One of the most common questions from new bloggers entering the world of professional blogging is whether to start a single-niche or multi-niche blog. If you’re among them, this post will assist you in choosing the best niche for your new blog.
What is a niche? In blogging, bloggers refer blog topics as niche. Identifying your area of interest is crucial if you want to get into professional blogging. But, more than that, it’s even more important to understand what niche would work for you and how you should approach it to make it a success.
Now before we try to find out which niche is better for you, ask this question to yourself. Why are you starting this blog? If you are starting a blog as a hobby and has no intent of making living out of it, then stop reading this post, and focus on creating your new blog post. Because, it doesn’t matter what you write and how many topics you cover on your personal blog. You can write about, food, tech, fashion and almost anything you like to write about and don’t bother about having a single or multi-niche blog.
However, if you want to start as a professional blogger with an aim to make a living out of it, then you should read the next part of this post to understand when you should opt for a multi-niche blog and when you should choose for a single niche blog.
Just to give an example, the niche of Labnol, Techswatch and Technical notes is technology, and they are single niche blogs, whereas The Verge and Mashable are multi-niche blogs. All of these blogs are successful and popular in their respective niche, despite choosing a different niche. Why? You would find the answer in the next part of this article.
I believe, the best way to find the best among two things is to make a comparison between them and let the reader make his / her decision. So, let’s have a look at the pros and cons of a multi-niche and single niche blog and why should you choose them.
Multi-Niche Blogs and Why it is Better?
Multi-niche blogs can do wonders as a startup only if you have a team of professionals or even freshers to start. Having a group professionals working together will reduce the workload on any single blogger. You can take a week off from the work yet be sure that work on your blog didn’t come to halt. It also gives you an opportunity to explore a larger extent of the blogging world, which is not possible with a single niche blog.
A multi-niche blog usually has an edge over single niche blog, and that is a vast availability of contents. Most of the multi-niche blogs are news-based blogs, hence can report about anything that interests the readers including technology news, entertainment, science, sports, and food. They also tend to have a broad appeal on social media and can generate tons of traffic from the social media. In fact, some of the most popular multi-niche blogs get their large chunk of traffic from the social media. Let’s have a look at pros and cons of having a multi-niche blog.
Pros of a Multi-Niche Blog:
- Easier availability of Contents: Content is the soul of any blog and having easier access to contents is a blessing. Multi-niche blogs never run out of content as something is happening in every field every day. So, finding and curating contents for a multi-niche blog is never a problem. It also does not require you to spend a lot of time doing extensive research for your articles, unless you are planning to submit a research report.
- Wide Social Media Reach – Social Media has become the most prominent place for almost all major publishers. The right use of the social media for your multi-niche blog can bring the amount of traffic which can crash your server. And this would be the only time you would love to see your server crash due to the traffic coming to your blog. Jokes apart, social media websites like Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, and Pinterest has the potential to bring tons of traffic to your blog.
- More Traffic = More Revenue- In the blogging world, traffic means revenue. So, the more traffic comes to your blog, the more revenue you can make. You can monetize your blog using advertising networks such as Adsense and generate income, or you can use affiliate links if you are reviewing a product. With broad readership, multi-niche blogs can also generate revenue through direct advertisement.
Cons of a Multi-Niche Blog:
- Requires a team of professionals- The Multi-niche blogs have the advantage of having vast availability of contents. However, this blessing can be a headache if you don’t have a team of professional writers because you won’t be able to manage a multi-niche blog on your own. Apart from that you also need social media managers, who can keep your social media pages active while sharing posts from your blog to the social media.
- Operating Costs- Multi-niche blogs can have an enormous operating cost. You need funds to keep your large server running, funds to make payment for your team (if they are not profit sharing partners), funds to market your new blog, funds to hire SEO professionals, etc. You need a moderate budget to keep your blog running at least for six months as, six month is the ideal period to tell in which direction your blog is moving.
- SEO of Multi-Niche blog is Difficult- SEO is one of the essential parts of any blog and to survive in today’s blog arena, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a must. If you have a single niche blog, it becomes easier to do SEO for your blog, as you have to put effort into a single niche or topic such as technology or fashion. However, if you have a multi-niche blog, you need to do SEO for all the niches that you would be covering on your blog. Of course, you can hire SEO agencies to do the job, but that would cost a fortune.
Single Niche Blog and Why it is Better?
Similar to Multi-niche blog, the single niche blog also comes with its share of advantages and disadvantages. The biggest drawback is you are alone ( if it is not a multi-author blog ), and the biggest advantage is that you would be managing your blog alone. Yes, you heard it right. Why so? Let’s find it out in the pros and cons section.
Pros of Single Niche Blog-
- Low operating cost– An individual or two can manage a single niche blog.Which means you can start a single niche blog with little to no budget. Assuming that it is a single author blog, you don’t need to spend a fortune on professional writers as well. Since it is a single niche blog, in the early days of blogging you don’t have to worry about expensive server costs.
- Does not require a team- As I mentioned above, the single niches blogs can be managed by an individual or multi-authors. However, here you have the option to start with a single author blog and later expand according to your need.
- SEO of a single niche blog is easy– Doing search engine optimization for a single niche blog is easier compared to the multi-niche blog. If you are familiar with the SEO work, you don’t have to hire an SEO professional as well. Even if you choose to hire an SEO professional, the work can be done much faster and within your budget.
Cons of a Single Niche Blog:
- Contents require research- Compared to the multi-niche blog, single niche blog cannot be a news publishing portal as it would be hard to compete with multi-niche blogs, which covers all the popular niche. Now to curate contents for your single niche blog, you need to do some research for your articles. At times, if you are looking to create some unique contents, you may need to do extensive research to write an article.
- Less Social Media Reach- It’s relatively difficult for a single author blog to get tons of traffic from social media unless they write a viral blog post. So, the single niche bloggers are mainly dependent on search engine traffic to get traffic to their blog. It encourages the bloggers to write evergreen contents on their blog so that they can get traffic for a long term.
- Less Traffic = Less Revenue- Single niche blogs tend to get a lesser amount of traffic than multi-niche blogs. So, if you compare the revenue of a single niche blog to a multi-niche blog, you will see the former generating less revenue compared to the later. Though, his wouldn’t be a fair comparison as single niche blog has less risk compared to the multi-niche blog, hence less profit.
Conclusion:
So what should you choose? A Multi-niche blog or a single niche blog?
It depends on the resources you have access to and your area of interest. If you can afford a high operating cost, have a team of professional writers, and trying to create a business out of it, and then you should choose a multi-niche blog. But, if you are a passionate blogger, who’s passionate about a single niche and trying to make a living out of it, then you should choose a single niche blog. In either case, you need to put lots of hard work to get your blog on the track and make a living out of it.
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