2 Silly Arguments for Not Picking a Blogging Niche
I have always stressed that picking a blogging niche makes you a specialist.
Specialists gain trust. Trusted bloggers eventually go pro if they persist for a substantial period of time.
However, many bloggers do not pick a niche and become generalists. Being a generalist in a world of trusted specialists does not work well. People do not trust someone who does many things okay or mediocre. This is because the same generalists live in a world of specialists who do one thing very well.
For example, if your perspective lawyer washes dishes at a restaurant, works as a mail person and also scrubs toilets in their part-time, would you trust this individual as a lawyer? Would you hire them to defend you in court if you knew they split their time up professionally between all of these different occupations?
Of course you would perceive this individual as not being credible. How can you be credible as a jack of all trades in a world of lawyers who master one trade?
The identical concept applies to professional blogging. Do one thing to do it well. Doing it well gains reader trust. Gaining reader trust positions you to become a professional blogger.
See Simplicity Not Complexity
This is not rocket science.
But the ego enjoys making simple concepts complex. The moment you make blogging complex you will run into endless problems. One such problem is the ego’s stubborn refusal to pick a niche.
As always, when you listen to the ego you will struggle, fail and quit or you will experience muted, mediocre success. This applies 100% of the time because blogging is for you and your readers, not just for you. If you ignore your readers you will never succeed. Otherwise, you will just publish a cyber diary masquerading as a blog.
Let’s dissect two silly reasons why bloggers defend the idea of blogging about multiple niches.
1: Limits Potential
People say that picking one niche limits your blogging potential. On first analysis, this appears to be the case. Blogging about one topic appears to limit your potential to reach a massive audience of human beings who would drive oodles of traffic to your blog and make you rich.
Of course, this ass backwards fallacy does not take into account how the world distrust generalists and only trust specialists. No jack of all trades gains credibility in a world of specialists who master one trade.
Perhaps you appear to limit your potential in that you reach a smaller group of people by blogging about one niche but that group of people will trust you, follow your blog loyally and expand your business exponentially through referral business because when you do one thing persistently you gain strong credibility gradually.
Unfortunately, the ego only thinks upside down. It sees backwards. The ego wants to reach a huge group of people without considering if the people actually want their content or if the people will return with each blog post.
Every time you change blog topics you lose readers. Every new niche you cover turns off readers. Every time you blog about something else you lose a loyal follower. In essence, it’s like starting a new blog every time you publish a post because you turn off and send off readers who expected you to cover the prior topic you covered.
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You may want to cover all these topics but your readers don’t want you to because they tune in for a specialist. If you blog about affiliate marketing today and dating tomorrow the affiliate marketing readers will stop reading your blog and you’ll have to start over. If you blog about personal development the following day, the dating crowd stops reading your blog.
Now you’ve lost the affiliate marketing and dating crowds but have a few personal development readers who want to loyally follow your blog. But when you talk about your pets the following day, the personal development crowd disappears.
Do you see how this strategy never works? Can you see how you will never grow a loyal, targeted blog following that actually grows your business if you try to cover multiple niches?
Blogging about one niche doesn’t limit your potential. Covering a single niche amplifies your potential long-term because the expertise you develop as a single niche blogger mushrooms into massive referral business.
2: Stifles Creativity
Some believe that covering one niece stifles your creativity.
How can you become creative if you cover one topic day after day?
By asking that question, I mean that your ego cares about this question but do your readers care about this question. If your ego cares and your readers don’t care it logically makes sense that you will either publish a cyber diary for your ego as you change niches or you will become a specialist who serves your readers, all of whom appreciate your expertise.
Jack of all trades types never become creative because they scatter their attention and energy between too many ventures. Specialists become highly creative or even geniuses by doing one thing so patiently and persistently that they do it incredibly well.
Your readers want you to become creative in one niche because the world trusts specialists. They care very much about that.
Your ego wants to express itself across multiple niches but your readers don’t care about that. Do you want to blog for yourself and be broke with no readers? Or do you want to blog for an increasing audience that accelerates your success because you blog about what they care about?
In truth, specialists become the most creative people in the world because they explore one topic inside out. You do not know what it means to be creative until you develop the discipline to explore only one topic for 10, 15 or 20 years or more. At one point, I wrote and self-published 60 eBooks on the blogging tips niche alone. Does that sound like a creative guy to you? Or does it sound like someone who lacks creativity, or who robbed himself of the chance to be creative by not blogging about multiple niches?
I have since limited my eBooks to far fewer to promote each one effectively but the idea is this: where your attention and energy goes, grows. Give your attention and energy to one niche and that niche will grow through your astounding creativity over the long haul.
Conclusion
Cover one blogging niche. Don’t trust the ego and its silly demands concerning creativity and potential.
Specialists are the most successful, happy, creative bloggers in the world.
Be a blogging specialist to succeed.
Originally published at https://www.bloggingfromparadise.com on September 2, 2022.