Why I Don’t Create Niche Content (+ A Poem)

[Listen to an audio version of this blog here.]

All of the people who blog about blogging insist that the only real way to write a blog, or to make money from blogging, is to be an expert in your field. You must become an expert in your niche, they say. You must write catchy headlines and numbered lists with boldened headers. You must utilize bullet points. You must not be too cryptic or too intelligent. You must optimize click-ability. You must try to sell something, either a product or a service. Some good things to sell are digital products like courses or e-books. You could also try affiliate marketing or drop-shipping or a pyramid scheme, if all else fails.

I’ve read so many blogs about blogging that I started hating the idea of blogs altogether. I’ve scrolled through food blogs trying to find the recipe I came for and gotten hopelessly lost in pitiful field of personal anecdotes, spelling errors, and bad jokes. This blog was never trying to make money. I’ve never had a solid niche, nor do I particularly want one. I’m not an expert in anything, and the older I get, the more I distrust people who claim to be experts in anything.

The origin of this blog was my eating disorder, and my eating disorder remained the focal point for over two years if only because my eating disorder swallowed me whole for a good chunk of time. But the girl who slowly and deliberately starved herself and then slowly and deliberately got better is in the distant past. When I look at pictures of myself back then, I barely recognize me. When I re-read some of my earliest blogs, I’m either amazed at my depth of awareness, confused by my messy diction, or a combination of both.

Not only was this blog never trying to make money, but it was never trying to be a niche, either. I’ve published two blogs each week for over four years, and the idea of writing about one subject from roughly 400 angles is mind-numbing at best. The idea that writing a blog is only worth doing with an end-goal of either making money, or of becoming a subject-matter expert in order to get noticed and therefore, make money, is asinine. I have no end-goal is writing this, right now. I have no desire to make money selling myself, and no desire to become a hyper-niche subject matter expert.