You may have already chosen an online business idea that you want to write about, blog about or market (or all three). Or you may be deciding between two or more good ideas.
Let’s say you’ve been blogging about food, or something more nichey, say vegetarian food. You love to cook and create your own recipes, and you want to write a cookbook and market it online.
So far so good.
But your other idea, which is about dogs (let’s just say), is also something you could write about forever.
You suspect there are a few gazillion other dog lovers online and reason that with a dog blog, you could eventually earn money from sales of pet supplies and toys and other paraphernalia.
Which will it be: veggie dogs or wiener dogs? You love them both.
However, as Confucius cautioned: Person who chases two rabbits catches neither.
How do you choose?
Steve Pavlina recommends following your heart AND your head. Steve’s subject is personal development — a niche as wide as the Mississippi that allows him to explore many smaller related streams. Plus, it has the additional allure of appealing to pretty much everyone, sooner or later.
Steve advises:
- Choose a niche you won’t burn out on. You’re going to write hundreds of articles and posts on this subject.
- Choose a subject about which you are knowledgeable, experienced, and passionate.
- Choose a niche that is broad enough to allow for both your creative freedom and a wide base of advertisers.
- Choose a subject that allows you to serve, and give generously to others.
He also says that bloggers should not choose a niche simply because they think it’ll make a lot of money. I agree. Money alone is just not that powerful a motivation, in most cases.
I think Steve’s got great advice.
However, I’m reluctant to suggest that you should always choose a subject you love. I believe that sometimes you choose the niche, and sometimes the niche chooses you.
In retrospect, my main criteria for choosing niches seems to have been necessity and something akin to delirious curiosity. I guess you could call that second thing passion. That’s fair.
More about me and my niches in another post.
This is about you and yours. Whatever you choose, it’s good to keep in mind what I believe is Steve’s main point: make it something you won’t burn out on. You will be writing about it a LOT.
The Web is a world of the written language — at this point in history, anyway.
