Niche Blogging Tips

The content of most blogs revolve around some type of niche. It could be blogging itself, making money online, bicycling, golf, current events, politics or whatever else the author decides to write about. The difference between a social blog and a niche blog is more of the promotional techniques used rather than the actual content.

Niche blogs are entirely focused on steering the visitor toward either Adsense ads or an affiliate offer. Visitors to this kind of blog a generally from one of the search engines, like Google, and not from social networking sites like StumbleUpon or Digg.

Unlike a social blog, where the concern is capturing RSS Feed subscribers and other returning readers, a niche blog is looking for unique, one time, visitors who have a need and find an answer to that need in the advertisements and/or affiliate links shown on the niche blog.

This topic is explored in more depth on OpTempo in this article: Niche Blog vs. Social Blog

Many people say that when you blog you should know your niche, that it should be something that you're passionate about. For example, if you're passionate about fishing, blog about that. Well, for a niche blog, that isn't exactly the kind of passion you need.

For a marketing oriented niche blog, knowing your niche means understanding the type of traffic a particular topic gets, what the advertising options are for it and what the competition is like for search placement.

For more details, see this OpTempo article: Niche Blog Beginner Tips

There are a number of options when it comes to getting content for a niche blog.

The "bad guys" often resort to stealing content from other blogs, either in whole or in part. A cut above that are those who use autogenerated nonsense such as a Markov chain post.

A more white hat approach is to use PLR or Private Label Rights articles. However, these articles will need to be rewritten in order to avoid Google's dreaded duplicate content filter.

Another option is to use a tool like Instant Article Wizard to help you research and write articles for a niche. Some people pay others to write content for them. You might also consult government websites for information as well.

Find out more on this post on OpTempo: Finding Niche Blog Content

There are two basic choices when it comes to building a niche blog site, self-hosted WordPress or Google's Blogger/Blogspot platform. Each has advantages and disadvantages.

Blogger is free and rarely has traffic issues. Blogger blogs usually rank well in search results. However, you don't have a lot of control over a number of things and the platform, as a content management system, leaves a lot to be desired.

Self-hosted WordPress blogs offer a lot of flexibility and a wide variety of plugins. However, they are dependent upon whatever hosting plan/provider you use. Search engine optimization can also be a challenge as well.

For a more in-depth discussion on this topic, see this article on OpTempo: Niche Blog Hosting: WordPress vs. Blogger