I want to follow up my Start A Blog: Just Jump In! post I wrote for John about 2 weeks back. In that post I mentioned how you should create a website or blog that you are passionate about. After realizing how many readers are here that are interested in starting a blog but just don’t know where to begin, I thought letting you all in on the secrets of picking a niche might be a good idea. Well, these aren’t really secrets; it’s just my approach to picking a niche or topic to blog about. Since I’ve had a little bit of success, I thought I would share 
The first thing you have to do is research. By reading helpful blogs like John Chow dot com, you are on your way. The next thing you want to do is pick a niche (a topic to blog about) that you are interested in and are willing to write about day in and day out. I am taking the online money making approach here, so if you are a recreational blogger, the day in and day out approach won’t be as strict for you.
Let me outline the process of picking a niche to make money online for you all:
- Time to reflect. In order to choose what your blog is about, you first need to think about what you are about. A way to identify what makes you YOU, spend some time thinking about what you value, what your interests are, your goals and aspirations, your passion and drive. If you can identify what keeps you going day in and day out, you can blog about it, and I bet it’ll be pretty easy for you too
- Is your niche on the rise? You will need to do a little homework here. Blogging about your passion isn’t enough to make your blog a hit; like any other business, you’ll have to do a market analysis on the area you are interested in. You might be interested in your topic but unless others are too, you will be fighting to build a highly read blog the whole time.
- How’s the competition? I know there is a craze going on about the making money online topic, I think I’ve jumped on that craze myself with Jane May Blogs, but you have to be realistic. If you write about a popular topic, think about what is the competition leaving out? If you can figure that out, then you’ve got yourself a niche, and I bet it will be a popular one too.
- Will you be able to write enough? Again, you will have to reflect on your experiences and yourself to be able to answer this. But I will say this, the internet is full of helpful resources, learn to tap into those resources to help you succeed online.
- How can you monetize this topic? If you are trying to make money online, you should always be asking yourself this. Will you be using affiliate sales, adsense, both, etc.? What ever your methods are, use the resources you have to help you.
- Finally, choose the darn topic! OK, you’ve done the hard part, now it’s time to choose your topic. Some of you might already have a blog and are still struggling to find a topic. Do these steps and I bet it will help you narrow down your scope.
This post was guest blogged by Jane May. She teaches readers how to create and monetize blogs on DailyWebIdeas.com.
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