I was talking to Andrew B Clark (the Brand Chef and new owner of Create Wow Media) at the monthly meeting of Central Iowa Bloggers on Friday about how I am almost the “Anti Social-Media Expert.”  We laughed about it and his response was simply “write a post about it!”  After my series of volatile social media posts the last couple of years, I think I will pass on anything controversial, but it did get me thinking.

I get frustrated by the success others have within their niches, but truth be told I don’t really HAVE a niche.  Not so much anyway.  Let’s face it, unless you are Wil Wheaton (hi, Wil!) having a “personal blog” is never going to reap the monetary or statistical rewards of one focused within a personal niche.  The entire category of “personal blogs” is not filled with many success stories.

I have struggled over the years to find my “niche.”  So much so I sat in a room with Joel Comm, Dan Nickerson and Joel Ownby in the offices of InfoMedia in Colorado asking them “am I just boring?”  Their response was swift and decisive: “You have a book.  You’ve sold over 2,000 copies.  Leverage that – there’s your niche!”  Yes, I could do that.  But I am so far removed from the niche living here in Iowa, that I don’t feel what I say would actually matter.

So I have struggled in finding that niche.  Maybe it is “filmmaking in Iowa” and I can blog about the state of the film’s film industry, etc. since the incentives dried up.  But there is already a blog on that. Besides that, there is really only one other niche I am willing to devote the amount of time to:

Making money on the Internet

And try to break into THAT. It is one of the “no no’s” of trying to start a blog.  Everybody tries to get into that and everybody fails. Besides, I don’t have a product, list or network built up that would support that.

Attending Blogworld was inspiring, but it still did not yield many ideas for my “perfect niche.”  I am still looking for that one “thing” that will hold my interest (and readers).  I admit I was very jaded about blogging a few months ago and was resigned to the fact that the only people making money on the internet were people selling products on making money on the internet.  While I know there is room for “real people” to be successful blogging… I still wonder at times whether I am “interesting” enough to do so.  It isn’t a lack of knowledge on the fundamentals – perhaps it is a lack of understanding and knowledge of MYSELF.

Definitely something worth investigating and cause for more introspection.

Dartboard photo by Loutsu