Choosing a Niche and Sticking With It

From the very beginning, against all the advice available online, I couldn’t choose a niche for my blog. The idea of confining myself to one area of writing paralyzed me. I procrastinated, doodled in my notebooks, and tore out page after page.

Instead, I organized my business and found systems and tools that worked for me. I blogged and contributed to various publications. My Google docs filled up with how-to guides and my web tabs grew to massive proportions. But when it came time to write a blog post, I was overwhelmed with ideas. How do I choose what to write about? A niche made more and more sense, but I still resisted.

Over the last few months, I noticed that I’m always finding ways to organize and automate my life and that I love helping others do the same. At home, I’ve automated the delivery of staples, like dog food and toilet paper, and developed routines that keep my household running. Friends pop by to bounce ideas off me for college essays. Another friend emailed me her resume, so I could tweak it. Another messaged me asking if I could help with some research on a chronic illness. Not only have I spent 17-years finding ways to become more productive, I’ve also developed a reputation as the go-to person to find solutions. These long-time habits bubbled over into most things I’ve written for publication.

From preparing for postpartum life to finding happiness by letting go of expectations, and from writing concise white papers about company processes to blog posts that help business owners manage their company. Every day I research, read, and write about strategies that help business owners succeed in their business and personal life. I applied what I’ve read to my writing business by automating tedious tasks and trying out all sorts of time management systems. Along the way, I realized that all those torn pages were me developing my niche while clearing the path to a sustainable business.

But, I still fought the idea of choosing one niche. My Google history covers a crazy amount of topics, and I’d love to write about all of them.

So, I had to compromise with myself. Because when you’re single and kind of a hermit, there’s no one to keep you on track or talk things through.

These conversations with myself tend to be two distinct voices (although no, I don’t actually hear any voices). My right brain, the creative side tells me all the dreamy, pretty things. While my left brain computes the data and tries to convince the right side to get on board and take the necessary steps. One night, as they worked together, I listened. I doodled word after word into a jumble of pages later to be torn out.

And a compromise was made. No need to go into the details, as that’s between my right and left brain, and I’m on a need-to-know basis right now.

All I know is that the decision was made to stick to a niche on my blog and I’m going with it.

I’m taking what I’m good at, which is helping friends find solutions and develop routines that make their lives better. And I’m applying it to writing and blogging by helping online entrepreneurs become more productive while living a life that’s satisfying.

When I first started out, I was overwhelmed. So much to learn and cram into naptimes. A lot of late nights reading after the baby was asleep. This last year was a crash course on the business side of writing. Going forward I hope to share more real-life examples of how to organize and run your business. Not only what I use in my own life, but the best-researched ideas and advice from the web, broken down into baby steps that you can apply to your life.

Whether you’re a blogger trying to stick to an editorial calendar or a freelancer figuring out how to organize your submissions, I’m here for you.

Join me as I turn my love of writing and organizing into a business model that works for me. I hope along the way you’ll share your story, and we can encourage each other.

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As always, thank you for reading!