Have you ever been told that? Have you been told you need to put your site in a certain niche?
You will not fail as a site if you do not have a niche, which I at least agree with Nicholas Scalice’s article You Don’t Need A Niche!
What you do need is some type of focus. It does not have to be on one particular niche. You would be surprised the amount of people who claim that their blog is in a certain niche, but covers a lot. For example, Blondish.net is not just a blog about blogging. It covers all the aspects from the design, the content, engaging with the blog community, and promoting the site. Now, what is a niche site is WPAddict.net, which is all about WordPress.
However, this is the site focus. It is basic Web Design 101 where you have to brainstorm what you want your site to do. If you want it to be a niche blog, then go for it. You just need to be a lot more strict with the material you put out if you want to be in that niche.
If you are a person that has many interests, you can have a site that does that, but if you are confusing visitors, you might want to look at what is driving them away and focus on what is attracting them.
However, in the end, you are the one that controls how successful your site becomes because you were the one that put it together. You have to put the leg work in to promote it and engage with others.
Yeah definitely I agree with you..
I believe Niche is like limiting your Website on one hill, which at that time have enough fodder for it… but in web space Time is virtually the fast moving consonant and that particular niche of yours could possibly out date with an hours or may be few weeks or probably with in five years.
Where as not clinching the rope niche would rather help you plummet in to the prosperous realm of expressive freedom that will provide you with a satisfaction of exploring “multiple Dimensions” rather than be stuffed in Niche (yet Cliché-ed) “One Dimension”
It is okay to have a specific niche, but you have to at least have a site focus on what you will cover and how loose you want to be in your niche. Some will be strict and others will slip in side stories. It all depends on what works for you and how your visitors respond in the end.
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You bring up many good points, especially that even those sites that claim to have just one niche do in fact have many. Thank you for mentioning my blog post and for your insight. This is a great blog that I look forward to reading regularly.
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Not a problem. Thank you for coming by and reading my response to your Seed at SeededBuzz.
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I've got 4 focuses on my site and they are clearly stated at the top banner. The good news is that all 4 topics overlap (at least in my mind) so it works well and gives me loads of ideas to write about.
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You make an excellent point about niche blogging and how the focus can be very narrow or somewhat widened, depending on the author and how they see their topic.
It can be difficult to write content for highly focused bloggers. Too tight a focus and you might find yourself running out of things to write about. But when you widen the scope a bit, this burdened is lessened.
There are definitely guidelines for what makes a successful blog that are tried and true. But in the end there are not hard and fast rules about who will succeed. There will always be creative individuals who will fly in the face of convention and create successful blogs that don't play by the rules at all.
You've gotta love creativity! :}
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Nice topic for a post, something that definitely has a lot of conversation around it.
My thoughts of a niche site – at least a proper one – is not only limited to a particular subject, but for a topic that isn't wildly covered. If you were thinking of creating a site on a niche topic and there were already 100,000 similar sites out there, it would make a lot of sense.
The point you make about WPAddict.com puts the term in a context I personally don't normally think of niche, but it's certainly opening up my definition of it.
I agree whole-heartedly with your mention on targeting your visitors. I have many interests that I blog about that range from web development to photography to Maui, and then just a general "in the life of" personal blog. To account for that, I manage them all as separate sites, since someone that lands on my Maui site that enjoys my pictures of the island may not care for the hockey game I shot at last week or the road trip I'm taking next summer.
As you mentioned, Web Design 101 – know you users and know what they want and don't care for.
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Great point! I struggled with the ‘niche’ when writing, but I have realized that being focused and tying entries together is just as effective as blogging about a narrow field. I buzzed about you and Nick in my latest post at Manic in The City. Stop by for a visit!
You make a solid point about "focus," and that's something I probably have to work on more. I think I confuse visitors way too much, and it is difficult to describe what I do in a nutshell.
Thanks for this post – I definitely have to go back to the drawing board and think about some things.
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Really fantastic topic you discussed here. I totally agree with the thoughts. Focus on a particular goal should be necessary. I have seen many people who initially tell that I am started a website and served with this service but few months or years later, the focus or goal of site completely changed and served with monetizing trend. As you said WPAddict.net serves the wordpress it mean that all wordpress related information are available there but think suddenly it offers off topic service then what happen. The image that it has been made in the people mind is completely changed and focus would be dispersed.
I agree. Technology has made a very cold, disconnected place we live in. People are too much in a hurry all the time
to be bothered with a phone call. But they can sit for hours hooked to reading Facebook , is this anyway to stay
connected with friends or family