What to Do When You Choose the Wrong Niche for Your Blog
The niche you choose for your blog can literally make or break your career as a blogger. With a myriad of niches to choose from, what happens when you choose the wrong niche for your blog? This article will discuss just that.
When some bloggers or website owners hire SEO experts or agencies, one of the most common misconceptions and false expectations they have is that, by doing so, they can miraculously just climb SERP ranks. Most of the time, that mistake proves fatal to the blog or site.
The thing is, your chosen blogging niche really plays a huge part in your success. In my blog at KevinOcasio.com, where I offer help and instructions to aspiring bloggers who want to begin their blogging career, I’ve also highlighted this particular point in one of my articles.
Choosing a blogging niche is difficult enough. But what do you do when you realize that you actually chose the wrong niche for your blog?
To answer that question, we must first get to the bottom of this one.
How Do You Tell If You Chose the Wrong Niche for Your Blog?
There are a number of signs that may alert you to how you’re doing it wrong. But the following are the usual ones that should ring a bell and cause you to pay more attention:
1. Constant Writer’s Block
Drawing blanks every now and then is not unheard of. After all, we all have our days where we wake up with less than the recommended amount of inspiration.
However, if you constantly grasp at straws when it comes to topics that you can use for your blog, then you might want to take a second look.
Maybe it has less to do with inspiration and more to do with the actual niche you’re blogging on.
2. Having Little or No Influence On Your Audience
Are less than 1% of your blog’s visitors leaving comments on or sharing your posts? Do you try but always fail to find the right influencers and connect with them?
Come to think of it. Your niche is the foundation on which your blog stands. What if the reason you’re not hitting the right topics that resonate with your audiences is that you’ve been standing on the wrong foundation all along?
3. Lack of Passion for Your Blog
Do you wake up with a strong need to start writing for and working on your blog? Or do you tend to procrastinate because writing has suddenly become a chore for you?
For a blogger, one of the saddest things that can happen is to lose passion for writing. Or to not have any, to begin with.
Again, at this point, you have to ask yourself: what if I chose the wrong field to build my blog on?
4. Your Blog Earns Zip. Nil. Nada.
Of course, the purpose of blogging should never be just to make money. There should be an innate need to share knowledge that others may also put to good use.
But to say that you don’t want to make money out of your blog is just either of two things: an ill-informed decision, or 100% bollocks.
Now, one of the most common reasons why a blog isn’t earning is because you’re not getting enough traffic. One of the most common reasons for no traffic is because people just can’t be bothered to care about your blog or the topics that you discuss.
If you’ve been experiencing these 4 things at the same time for a while now, it’s time to reconsider the choices you’ve made.
So You Finally Realized You’ve Picked the Wrong Niche All Along. What Should You Do Next?
The most important thing to do is to not lose hope. There’s always something you can do. Accepting that you made the wrong choice is a good first step.
It’s not always going to be easy starting anew. Especially if you’ve already invested enough of your time, effort and emotions on your old one. But the only thing to do is to let go and move on.
Here’s What You Can Do Next:
1. Scratch Your Old Strategies and Cook Up a New Plan
Reevaluate yourself. Find the perfect balance between your knowledge and skills, your passions, and the most profitable trending blog niches.
The last one is especially important. There is significant weight in wanting to choose a niche that’s unique and sets you apart from everyone else. But, on the other hand, it could also lead you into the pitfall of topics that very few people actually want to talk about.
The other end of the stick is making your choice based on a niche’s profitability alone. Blogging for the sole purpose of earning money could sap the soul right out of you. Trust me. You don’t want that to happen.
Balance is what you need. Consider all points before making your new choice.
2. Make a Business Plan
As a blogger, writing is your business. And as with any business, you need a solid plan in order to succeed.
When you create your business plan, consider your goals.
- What types of audiences do you hope to attract?
- What kind of topics will they most likely be interested in?
- How much do you hope to earn through your blog and by how soon?
- Will your blog aim to fill a need or solve a pain point for your customers?
It is imperative that you determine your own answers to these questions before even proceeding.
3. Keep as Many of Your Readers & Followers as Possible
You may have already been able to build up a list of followers from your old niche somehow. If so, do your best to convince them to continue following you, even as you transition to a new field.
Regardless of whether you plan to use your old blog or create a new one, never neglect to inform your readers of your plan. Also, make it a point and try more than your hardest to let your readers know and feel that your choice to switch to a different niche can still prove beneficial to them.
Offer value, and then once they do follow you on your new path, proceed to deliver what you offered.
Remember: keeping your old readers and followers is a lot easier than finding new ones.
4. Give Yourself Time
Just as with everything else, it will take time to fully get used to being in your new niche. At the same time, it may also take a while before you begin to profit from your new blog. Don’t let this discourage you.
Keep working at it. Keep writing excellent content. Keep producing more share-worthy posts. Have faith in yourself and persevere. Eventually, all your hard work will pay off, maybe even better than you ever expected.
Conclusion
Making the right choice the first time is great. Choosing the right niche for blogging is awesome and could help make you rake in the profits quite early. It also very rarely happens.
The next best thing is learning from your wrong choices and applying what you learned from there when trying to make the right ones.
It takes more than luck to become a popular blogger. Instead, you have to lay out your strategy, do your research, and exhaust all means to put your plans into action.
There will be times when the going gets tough. You might get confused and make incorrect choices here and there. The most important thing is to realize when you do and to make a beeline for the right track again.
Realize that everything you went through in the past has led you to become what you are right now. Even your wrong choices. And you’re on your way to becoming an even better you.
Kevin Ocasio
Latest posts by Kevin Ocasio (see all)
- What to Do When You Choose the Wrong Niche for Your Blog - December 11, 2017
SEO and marketing experts told me that a business blog would never work because of the high competition. Guess what? They were wrong. It’s just been 4 months since I started my business blog and it already receives 1000+ visitors per month from Google alone. So don’t listen to others. Just follow your passion.