Passion or Profit? How to Choose (or Reassess) Your Blog’s Niche - DailyBlogTips

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Passion or Profit? How to Choose (or Reassess) Your Blog’s Niche Posted: 24 Apr 2014 02:45 AM PDT Bloggers without an existing business typically fall into two broad camps. The passion-driven bloggers love writing about their favourite topic. (You’ll probably find them talking about it to anyone who’ll listen, too.) They may have started blogging simply to share their enthusiasm, though they’ll often be interested in monetizing their blog too. The profit-driven bloggers love making money online – and that’s their main focus. They may not be all that interested in their blog’s topic, but they’ve got a clear strategy and they’re keen to start making money, or growing their revenue, as quickly as possible. Here’s why I think both camps have something important to offer: Not All Passions Will Make Money Let’s say you’re really passionate about an obscure ’90s TV show. While a blog could be a fantastic way to meet fellow fans and share your enthusiasm, it’s probably not going to be an easy way to make money. Sure, you may make some through running ads, or using affiliate links to the show’s DVDs / memorabilia … but realistically, this isn’t going to be anything near to a full-time income. A good test of whether your interests will make for a monetizable blog is whether or not there’s a reasonably large market for that topic. If there are books, magazines, other large blogs or products related to it, that’s a good sign! … But Profit-Driven Blogs May Be Doomed If you start a blog purely with profit in mind, especially if it’s your first “pro” blog, you may find yourself giving up after a few weeks or months. You’ll probably find it takes a while to get your blog to a point where it’s even making a few dollars a week. This means blogging away for months while trying to build up an audience, which is really tough to stick with if you’re not actually at all interested in your blog’s topic. Your blog posts may also come across as rather bland and derivative, as it can be tough to keep coming up with good ideas when you’ve chosen a topic for its money-making potential. The Solution? Blend Profit and Passion When choosing a niche, then, your best bet is to look for a good mix of both profit and passion … and I recommend starting with passion. Make a list of all the topics that interest you. Think about: Your hobbies – clubs you belong to, magazines you subscribe to, etc What you enjoyed studying at university or in school The jobs or volunteering work you’ve done and enjoyed The books and blogs you already read Next, think about which of these topics are most likely to have the potential to make money. For instance, let’s say you’ve drawn up a list that looks like this: Hobbies: hiking, knitting University: ancient history Jobs: didn’t enjoy any of them Books/blogs: personal development, entrepreneurship The topic that stands out here to me as not being a good one is ancient history. While I’m sure you could monetise a blog about classical civilisations (perhaps with affiliate links to textbooks, etc), it’s probably going to be a struggle. Hiking or knitting could both make great topics, as both are hobbies that involve quite a bit of equipment – and readers who are enthusiastic about a hobby will often be open to buying new products (which you can link to as an affiliate). Both could also work well for selling a digital product, perhaps a book of knitting patterns or a book of interesting hikes. Personal development could work well, if you’ve got an interesting angle (e.g. aiming at a particular audience like stay-at-home parents). Entrepreneurship is of course a hot topic online, but unless you really have some experience and expertise, avoid starting a “make money online” blog.   Ultimately, you need to choose a niche that genuinely excites you, and one that you can imagine blogging about for years to come. If you’re looking to make money blogging, then obviously you’ll want to consider whether you’ll be able to easily monetise it … but if you start by focusing on profit, not passion, you’ll find it harder to succeed.   Wanna learn how to make more money with your website? Check the Online Profits training program!

The New Top Level Domains Are Here! Posted: 23 Apr 2014 06:25 PM PDT I am not sure if you remember, but a couple of years ago we got the news that ICANN would start selling new top level domain extensions to whoever had $100,000 laying around to buy them. The discussion about the implications of the change were heated, and many people were skeptic about whether or not those new extensions would see the light of the day. Well, they have. The rollout (or delegation, as they call it) is a gradual process, but every day some of these new domain extensions is becoming operative. Here’s the page where you can follow the rollout: ICANN Delegated Strings Some curious ones that are already available: .fail .cash .vodka .guru .sexy .tips .condos .gratis In my opinion opening up those new extensions was a terrible idea. But who knows, maybe their effect will be to strengthen the .com even further, as they might create confusion, and when confused people resort to what they are familiar with. Wanna learn how to make more money with your website? Check the Online Profits training program!

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ProBlogger: Want to Market Better? Think Like a Consumer

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Want to Market Better? Think Like a Consumer Posted: 23 Apr 2014 08:13 AM PDT Image via Newton Free Library on Flickr This is a guest contribution from Moazzam Kamran. Consumer centricity is a hot topic in marketing circles. Organizations across the globe are trying to “get in touch” with the consumer through multiple methodologies. We employ consumer audits, focus groups, in-house visits, in-depth interviews, and various other techniques to try and understand the consumer’s mind. But in doing all of that, we as organizations are dehumanizing ourselves. We focus so much on getting to know the customer that we slowly and surely distance ourselves away from him. So where does this all come from?  The problem actually lies with people being risk-averse. Why I say people and not marketers or organizations is again to humanize the problem. The issue is the word “failure”: we as humans have been taught that failure is the ultimate sin. This indoctrination has led to us becoming risk averse as individuals, which is very unhealthy. Think of any great mind – be it Edison, Ford, Jobs – they all embraced their failures and learned from them. But how does failure relate to the consumer? It is simple: when you are fearful of failure, you tend to anticipate it as well. Like a person drowning, we will grab at sticks. We will surround ourselves with insight now for the sake of knowledge but as a fall back option, blame it all on bad consumer insight. Soon research becomes a monotonous ritual that we do just for the sake of paperwork, our own belief for the product is replaced by an overwhelming urge to stick to routine and do as we are told. How do we fix it? Over the years, I have worked with phenomenal people on exceptional brands. My CEOs were insatiable people who exhibited a thirst for knowledge and always wanted to learn. That kept me on my toes. I would pore though books, articles, case studies, regardless of FMCG, appliances or technology background, it was all exposure for me. That gave me enough insight to understand that when you do the same thing over and over again you get stuck in a rut, and that's the worst place to be for a brand. Another thing I learned is to not be a slave to focus groups. Letting the customer guide your every move is a fool's strategy. As Steve Jobs said: "customers don't know what they want until we have shown them".   Consumer empathy = insight + intuition  Consumer research does work but what is missing is realizing that there is an equation. Replacing consumer centricity with consumer empathy does not mean that you are removing the consumer from the mix; it means you are going one step deeper. Your consumer centricity is your consumer insight now. By all means any organization or marketer should have access to their consumer on formal forums; but he or she should also be able to engage them through informal forums as well. When was the last time any of us actually talked to the consumer, not via a requirement or a guided interview, but just genuinely talked to them? You will be surprised by how willing they are to talk, how in-depth they would like to go. The digital age has made this even easier; we now have multiple consumer and technology blogs where people discuss our brands on a daily basis. It is these online forums where you can really connect with the consumer share your thoughts with them and ask them truly; if they liked the recent Coke commercial, if they liked the new Dairy Milk and if the new Samsung appealed to them. Now comes consumer intuition As marketers we also have to realize that there are certain areas where our belief in the product allows us to take decisions regarding its outcome. As marketers, we need to communicate our brand intuition clearly. We need to balance the equation, build products that we would love to sell to our consumers. Organizations also need to learn to tolerate failure, build a culture of experimentation. Nourish their people by providing them opportunities to learn from the consumer. Consumer centricity isn't dead I read somewhere that consumer centricity is dead. That is not true; consumer centricity is still there and an active part of the marketing and organizational process. Its importance cannot be denied. Once we get rid of this constant fear of failure we move towards greater consumer centricity; we also realize that our own opinions are important. They matter because they come from our intuition which is a combination of our years spent with the consumer and our love for our brand. So to all those people who are part of the marketing process; let's build dreams, bring people new and innovative products and technologies, shape lives. Honestly it's all we ever talk about. Moazzam Kamran is a brand professional with a leading ISP and Cloud service provider, and a 'Marchitect (Marketing Architect)' who has provided consultation to local and international brands on brand building & development. You can get in touch with him on Google+ or  LinkedIn. Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger Want to Market Better? Think Like a Consumer

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