For any budding bloggers who eventually want to turn their blogging exploits into a stable income stream, lots of advice is naturally available online, but it can become a bit overwhelming at times. For one, most sources of advice will tell you that what you essentially need to do is drill one inch wide and many kilometres deep, while others suggest a little bit of a broader focus on a topic which has many connected niches radiating from it.
I’d suggest that the advice of drilling one inch wide and many kilometres deep is perhaps better than that of a broader niche focus, but not for the most obvious reasons you might naturally conclude.
An emphasis on high-quality content
The reason why I’d personally gravitate towards a singular-focus is because of what this action represents. It’s not so much about picking one single niche in fact, but rather about what it suggests by way of your approach to creating content. It’s all about creating high-quality content and often that only happens when you focus on one niche.
So it’s okay to have a broader focus by way of your niche or topic, but then you open yourself up to the possibility of being overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the content you think you need to generate. An encyclopaedia covering a broad topic such as science wouldn’t be a good idea for example since there would be some glaring gaps in all the content you’d still need to furnish. This can be overwhelming and you might get frustrated at the colossal job which appears to lie ahead.
On the other hand something like a sports-specific “encyclopaedia” is a little more focussed and will give you all the leeway you need to furnish content as it comes to you. You don’t need to discuss everything about football for example for your football blog to seem like it’s a complete work which is continuously being added to as fresh content ideas come to you.
So it’s all about good quality and not necessarily about focussing on one small niche.
The money factor
Now, the reason why it doesn’t really matter what niche or niches you focus on if you ultimately want to make some good money as a blogger is that nothing in this world exists in isolation. Everything is connected, as much as the efforts of the media and other entities try to segment, class and separate them.
To make a very realistic example which I hope will drive the point home as intended, a blog which is aimed at working-class women doesn’t necessarily have to be monetised through selling or advertising products and services aimed specifically at working-class women. How many of your readers are looking for some awesome birthday gift ideas for him, for example, in which case your blog post about insurance targeted to women for example might still make for the perfect platform to advertise these birthday gift ideas for the lads?
So it’s the links which exist between everything and anything under the sun which mean that you can make money out of any niche you choose to blog about.