Ambition: Too Much Of It - Black Holes That Bloggers Get Trapped Into #1

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Welcome to the Black Holes Bloggers Get Trapped In series[another one of my series!], in which I aim to identify and help avoid ‘black holes’ which suck up many new bloggers. Enjoy!

Just yesterday I was chatting with a new bloggy friend of mine who had trouble selecting a niche for his blog. I suggested the usual to him: get pen and paper and write down everything that interested him or that he liked to do. He did and came up with several possible niches.

Skyscrapers that boast dizzying heights were mere pieces of flat land too, once, right?

But the problem arrived when we were debating on the sustainability and content potential of the possible niches. He couldn’t go very far in thinking up how many posts he could write on the topic. But, he didn’t decide to press on. As soon as he got stuck, he decided that niche wasn’t for him to hopped on to another one, with the same result. Why?

I guessed his problem. He was being over ambitious. Trying to achieve more than he could. Typical story, right?

Many new bloggers who enter the blogging scene are very excited. Just like real life when you start doing something new, you’re excited and think what it could bring to you. Bloggers are excited about the success and fame and money blogging has the potential to bring them, and fix their sights on these things.

Now, with aims and goals so high up, naturally, their mindset will adapt to nothing less than producing ‘excellent’ content. Therefore, these bloggers will aim to write posts that will instantly shoot to fame, and demand attention and make the blogger popular. Too far fetched. They’re being overambitious.

Naturally, you cannot usually get famous just from the first step. When all the expected fame and money and popularity does not come, it leaves these bloggers flabbergasted and disillusioned from their blogging.

Niche Selection

Niche selection is a very important decision. You cannot be over ambitious when selecting a niche. The content potential of a niche should be decided on the basis of the blogger’s ability, not desire.

Let me elaborate. A blogger should not select a niche based on its popularity in general(think ‘make money online’). A niche should be selected keeping one’s capability in mind. Will I be able to produce unique and sufficient content for years to come on this niche?

Monetization potential is important too, but it comes second to content potential. The ‘make money online’ niche scores high on monetization potential, but its content potential is abysmally low. Why? Because it is so overcrowded that finding unique content which has not been touched by anyone before is very hard. There are just too many vultures feeding on a depleting carcass.

Lower your ambitions. Aim for the stars alright, but don’t expect you’ll reach there immediately. There’s a lot of hard work and determination and time in the process. What I mean is, you have to start small, as someone unimportant and build up reputation and credibility from there. You don’t build a building from the top downwards, do you? You first lay the foundation and then go from the bottom upwards.

Skyscrapers that boast dizzying heights were mere pieces of flat land too, once, right?

You are bound to hit road blocks when choosing your niche. Does that mean you stop right there and give up? No. You have to jump over or walk past these roadblocks and continue on, a principle applicable in real life too, right?

The key is to not be reasonable with yourself. You must acknowledge that you can achieve only so much. Don’t try to over achieve. Been there, done that, have suffered. Believe me.

This problem haunts not only new bloggers but established ones too. Are you overambitious?

The next black hole in this series is: impatience. Stay tuned!

Thanks to jurvetson for the cover image of this post!

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