Do You Need a Niche?
When I was first starting my journey as a professional blogger, defined as a person who earns money from blogging, I read everything I could find on how to become a successful professional blogger.
Almost everything I read told me to find my niche.
I did a quick Google search to find the best definition of niche.
For our purposes today I want to focus on definition 2.
2.
1. a specialized segment of the market for a particular kind of product or service.
"he believes he has found a niche in the market"
adjective
denoting products, services, or interests that appeal to a small, specialized section of the population.
"other companies in this space had to adapt to being niche players"
Many of the things I read relegated "niche writing" to the purview of copywriting. Copywriting is used for sales.
But other blogging how-to articles used the same advice.
"Find your niche."
A niche is essential to marketing. And if you want to become a successful professional blogger, you need to market yourself.
I'm terrible at sales and marketing.
I'm especially terrible at marketing myself. It feels tacky. I'm not sure if this is because my mom was a lawyer. I remember growing up hearing about how tacky "ambulance chasers" were. Those are the people that follow the ambulance to the hospital to hand out their business cards.
I have a vague memory of my mother saying advertising legal services was frowned upon.
By whom? No idea.
I don't really think that's why I have trouble promoting myself. I think it has more to do with self-confidence. Self-worth. And the fact that in my eyes, my life is relatively boring.
The "experts" tell us to find our niche by asking ourselves what were are most passionate about. What skills do we have? What kind of knowledge do we have to impart?
And then they want us to choose just one thing.
But what if you are passionate about many things? What if you have a "vast amount of knowledge about trivial things," (as my dad used to say about himself and about me, too)?
I know a little about a lot of things. I know a lot about many things. Anything I've ever had a passing interest in, I've studied. Sometimes in-depth but sometimes just enough to not sound like an idiot talking about it.
I'm passionate about a lot of things, too. I have a hard time just picking one.
Homesteading
Survival skills
Goats
Milk Goats
Cooking
Film
Books
TV (well, TV I can stream because I hate commercials)
History
Religion
The history of religion
Politics
Philosophy
And much much more!
Which to choose? How to start?
I've figured some things out.
Another oft-repeated refrain is, "know your audience."
Just imagine if this audience was suddenly subjected to The Magic Flute by Mozart instead of the football game they paid to see.
That would be one unhappy audience. And they likely would never again pay for tickets to that stadium.
Writing is the same.
Imagine you are a devout Christian. And you want to write about all the ways in which you feel Christ is King.
Imagine further that your audience is primarily Hindi, Muslim, or Jewish.
Your story would fall on flat ears.
One of the things I've figured out is that it is more important to know your audience than to find your niche.
I write differently depending on the platform on which I'm blogging. My voice is different from platform to platform but still distinctly me.
On Medium for example I tend to go deeper into my personal essays. I let more out. I vent a bit more. I curse much much more.
Here on read.cash I tend to keep in mind my audience is likely to have English sad their second language. I keep in mind we are from entirely different cultures and entirely different parts of the world. Some things need more explanation here.
On Medium, I tend to be much more precise in my grammar and language. The editors there are much more critical than moderators here.
There is a great deal of competition on Medium. Lots of stories covering similar subjects. A writer has to find a way to stand out. Excellence in writing is an absolute must.
My subject matter is different, too. On Medium my essays tend to be political or involve social justice somehow. Or in the publication I help edit, The Bad Influence, I mostly write introductions and roundups for our Thrifty Words Challenge.
It's kind of like PromptlyJonica, but writers must write either exactly 50 words or exactly 100 words in response to the prompt. It can be very challenging.
How do writers figure out who their audience is?
First, the writer must establish an audience. These days, many writers use social media to get a following. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTock are all common social media platforms where a writer can introduce themselves and their writing. Also, Quora and Reddit.
There are many more blogging platforms that pay for writing, but they are more obscure, less well known. I figured out is best to have a following and then promote some of the more obscure platform blogs
Writers will find their audience by trial and error. Your audience will let you know whether your writing is or isn't for them. The stadium of football fans will boo the opera singers right off the field.
When I began my professional blogging career I believed I could only write to one type of audience. I could only write in one niche.
FALSE!
As I mentioned above, I have many passions. I have gained enough followers from different cultures, different walks of life, different countries that I can find an audience for almost any niche.
Other writers are different to me, however. Other writers are in different places on their writing journey.
So, to answer the titular question, "Do you need a niche?" I answer you don't need one, but it helps.
It also really helps to actually have a solid grip on what you are writing about. That's where the passion part comes in.
I speak from personal experience when I say it is incredibly difficult to write about something for which you have no interest, no passion.
Not only is it difficult to write about it, but it is also more difficult to learn about it. And readers call always tell when writers are half-assing it. When they don't care. When they don't know enough.
There's an expression for that in my country. "Phone it in."
"During the early 1930s, a popular joke among theater actors alluded to having a role that was so small it was possible to call on the phone, rather than appear on the stage in person." - from Grammarist.com
Good writing can't be phoned in. I don't care if you have the perfect money-making niche (Bitcoin Cash?), if you aren't passionate about it, if you don't have knowledge about it, you most likely won't write well in that niche.
In conclusion, finding a niche is helpful. You can have more than one niche. Knowing your audience is critical. You can have more than one type of audience. Gaining a following is important, too.
I'll write more about how to gain a following in another article.
Screenshot of Google Dictionary - Google’s English dictionary is provided by Oxford Languages.
All other images license free from Unsplash
Niche and audience, two things for which we are new in this world of blogging that is somewhat difficult to assimilate and to achieve.
I have been writing here in read since last month, I was encouraged because I started writing in Spanish. But I see that I am not progressing at all, that is, I am not seen by other users. A friend here recommended that I write in English, or at least use a translator. It's what I did today on his channel to see how it goes.
I speak and write in Spanish and most of the articles I read are in English and I translate them. Hopefully they would also give me the opportunity and read my articles.
I still don't have a niche or audience, I'm writing mostly about my experiences.