How to choose a blog topic?
When you set up a personal blog, it is easy to know what you want to blog about. You can treat like a diary, writing about your day-to-day routine. Perhaps a review of a movie you watched, or a book you read. At times you might blog to vent your frustration about your friends, or your job.
(Though, if it is the latter, I suggest you lock up your post. You don’t want your boss come sniffing around)
However, if you are set to blog for profit, you need to think harder on your blog topic. This single element of your venture will dictate the success or failure of your blog. Unlike a personal blog, where you can simply stop writing and no one will bug you about it, a for-profit blog will be a big waste of effort if somehow your blog topic is off the mark, or the updates inconsistent.
There are often two main factors you want to consider when you choose a blog topic - profitability and passion. Blogging about something you love (like in my case, my chick lits) is easier to keep at, since you know the subject inside out and you won’t run out of things to write about too often.
On the hand, you have to consider the profitability. If your blog topic is not something that you can monetize, your effort will be wasted. It will be hard to make sole income from generic Google ads. However, if your blog topic is very profitable, chances are there will be lots of bloggers out there blogging about the same thing.
So, what do you do? How do you decide? For a blogging novice, this alone is a big headache. Well, here’s a cheat sheet to get you started.
(From here on I am assuming that you have, at least, a personal blog, and has been blogging about stuff for sometime)
Discover what you always blog about
Easiest way to get started is to build on things you have already blogged about. Even if you blog about “mundane” stuff on your daily life, a pattern (or two, or three) will emerge. If your blog has categories, see which category has the most blog posts, and most blog comments. From the control panel of my personal blog, it is obvious I always blog about travel, movies and (of course) blogging - these can get me started
Do an environment scan - how many blogs out there are on your topic?
Are there many blogs out there blogging about the same thing? Are they blogging for their own interest, or out to get money too? You need to answer these questions as they will tell you if there are too much competition out there, and if there are sufficient interest online (individual blogger) that will be interested in your blog. For example, if I do a quick Blog Search on travel topics, I can see that there are a couple of blogs which are big on travel, like Travel Blog, Real Travel and Lonely Planet. However none of these seem to be blogging for profit, so now I know I am off to a good start.
But wait - can your blog topic be monetised?
Think about your topic. As someone who is passionate about it, what are things you spent your money on? What are the companies providing these products/services, and do they advertise on Google, have affiliate programmes etc? If there are many companies market through the web for business, chances are you will have channels to monetise your blog since it is related to what these companies have to offer. For example, I always need to purchase air tickets for my holidays, and I often buy them online. After a bit of digging, I discovered that plenty of companies advertise on Google selling air tickets, and companies like Zuji and Priceline offer affiliate programme. Again, a good start
Your blog topic is so “general”, how can make it more focused?
The general rule of thumb is that, the more niched your topic is, the more targetted your traffic will be, and the easier it will be to exert an influence on your select audience group. To discover a niche of your topic, simply branch out your topic into sub categories. Go by size, geography, budget, lifestyle, tools etc. For example, I can branch out my travel topic by geography (Asia, Asia Pacific, Australasia, Europe, North Asia), by budget (on a shoe string, luxurious travel) or by tool (just by train, travel accessories, travel transportation). Each of these second level sub categories can be further branch out - but you might want to stop at the third tier. You won’t want your topic to be so niche that you can’t find its audience or advertisers!
You found your topic - what’s next?
There are just so many things you can do at this stage. Set up a blog. Gather your old blog posts. Do research online. Bookmark related blogs and forums. Whatever it is, the important thing is to stop reading and start blogging.
To recap:
Step 1: Discover what you love, and have wrote about before
Step 2: Check if there are still room for growth on blogosphere
Step 3: Find out if there are money to be made on your niche
Step 4: Focus and “niche” your topic
Now… I am off to start blogging on mine! 
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