Wow – two very different niches! My best advice is to look at which of those two niches you have the most expertise in and which of those two niches you think you could most easily monetize. And most importantly, remember a successful blog is a blog that helps other people with their problems. I say that because you say ‘a musician blog covering my love of singing, songwriting and music production’. In the nicest possible way, people don’t want to read about your love of music, they read blogs for what they can get from it. You need to answer the questions that your ideal readers are typing into Google. So a blog that teaches singing / songwriting / music production, I don’t doubt that could be successful… and of course it will be even more successful if you’re passionate about the subject. But a blog that simply shares your love of something is very unlikely to be successful. Hope that helps! Eb 🙂

Currently stuck between a financial independence blog for women or a musician blog covering my love of singing, songwriting and music production. Tricky to decide

Good to hear that this has helped you! Tightening your niche is definitely the right move. Both from a business perspective and from a Google / SEO perspective. Personally I would say Motherhood is still too broad. What kind of mothers do you help? (For example, do you target rich mothers? Mothers on a budget? Arts and crafts loving mothers? Outdoorsy mothers? Travel loving mothers?) And what specific problems do you help with? Those two questions should help you narrow down your niche and become more targeted. Good luck!

Thank you!

Lisa
http://www.lovefromlisa.com

Fashion Over 50?
Fitness Over 50?
Retire at 50?

Hello from a fellow Generation Xer! The important thing to consider when choosing a niche is WHO will you help and WHAT will you help them with? The key to success with blogging is to focus on understanding who your target audience is, understanding what their problems are and providing solutions to their problems. You have identified that you want to help people who are 50+ But that’s a lot of people. Can you narrow that down a bit? And people in their 50s have a whole range of problems… pick one and write a brilliant blog that solves that problem really well… THAT is your niche! For example you might help overweight women in their 50s get fit (Be fitter now than you were in your 20s!) You might help people in their 50s who are struggling with money to learn to manage their finances better. You might help people in their 50s who have taken early retirement to travel the world. Whatever you do, don’t try and solve all the problems… pick one and do it really well!

Aaah, I see now I misunderstood your original idea – you want your blog to be about teaching people how to acquire new skills – is that right? In which case that makes sense and I can see how a blog that teaches people how to learn new skills well / fast / efficiently could work. The only thing that concerns me is that your 3 sections sound to me like 3 separate blogs / niches… all of which are good ideas, but I am not sure how they would work on one blog. It might be a good idea to pick one of those options to start with and expand later once you have established authority / expertise in the first one. Or perhaps combine the first 2 – where section one would be focused specifically on philosophy/mindset needed to learn programming skills. If indeed your blog is about teaching people how to acquire new skills, I love the word ‘rocket’ – it implies boosting / improving / getting somewhere fast. I feel ‘stepstoskills’ is still too vague and not exciting enough. Hope that helps! Eb 🙂

Thanks a lot, Eb!!!! Somehow I’ve written a new post (an update to the earlier one) before I saw your answer.
You made a very good point of getting to be the ‘expert’ as quickly as possible. I now think I could say (which is true) that I have mastered over a dozen skills in my life through self-learning, I spent many thousand hours self-learning, and in this blog I want to share with the audience the steps that I have taken, as well as the steps I am taking now to learn new skills. As part of learning new skills, I would share with the audience simplified descriptions of things I really had to search for as part of my own learning journey: things that weren’t readily available in a Google search or were poorly explained. I do run into such things, and I think if I had trouble finding answers, other people might too. (I still need to learn the SEO tool that gives the frequency of search requests, but that’d be at a later stage.) I could set up a survey form about the skills the users have self-learned, and maybe even ask if they want to share their skill-learning stories on this website. I could share feedback on online courses I have taken to learn new skills and maybe invite users to leave their feedback on their learning experiences, after moderation of course.
Regarding the name being too general as you said, do you think that “stepstoskills” is too general as well? I could also try “selflearnskills” or “beselflearned.” The idea of “steps” is very appealing to me, but I don’t have online experience to predict how people would react to it. Or how about “selflearnrocket” or “selflearningrocket”, with the idea of riding a “rocket” to self-learn toward one’s goal? How does that seem to you?
If all goes well, maybe at a later stage I could offer guided challenges on learning new things step by step: a user sets a challenge to learn something and then gets daily guidance/encouragement/reminder, or some such to keep them on track of their learning journey.
I very much appreciate your advice and will definitely use your referral link to get the hosting, once I finalize the name.