What is a niche? When it comes to blogging your niche describes what you write about. That can be budget fashion, luxury travel, Korean culture, basket weaving, etc., etc. One of the first decisions you have to make when starting a blog is whether or not you want to confine your writing to one niche.
There are two opinions here - yes, your blog absolutely needs a niche to be successful or no, as long as you have quality content a niche isn't a requirement. I'm going to cover the pros and cons of each to help you make the right decision for your blog.
There are several benefits to limiting your blog to a specific niche. The first (and probably most important) is that your blog readers will know what to expect. Lets say you start a blog on organic kid friendly recipes. Every week you share great recipes that your readers love, but then decide to start posting about your job in medicine. Will some of your most loyal fans stick around? Probably. But, for the readers that follow your blog just for organic recipes they may lose interest and migrate to a different site.
Having a niche can also increase your opportunities for sponsored posts. When you build a community of people who share a common interest brands will take notice and they might approach you to feature their product. Companies know that their product is getting in front of the right potential customers because you have them all in one place.
If you do decide that your blog would benefit from having a niche Melyssa Griffin has a great post on how to choose the right one.
On the other side is the argument that a blog doesn't need to have a niche in order to grow a following. In this case it's more about selling yourself and your story as opposed to your expertise. When you cover a variety of topics people will come to your blog because they like you. If your blog doesn't have a niche one idea is to brand it after yourself, ie. firstnamelastname.com.
Now for the ultimate question - does YOUR blog need a niche? That's really up to you and what goals you have for yourself.
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