This is my 4^th time starting up a blog.

I know that’s a lot isn’t it? If you fail, you try again, right? If you don’t succeed the first time, persistence is key, right? I’m not so sure.

My Loves, Life as a Housewife, Mama & Her Kids and now this one. Each one I started the blog in a period of my life where I had a break from work and was looking to keep myself occupied. I obviously love it, hence why I’ve gone back again. But each time, after about 3 months, life happens, I go back to work and things gets busy, and I end up closing them. It is so much easier to earn an income at work than it is to start a blog! (It’s funny as the perception out there is completely different to my experience!)

So, what have I learnt and why am I doing it again?

I know I LOVE blogging, I’m not much of a face-to-face kind of person. My social anxiety takes over and sometimes the words that come out of my mouth isn’t quite what I intended. I then try to fill silences with awkward conversations. I much prefer to text sometime then to talk to them.

The niches I previously chose didn’t quite meet my lifestyle. My Loves was more around trying to fit into the fashion industry but I realised quickly that I am very much a minimalistic kind of person and minimalism wasn’t quite “in” back then. Life as a Housewife was a time where I just got married and I was trying to re-invent myself as the “wife” that cooks and cleans (trying to mirror myself with the insta mums) and Mama & Her Kids, was created when I became a mum.

Except I know that despite being some of those things, it doesn’t really feel like my own. I wanted something that I can accomplish without being a mum or a wife and so Female Boss Blog was born, precisely 2 weeks ago. 

I hope this part of my blog, I can track my failures and successes. I feel this will make me more “accountable” and this time it is to stay. This Niche is about females at work, tracking my experiences at work and how I navigate those difficult days, difficult conversations in the workplace and what I do to excel in my professional career.

How to pick a niche that speaks to you

As you can see, picking a niche for your blog is a really important decision that significantly impacts whether you are successful. Here are some of the steps that have helped me:

1. Pick an interest that is also your area of expertise

Don’t look at what anyone else is doing and concentrate on yourself. I know it’s hard in a time like this where everyone you look to is a successful blogger, influencer or they work for themselves. It’s hard not to compare. I compared myself to “Not So Mumsy” and “Miss Kyree Loves” and tried to mould myself into that kind of niche. It ultimately become too hard and I ended up giving up. 

You need to find something that speaks to you, that you can write endless amounts of posts and talk about on the fly without any boredom or hesitation. Consider your hobbies and your professional experience. Picking the right niche will help you stay motivated and produce quality content.  

2. Assess the competition for each blog post

People will often tell you to pick a niche that is not overdone; however, I disagree with this. If the niche you’ve identified is rare, but you can’t write about it, your blog won’t last. You could also argue that if a niche doesn’t have any competition, there might be no interest at all. 

Instead, I would pick a niche that suits you, and I would instead assess your competition when you write your blog post. Before I publish anything, I head over to answerthepublic.com (the free version gets you 3 free searches per day) to see the competition based on keywords search volume. I then do a quick search to see how others have answered that query and then this will allow me to plan out my post.

3. Consider monetization potential

I am currently working on this. There are several platforms that you can use for this, however this depends on the user and session number. Because this blog is relatively new, I only qualify for Good AdSense. I have applied for this a week ago and still waiting. 

Affiliate marketing is another that I am in the process of setting up. I have chosen Amazon affiliate marketing and The Commission Factory; both are relatively easy to set up and can be done when you start a new blog. More to come on these when I have made a sale.

4. Promote your blog

I am also in the process of testing this and I believe this will depend on the type of niche you are using. Because my niche is more to do with the workplace, I have trialled LinkedIn. LinkedIn has groups that have more than half a million followers where you can post, free and readily available audience directly interested on your topic! Pinterest is another one that is great. Both LinkedIn and Pinterest have a direct link on each post that takes the traffic directly to my website. 

Instagram is the third social media that I am trialling, however I have found this platform to be overly saturated and therefore traffic coming through from Instagram is low. I have found by doing this, it does take users to my blog (it’s been 2 weeks since I’ve opened this blog and I’ve had 100 people come through; however, my session times (time spent on your blog) vary according to the topic of the post).

5. Test and refine your content

Once you’ve selected a niche, it’s time to start creating content and gauge the engagement from your audience. You can use this to test and refine the content you are putting through.

For example, I know that my audience have bigger session times when I talk about bullying, compared to preparing a handover before a holiday. So now I know to directly focus on mental health and staff wellbeing posts.

Remember that choosing a niche is incredibly important. I would highly pick something that is within your interest. Before creating content, assess the competition, promote your blog, and then test and refine. Then repeat, don’t give up. If you’ve given up it’s because you haven’t picked the niche that speaks to you.

In summary, so far, I’ve learnt:

• Pick a niche that you can talk about
• Don’t worry about the competition in that niche but be selective on the content you publish
• Picking a niche that speaks to you will ensure motivation and persistence especially when there is no one reading it at the beginning.
• Pick 3 social media platforms to promote your blog. Pick 3 that is best suited to your niche.
• Look at the stats (I use Google Site Kit through WordPress).
• I opened this blog on 16/6/2022, so far, I’ve had 109 users with 150 sessions to the blog. My session duration varies according to the content I’ve shared with 9 minutes as a maximum to 1 minute as the minimum.