To Hell With Niches, Blog Your Passion!

By Ven On July 19, 2010 Under Advice, Food For Thought

Have you ever read something or been told something that sucked the life right out of your dreams?

I seem to get that a lot, especially from well-meaning friends and family members who think they’re sparing me a lot of wasted time and hard work. Or maybe they think a little disappointment up front will hurt a lot less than a big failure down the line. Whatever the reason, I get sick of hearing it.

Something else I get sick of hearing about is niches, especially from bloggers who encourage you to pick a niche, just not their niche.

I recently came across this post, Blogging About Blogging: Fair Warning, where the author linked to and commented on another post, Stop Blogging About Blogging Already. The point of both posts was to discourage new bloggers from blogging about blogging, a niche they claim is saturated and much too difficult for a new blogger to break into. Ironically, both of these bloggers happen to blog about blogging and if you take a few minutes to read through some of the content on each blog, you’ll quickly find that they each write pretty much the same thing, as do many other bloggers on blogging.

The funny thing is… I like and subscribe to both sites. I also subscribe to Problogger and many others, all blogs about blogging, even though they say a lot of the same stuff. Why? Because they each have a different voice, a different way of presenting the same thing and I like being able to compare ideas, to read different viewpoints. The blogger’s personality draws me in as much or more than the content itself. That’s what keeps me coming back. That’s what I love about blogs. They’re not just information dumps. They’re people. Fascinating, exciting people.

According to Ambrose Bierce “there is nothing new under the sun but there are lots of old things we don’t know.” There are also a lot of wonderful voices we haven’t yet heard. Yours is one of them.

My advice to new bloggers is to find your passion and blog about it. If you’re passionate about blogging, love blogging more than anything in the world and want to pass that passion on to others, than blog about it! Don’t worry if your niche is saturated. Put your voice out there and be heard. You might have to work a little harder than you would in another niche, but if you’re passionate about it, it won’t matter. You’ll be doing what you love and that passion will show through on your blog.

Be who you are and don’t let anyone steal the life out of your dreams.