To Make Money, Write What You Know

The blogosphere is full of alleged expertise on a wide variety of subjects. Everybody knows everything there is to know about either family life, fashion, technology, politics, or pop culture. This accounts for the majority of the millions of blogs that exist. Countless blog writers want to tell the world their story or rehash the most popular stories already in circulation. The problem with that is they aren’t writing about anything that anybody wants to hear about.

When starting a blog, it’s important to focus on what you know plenty about. Your expertise might sound boring to you, but that’s only because you’re used to it. Business analytics might be what you do professionally, so you hesitate to dwell on it when going about your spare-time activity of blog writing. But what would a visitor more likely stick around to read about? The drama of American family life or the day-in-the-life of someone who knows the ins and outs of American business practice?

Keep in mind the web is not television and you aren’t counting on capturing a random visitor. The only people who will visit your blog are people who found it by themselves whether through a search engine, a link, or word-of-mouth. The more specific issue of being a business analyst will be much more likely to be connected to your blog than more generic musings.

But it doesn’t have to be your job. Essentially anything unique about your life or anything particular you know quite a bit about can be churned into blog content. It has to be something you’re passionate about. Or else how are you going to handle writing a post virtually everyday?

The Internet is packed with blogs wherein about a dozen or so posts are in rapid succession at the start. Then a week goes by before another post appears consisting of an apology for not posting often recently. Then months go by without a single post and the blog flat-lines into online oblivion.

You have to pick a general content topic that’s reasonably original and keeps bringing you back to post. It may take years for a blog to pickup steam. It’s going to take as much time posting to keep it relevant and attractive to visitors.

Know your expertise, then become an expert at blogging about it.