Writing online for readers means writing for an audience of readers. The wider you cast the theme of what you write about, the larger the possible audience and the greater the number of writers writing online about the same theme become. If you go for a more specialized theme, the possible audience becomes smaller but also the number of writers active in the field.
Writing online has two important components that decide over success or failure of your writing. One is what you know a lot about and accordingly write about, the other is what interests your audience of readers. This article deals with the latter. Readers constitute your market. A large market means a lot of competition, less competition can be found in smaller markets. Smaller markets are called niche markets.
If you write about housekeeping, your possible audience will be very large but the competition by other writers is possibly even larger. If you concentrate on a particular aspect of housekeeping, you choose a niche of it. Cooking would be such a niche; at the same time, cooking is still a fairly large field to cover. You could cut that down even farther and concentrate on slow cooking or cooking with an aga.
This shows that even niche markets can still have further and smaller niches that you could explore. Writing for a smaller audience may not sound sensible, but it is. If you can get out of the rat-race for the general public, you can get a larger market share of what you aim for. Trying to compete with Perez Hilton doesn't make a lot of sense when you can be the authority on your local VIPs for instance.
To find a niche market, you must learn to think outside the box. Thinking outside the box shouldn't take you out of your comfort zone. Contrariwise, it should take you right to the center of your comfort zone instead. It just takes a positive approach to what you do every day as a matter of course and others might not. The exotic for my friend in Pakistan is the humdrum for me.
Travel articles are a major staple for writers online. If you search for travel articles, though, you'll be swamped. Of what you find, a lot is plain trash and cheap rehash by people who never even saw the place they are writing about. They take their information usually at third hand from other articles or worse just copy them. If you consider that market as kaput, you aren't far off.
But you are in a unique position when writing online for travelling folks. You live in a place and know about its history, the best places to go to, an what bus will take you to the beauty spots. Didn't you think about the place you live in as a tourist spot? Start thinking outside the box. What is normal to you is exotic to others. Make use of your first hand experience to get readers interested. Just after the fall of the Iron Curtain, my Yugoslavian cousin came to visit and was bowled over by a supermarket where you could get any kind of fresh fruit. I wouldn't have thought of that.
Further reading
Getting Ideas for Writing Online Articles
The Honey Pots for Writing and Publishing
How to Start Writing Online
Writing online has two important components that decide over success or failure of your writing. One is what you know a lot about and accordingly write about, the other is what interests your audience of readers. This article deals with the latter. Readers constitute your market. A large market means a lot of competition, less competition can be found in smaller markets. Smaller markets are called niche markets.
If you write about housekeeping, your possible audience will be very large but the competition by other writers is possibly even larger. If you concentrate on a particular aspect of housekeeping, you choose a niche of it. Cooking would be such a niche; at the same time, cooking is still a fairly large field to cover. You could cut that down even farther and concentrate on slow cooking or cooking with an aga.
This shows that even niche markets can still have further and smaller niches that you could explore. Writing for a smaller audience may not sound sensible, but it is. If you can get out of the rat-race for the general public, you can get a larger market share of what you aim for. Trying to compete with Perez Hilton doesn't make a lot of sense when you can be the authority on your local VIPs for instance.
To find a niche market, you must learn to think outside the box. Thinking outside the box shouldn't take you out of your comfort zone. Contrariwise, it should take you right to the center of your comfort zone instead. It just takes a positive approach to what you do every day as a matter of course and others might not. The exotic for my friend in Pakistan is the humdrum for me.
Travel articles are a major staple for writers online. If you search for travel articles, though, you'll be swamped. Of what you find, a lot is plain trash and cheap rehash by people who never even saw the place they are writing about. They take their information usually at third hand from other articles or worse just copy them. If you consider that market as kaput, you aren't far off.
Further reading
Getting Ideas for Writing Online Articles
The Honey Pots for Writing and Publishing
How to Start Writing Online
No comments:
Post a Comment