Choosing The Right Name

“Probably the best place to start thinking about what your blog should be about is to consider what YOU are about.”

Niche is a requirement to have a successful blog as you wanna it to be different, special, just simply awesome as these attracts audience. Two things that you need to consider in finding that niche;

Firstly if you want to grow a popular and well respected blog it can take considerable time and you’ll be needing to take a long term approach to building it up. As a result it’s well worth asking yourself ‘can I see myself still writing on this topic in 12 months time?’ If you can’t I’d suggest finding another topic.

The second reason is that you readers will quickly discern if you are passionate about your topic or not. Blogs that are dry and passionless don’t tend to grow - it makes sense really as no one wants to read something that the author doesn’t really believe in.

It does a great impact if that niche are a topic that is popular, the law of Supply and Demand is what most business students are taught in their first semester of studying economics and it comes into play here also. You might be interested in your topic but unless others are also you’ll always have an uphill battle in building a highly read blog.

Of course keep in mind that you are writing in a medium with a global audience of many millions and as a result you don’t need a topic that everyone is searching, just one that some people are searching for because even it’s something that even a small percentage of people have an active interest in it can be a lucrative area.

Your topic if it is something new yet a topic that lots of people are talking about then the chances for it to grow is way better to compare with something that is already been talked about for the last 50years which is a dying trend and it the geographical location of your targeted audience do plays a significant role. Eg: Topic like "English Made Easy" may be a popular in a growing third world country but nobody might not even bother to look at your blog especially if they are English living in England.

One of the key features of successful blogs is that have the ability to continue to come up with fresh content on their topic for long periods of time. Conversely, one of the things that kills many blogs is that their authors run out of things to say. Answering the question regarding whether there is enough content can be done on two levels:

1. Do YOU have enough content within YOU as an author? This really comes back to the question we asked above about your passion, interests and energy for the topic (so I’ll leave it at that).
2. Do you have access to enough other sources of content and inspiration? There are many web based tools around these days that can help you in coming up with content.

If you are interested in earning an income from blogging you will need to also factor in some investigation of whether the topic that you’ve chosen has any obvious potential income streams.

Have an idea what is your blog gonna be all about? Choose a name for it, something that it simple, attractive, meaningful, as you want to build credibility and a sense of professionalism around your blog. Keep this in mind when choosing that name :

1. Goals and Objectives - I constantly come back to this point in most of my tips posts on a variety of aspects of blogging - but it’s so important to be thinking of the long term vision that you have for a blog when you’re making decisions.
2. Thinking of the Future - another factor to consider that is related to my first point of goals and objectives is to consider what your blog might look like in the future. I’ve seen a number of bloggers start up blogs with domains that fit with the topic of the blog initially but which outgrow the domain down the track. In one instance the problem was that the blog started on a fairly narrow topic (a sub-niche) and on a domain that reflected this but that in time it expanded it’s topic as the industry changed.
3. Name Length - there are a range of opinions on what the ideal length of a domain name is. Technically you can have one with up to 67 characters in it but it is generally accepted that short ones are better for a number of reasons including that they are easier to remember, that they leave less room for making mistakes when typing them in, they are good for word of mouth (online or offline) marketing, that they are more visually pleasing (eg on your business card) etc.
4. Keeping it Legal - it is highly recommendable to think seriously about the legal implications of the words you use in your domain name. Avoid trademarked names especially. I know of a couple of instances where bloggers were forced into making changes months into new blogs because of legal threats. Whether these laws vary from country to country I’m unsure - but it’s worth considering if you’re picking a domain that might clash in this way.