The hard part about starting a blog is knowing if you started the right one. Here’s how to know.
When you start the blogging journey, the hardest part is picking the domain name–which also determines what the blog is about.
Sure, of course, you could name your blog the superdoggyblog.com and then blog about golfing…but we all know that really wouldn’t work.
The first decision when starting a blog is deciding niche vs. broad.
Either one works.
One of my favorite examples for a niche blog is OhioTropics.com which is about growing tropical plants in the Midwest. The guy makes about $10k per month!
But if you start a niche blog you better be 1,000% certain you can stick with it long term!
AustinJames.blog is a broad blog. I decided to blog with my name as the domain because then I am the niche, which makes it way easier to write about whatever I want to write about, and each individual article is in a niche.
If you aren’t really sure what exactly your niche is, then start a blog under your own name. It doesn’t matter if the .com is taken (like it was for my name). You can write at .net, .org, .xyz, .photo., or .blog like me. There are about a 100 different addresses these days and they are all the same under the eyes of Google.
I chose .blog because it really sends the message that this is a return to old school blogging, which was one of my goals in starting this blog.
Remember when I said above that you have to be 1,000% certain on your niche…well, the good news about blogging is you don’t have to get it right on your first try. So, you can be certain in the niche you start and then change you mind later once you see how it works out.
If you decide on a niche because you have a great idea, but then you later find out that it’s not working or you aren’t as interested in writing about it as you thought you would be…well–THAT’S A GOOD THING.
Now you know you can cross that idea off the list and move onto the next one instead of endlessly agonizing about which blog to choose.
So, if you aren’t sure. Just blog under your name or a title that is somewhat open. Do what I’m doing here. I’m writing 100 posts. When I get to 100 posts I am going to re-evaluate how everything is going and make a new plan for how to proceed.
Ideally, I’m thinking I will have one main blog (this one) and then several niche blogs.
But before I get ahead of myself, I’m building up this blog.
One more note on blogging under my own name–I have some other projects in the words where it would be a good thing that I have a website under my own name. So keep that in mind to, if you are working on creating a service or writing a novel–you’ll want to have a website that matches your name.