How to Find Your Writing Niche

Since the time couple of months back, when I intended to develop my skills as a freelance writer eventually aiming to go at it fulltime, I have been reading about the need to find my niche area. I am not doing any dictionary research to find the meaning of the word niche; its meaning is rather understandable. But the objective of this article is to brief you about my still incomplete search for that writing niche.

This article may be helpful for those who are struggling like me to find their niche or for those who intend to take up freelance writing as a fulltime career.

Anyone who has been scouting the Internet for freelance writing opportunities and trust me there are many of them; will tell you that finding a writing niche is that one idea that is found underlying in the thoughts of all who have an advice for the new breed of freelance writers.

This advice is particularly relevant for people who want to build up a blog and look forward to monetizing it. But then what is this niche that everyone from John Chow to David Risley to Steve Pavlina is talking about in one form or the other.

For a blogger trying to make money, reports that 99 per cent of the blogs do not even make 100 dollars are indeed very disheartening to say the least. Why don't blogs make money, or how to make money through a blog is not the purpose of this article. The whole purpose of this article is to communicate with you about my own experience of trying to find a niche and interact with you about your thoughts of the topic. You could post a comment here or visit by blog www.wordsofworth.wordpress.com to do that.

Finding as niche I realize is one of the most difficult aspects of blogging. What do I write about? Will I be able to quickly make money from it? Where will I get the readers from? Will I succeed or will I fall on my face? I also realized that in the process of finding my writing niche, I was beginning to lose hope about ever being able to develop an blog, forget sticking to it and updating it. The more I read about finding a niche area to continue writing. I realize that I was losing both interest and hope. To add to the trauma was the pressures of my day job which was forcing me away from my chosen subject.

Where then could I ever dream of continuing to write something, forget earning any money from my writing? I was soon losing hope, but I continued to search for some advice on how to find my writing niche!

I am sure there are many others like me out there. What I found out may be something that can help you. For me it was simply enlightening. I couldn't believe that I was beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel. It almost felt like a load off my chest. I realized that finding a writing niche is more of a self-study exercise. You got to give it some peaceful time and energy. After all you have to be able to stick to it. The process is pretty simple. Take a notepad and write answers to the following question:

• Which are the topics you feel you are interested in?
• Which are the topics you feel you look forward to be building an expertise in?

Now take each topic and ask yourself. Am I ready to write on this topic for free? Yes free? Is it a topic which will keep you so engrossed that you do not mind spending hours reading and writing about it? You may be passionate about the topic; however that does not necessarily mean that you will write on it for free. You may not be very passionate about the topic but you may still be reading a lot about it and may have an opinion about it. Remember that both freelance writing and blogging are voluntary tasks. You have to be passionate about something to the extent of writing for free. I realized that this was the hardest bargain. Here I was trying to find my niche area of writing and I was being told to write for free. But when I moved away from my desk and began thinking about it in peace, I realized how true it is. It essentially means that I need to be able to continue my blog without getting inpatient about making money from it.

Once you have found the answer the question above you need to verify the answer. Ask yourself if it is true?

For those stuck, you could consider using a rather simple approach that I adopted. Get on the Internet. Keep your mind completely blank without any particular direction of thought. After about an hour look at what you were surfing about. What are you reading about? What is that holds your attention? What is it that you feel like bookmarking or jolting down about? What is it where you have an opinion to express and you tell yourself, "This is what I feel"? Observe your search and reading pattern and you will be able to verify your findings about your niche area. You may even realize, as I did in my case that there are more than one topic that holds your interest. So be it! Continue it that way. Take all the topics forward. Begin blogging about them. Don't mind any logic that may be given to you about sticking to your topic. Chances are that some among them will be left behind. What will emerge from them will be your niche topic or area of interest.

As you go around Blogosphere you will find that some of the leading bloggers have been writing on a wide variety of subjects. Be it in the same blog or on different blogs. It may be on technology or it may be on global affairs. It's their thoughts that they are expressing. They may have read something which they found interesting or it may be something that they are experts in. Use the same approach if you feel you have a multiple niches. Do not worry about finding one. It will search it own way to the top!