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Starting a Niche Blog

Why choose WordPress for your Niche Blog

Millions of niche bloggers, and most successful companies including some Fortune 100 companies use WordPress daily. But why choose WordPress for YOUR blog?

Why choose WordPress for your Niche Blog?


Earth ball with wordpress
If you search for a blogging platform, many options will come up, as we discussed in Choosing the Best Blogging Platform. It doesn’t take very long, however, before you see one being very popular: WordPress. But why choose WordPress for your Niche Blog? Why is it so popular? In this article we will discuss the many advantages of building your niche blog using WordPress.

Easy to Setup


One very important factor when creating a niche blog is how easy the initial setup is. The good news with WordPress is that most web hosts offer a very simple installation wizard for WordPress which asks a few questions such as the name of your Niche Blog, let you choose a username and password, and in general get you started within 5 minutes, most of which is spent watching a status bar on your screen. If you want customize your look and feel with one of millions of themes available, you can get started in as little as 15-30 minutes and already have a very respectable niche blog to begin with. All that being done with absolutely no coding and no programming.

Easy to Write your Posts


Setting up your niche blog is one thing, but one of the most important things about your Content Management System (CMS) is how easy it is to create posts. With WordPress, as soon as I have an idea, I just log on to my blog, click new post, and start writing. Using a very simple interface, you can format your text quickly and easily so you can focus on creating great content and let WordPress take care of the complicated technical stuff. And more importantly, it means that I can save a draft with my ideas before I forget about them. Back in the olde days when I had to manually code everything, I needed pages and pages of written notes because my programming skills could not keep up with my ideas.

Optimized for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)


A great advantage with WordPress is how it was designed from the ground up with Search Engine Optimization in mind. Good SEO will help your niche blog rank higher in search engines so viewers can find your niche blog easier. It’s definitely not the only way to get traffic to your niche blog, but it certainly is one of the best and cheapest. If you add a SEO plugin such as Yoast SEO, it can take you 5-15 minutes per post to do some Search Optimization and help viewers find your post. Yoast SEO is such an important component that it’ll deserve it’s own post down the road. But back to WordPress for now.

Millions of Themes and Plugins


WordPress themes allow you to customize the way your website look in minutes. Because of the way it is built, your posts are kept from one theme to the next, so you can try out as many themes as you like without having to rewrite your content. There are also a myriad of Plugins available to help you manage your website. Interested in having statistics for your website? With a few clicks, you can have a statistics plugin up and ready. Want to add an event calendar with the option of selling tickets online? Again with a few clicks you can get everything ready. It is truly amazing how many things you can do with plugins without having to learn programming. A few you have to pay for, but there’s quite a cornucopia of free plugins available also.

Responsive Websites


Responsive Website_55551172
In this day and age where Mobile devices are gaining an impressive market share of the browsing experience, having a website which looks great on a computer, tablet, and cell phone is very important. Luckily WordPress offers many themes which are built to be responsive, so you are good to go out of the box. Not all themes are responsive, so I do recommend you check for responsive ones to give the best experience to all your users, no matter which device they use.

Security


Security is another important aspect. It’s important to keep your content secure so only you and those you allow to can make changes or post new content to your niche blog. It’s also important to keep spammers and bots off your site so everyone can enjoy the comments section without having to read thousands of spams. The good news once again is that WordPress has you covered in terms of security. No server is ever 100% secure, but WordPress strives to be as close to possible to that mark. It is used by most of the Fortune 100 companies, and has kept their data safe.

So Who Uses WordPress?


WordPress is such a flexible tool that it is being used by various types of niche blogs and websites. From Universities and Colleges to Fortune 100 companies, without forgetting millions of niche blogs. WordPress has a very strong following and one of the best communities in existence. If you stumble upon an issue, there are a plethora of websites available to help you out. There are millions of people devoting their spare time in helping others achieve success with their Niche Blog.

It’s Free!!!


Notice how I put this header last? That’s because while WordPress is free, even if it weren’t, it would still be my favourite CMS because of the many reasons listed before. The fact that it’s free is a great bonus, a bonus which makes it easily accessible to anyone and everyone, and lets you have a great no-compromise solution for your niche blogging needs.

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Starting a Niche Blog

What’s in a name? Tips for finding the perfect blog name!

So what’s in a name?

Deciding a name and web address for your blog is one of the first steps in creating your brand and identity. As such, I’d recommend you spend a bit of time researching that perfect blog name, especially because you will most likely either love it or hate it for the next 10, 20, or even 90 years. While it’s not impossible to change names along the way, there’s many reasons why it’s usually better not to, from search engine optimization to branding. At the end of the day, though, as long as you love the name you gave to your blog, that’s what counts. There’s no “good” and “bad” names, but here’s some suggestions to get you started on choosing that perfect name you will be proud of calling your blog.

When I grow up, I want to be…

If you’ve been reading our blog for a bit, you already know What is a Blog and What is a Niche Blog? and you’ve already Found a Niche for your Blog. Now imagine your blog in a couple of years after it grew up, not as it is starting out. Try to find some key words which best represent what your blog will be about.

Real Name vs Descriptive Name vs Artistic or Creative Name


There are different ways you can name your blog. For example, I could have called this one Jean-Pierre La Forest’s blog, or even JP’s blog for short. I could also done like Wikipedia, Google, and others, and just called myself something totally unrelated but incredibly memorable. Which option is best for you will depend on what your blog is about and your preference taste.

Should You Use your Real Name?

Your blog should be all about you. What you think, what you do, what you enjoy. Writing great content will make people stay longer on your blog. Being personable and creating a connection with your readers, though, that’s what will bring you many loyal fans. An anonymous blog written by an anonymous person probably won’t build a strong fan base. Naming your blog after yourself would make sense, right? Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. Generally speaking, if your blog is about who you are, or what you do in your personal life, then naming it after yourself is a great idea. Same thing goes if you’re already famous. Maybe you’re a singer, an actor, an author, a politician, etc. You already built a brand around your name, and people know who you are. Chances are your blog should be an extension of your already famous brand.

One thing to note is that if you ever have in the back of your mind that you’d like to have the possibility of selling your blog at any point in the future, using your real name as the blog name will most likely make it much harder to sell. The chances of me finding another Jean-Pierre La Forest who’s interested in the exact same things would be slim to none. Finding someone interested in Niche Blog Mentor, definitely more sellable, even though that’s not my intentions with this site.

Should You Use a Descriptive Name?

First of all, what is a descriptive name you might ask? It’s a name which describes what your blog is about, such as Niche Blog Mentor. With a quick glance, it’s clear that I talk about niche blogs, and my goal is to mentor other bloggers. The bonus to that is it will help Google know what my blog is about, and while Google doesn’t give as much weight to the blog name and address as it used to, I do believe that every little bit helps. The only real disadvantage is if you have varied interests, chances are you’ll have to start up and manage multiple blogs, which is both a blessing and a curse. It’s a positive thing because not all visitors to my Niche Blog Mentor blog care about photography, videography, or even chain maille art, so whenever I post in one of my other blogs, viewers of this blog don’t feel spammed by posts they would find irrelevant to them. The downside is you have to build multiple audiences and start mostly from scratch each time, which if you like starting blogs can be a fun endeavour in itself.

If you care about naming your blog with Search Engine Optimization in mind, it’s a good idea to use a tool such as Google’s Keyword Planner to find out how popular a key phrase is, and do some research to see how much competition you have for that term. Or you could just go with whatever sounds best, or if you believe a key phrase will eventually become more popular in the future.

Should You Use an Artistic or Creative Name?

The World Wide Web is full of websites and blogs which made it with overly creative names. Google and Wikipedia or two examples of names which have an interesting story to them. Some other names such as Yahoo and Bing are creative uses of already existing words. With proper marketing, a creative name can eventually be used or modified to become a verb. By now, most of us know how to google, tweet, or even facebook something or someone. Without proper marketing, though, you can leave people confused about what your blog is really about. And by proper marketing I mean the type which costs millions or even billions.

As with everything else, though, there can be exceptions, and while your name will help define what your website is about, it most certainly isn’t the end all be all. And there are some bloggers who have managed to make a recovery from using a name which eventually became too restrictive for them by changing their blog name and address and letting everyone know that it’s still their great self creating the same great content, but even more of it!

Ensure the .com is Available for your Name!

We will get into registering your .com in a future post, but for now suffice to say that you have to ensure that the .com you are looking for is available. There are many great names I thought about before landing on Niche Blog Mentor. And as with all other things, great minds think alike, and I went through quite many names before I found one I like which was available. While it is possible to run a successful site using another extension, a .com is still the gold standard and you should get at least that. The reason is simple, if you’re trying to remember the address of a website you visited in the past, chances are you’ll start with the .com first and see if it’s the right site. If it’s not, you’ll have to go to your favourite search engine and hope for the best. On top of that, if the .com is available, the chances of you using someone else’s name is quite low.

How do you check if a .com is available? Go to your favourite registrar, such as 1and1.com or GoDaddy, and put the desired domain, such as example.com and see if it’s available for sale.

Ensure your Name is Unique!

Once you have a name you like and checked that the .com is available, do a search in a few major search engines to see what comes up. If you see that someone is already using that brand, it’s better to look for a new name to avoid confusion and possible court cases down the road. If nobody else is using it, congratulations, you may have found a name for your blog!

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Starting a Niche Blog

Finding a Niche for your Blog

Finding a niche for your blog is something which will most likely define your blog for years to come. Thankfully, there are ways to make it easier to find the best niche for you. In the next post, we will discuss how to name your blog post, but for now, it’s just a question of finding what subject your blog will be about. Ideally, a good niche should have enough viewers interested in it, and not be over-saturated. It has to be something you love and are passionate about, because you will be putting countless hours reading and researching on that subject every week. Then as your notoriety increases and you become more and more recognized for the expertise you are developing, you will be making lots of friends and fans in your field, which brings more conversations and more questions, which of course means more researching and more writing.

If you have any hobbies which have kept your interest for years, chances are they are a great place to start with when trying to find your niche. For my first blog, it was photography and videography under the name of Studio JPIC. I always loved photography and videography. Ever since I was a child, I was fascinated by photos, and as my passion grew, I wanted to learn how to take better photos, both in terms of equipment and technique. I knew it would be a lifelong journey, and that there will always be something new to learn. I also knew that I would spend many hours per week researching and experimenting, and I wanted a way to remember what I learned. I figured that many others probably had the same questions that I did, so the idea of a blog and YouTube channel sounded like a great two birds one stone story. When it was clear that blogging would occupy a big part of my life, I then created this one, the Niche Blog Mentor.

Rule #1: your blog should feel liberating; it should be relaxing

One warning I can give, though, is don’t start a blog only because you believe it will be popular, or only for the money you believe it will bring you. Your blog should feel liberating; it should be relaxing. While you may be able to put up with a subject for which you have no interest in for a short while, you will most likely never develop the expertise to really set yourself apart and become the leading reference in that field. On top of that, you will very quickly become very miserable every moment along the way. On the other hand, if you love your subject, you can research and blog about it for many hours each day, and never get tired of it. That’s when you know you chose the right niche for yourself. In 99% of the cases, your blog shouldn’t feel like work, it should feel like a hobby, something you do for fun. You just happen to be able to get some extra income from that hobby!

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Starting a Niche Blog

What is a Blog and What is a Niche Blog?

Chances are that you’ve probably heard about blogs. But what exactly is a blog? And what’s a niche blog? And which one is the best? Lets start with a quick Internet history lesson.

In the beginning of the web, some 20 years ago, everyone wanted to show off that they could be the best of the jack of all trades. We all created portals which would link to a myriad of unrelated subjects, sometimes publishing an article from NASA about space exploration next to a photo of your favourite pet. It was a disorganized mess, and we didn’t mind it. But then we grew up. Now that there are more and more content creators out there, the burden is higher on us to be experts in our fields. For example, Queen Elizabeth II of England may have worked as a driver and mechanic in WW II, and while she is reputed of being quite adequate at both tasks, I would be more likely to ask her views on running the Commonwealth, and keep my car questions for my mechanic. The French have an expression “À chacun son métier et les vaches seront bien gardées”. Loosely translated: “To each their own craft, and the cows will be well taken care of”.

What is a Blog?


A blog, which is the short name for a weblog or web log, is a website where you mostly put entries called “posts” instead of creating only pages. Every blog is as different as the person or persons writing it. Traditional blogs usually only had one author, but we see more and more multi-author blogs where many authors contribute on a subject. A blog can be a form of diary, where you share about yourself and what you do, or it can be about your hobbies or things you know and are passionate about. A blog can be about you, your business, your interests, or really anything you can imagine.

What is Niche?

Now that we talked about blogs, lets talk about niche blogs! Lets start with the boring complicated answer first and get it out of the way! A niche is a marketing term which refers to a small segment of the market. If that made no sense, don’t panic, we’ll break it down with an example! Lets take all the chocolate eaters in the world, and lets call them the market. How much chocolate all of them combined want to eat would be the demand. To fulfill that demand for chocolate, the chocolate industry was born, which includes many chocolate manufacturers and providers. The total of all the chocolate they produce (Yummy!) is called the offer. At first everyone is making that same generic chocolate and they’re all fighting for the same customers. Until one day one of the manufacturers decided that being the 100th best chocolatier in the world is not enough, so they decide to specialize in one type of chocolates. I love milk chocolate bunnies, so lets go with those. All of a sudden, that chocolatier has a big choice in front of them. They can either keep competing against all the other chocolatiers in the world as the 100th best chocolatier, or they can become the #1 seller of chocolate bunnies. By differentiating themselves with a smaller, more precise market, it is easier for them to target their niche market, find out more about them, and to make sure that anytime someone needs a chocolate bunny, they’ll go to them.

So What’s a Niche Blog?

Now that we understand better what a niche is, how does that apply to blogs? Lets say you wanted to make a blog about cars. For this exercise, go in your favourite search engine and type cars to see what comes up. I’ll be waiting.

Back? Great! Chances are you saw sites related to selling cars, car manufacturers, and even some links about the movie with that name. While a blog about cars could be a great idea, you will be competing against companies with millions of dollars going into publicity. The truth is that a viewer will be worth much more to a company such as Mercedes or Porsche than it will be worth to you, a blogger. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do a blog about cars. But do you really want to compete against the over 1.1 billion web pages related to cars that Google indexes? Probably you should narrow it down. Will your blog be focused more on driving cars, designing cars, racing cars, fixing cars, or collector cars? Maybe you’re a big fan of a specific car model, such as the the Volkswagen Beetle? Or maybe you want to narrow it down even more and build a website about moving furniture with a Beetle car! Surprisingly you would still have 454 THOUSAND competitors! The more you narrow down your niche, the less competition you will find. The idea is to find a niche which offers a good balance between a high amount of search volume, in other words a subject which enough people are interested in it, yet with not too many competitors.

In the next post we’ll continue talking about choosing a good niche for yourself, but suffice to say for now, that on top of being a viable niche, it also has to be something you are knowledgeable about, and willing to spend hours upon hours talking about. No matter how good a niche is, if it bores even yourself, you’re better off letting someone else do it.