niche, or Naff Off
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Image courtesy of Visualpanic
You’ve heard the stories about people making thousands, even tens of thousands of dollars a month from blogging. There’s some truth to those stories. People really do it. Some people really do make that much. But the vast majority of bloggers earn little or nothing for their efforts. One reason for the difference is the value the successful folks deliver.
Creating blogs is very easy and inexpensive. With just a little bit of training, most anyone can do it. It’s so easy to create blog that statistics indicate there are something like 100 million of them. But only a tiny fraction make any money. Perhaps the biggest reason is that most blogs, regardless of the effort their creators put into them, give the visitor nothing unique that would cause them to come back again.
For a blog to deliver real value, it must have something special. Either the content must be unique, or the presentation of the content must evoke people’s emotions. Blogs that could have been written by anyone, with contents that readers can find all over the web, just won’t matter to people.
When it comes to delivering unique content, it helps to be an expert in the niche the blog covers. Experts can deliver value simply by providing information that isn’t readily available elsewhere. For those who aren’t in a position to write about unique aspects of the niche, the way you deliver the information has to provide the value your readers want.
A moderate and uncontroversial style is the kiss of death for bloggers who aren’t experts in the field. It’s great if people love your style, but it is just as good if you make them angry. Drill it into your head that if you can’t engage your visitor’s emotions, and can’t give them unique information, your blog is doomed.
I hope I’ve convinced you that delivering something readers value, either unique news, a unique point of view, or a unique style, is vital to earning real blog income. If you learn how to do this properly, you’ll have conquered a problem area most bloggers never get past.
