7 Reasons Why You Should Switch Your Blog Niche (And Why You Shouldn’t)

1. Your niche was about your lifestyle and your lifestyle changed.

For many bloggers, their blogs are based on their lifestyles. So what happens when your lifestyle makes a huge detour? Should you blog about your new lifestyle instead? Should you continue to blog about your old one? Should you blog about both? This can be a hard decision especially when you’ve grown your audience over some time. So to help you choose, what I recommend is asking yourself this question:

Five years from now, you’re looking back at your blog posts that has helped thousands of people around the world, what is it about?

Your answer to that question should help you decide. Basically, let your future decide your choice today.

And if you’ve already gained the trust of your audience, don’t worry about them, they will continue to follow you no matter what niche you choose.

That’s the beauty of blogging, it’s fluid enough to evolve with you as you go through different stages of your life. This was the case for me. My lifestyle has changed over the last two years. I transformed into a work-from-home life from the digital-nomad & travel life.

2. You realized it’s not the best niche for you to help people in.

When I was in college, my mentor once told me “No one knows what they want to do for the rest of their life when they go to college. What you study in college doesn’t matter. What matters most are the skills you learn in college– studying, working hard, working with others, and being a leader. Because once you find out what you really want to do, it won’t be hard to pursue it because you already have the necessary skills to succeed in it.”

For a lot of people, what they major in college has nothing to do with the career they end up choosing. And that’s okay. Just like how the first niche you choose to blog about probably won’t be your last. And that’s okay too.

I really enjoyed creating travel content and I still do. I would get so many messages and emails from readers about how much I’ve inspired them to travel solo. And I’m so happy about that. But it’s interesting because not only did I inspire them to travel, but I also inspired them to blog. I didn’t share blogging tips but I did show a lot of behind-the-scenes. That sparked a lot of interest and I noticed I was helping more people blog than travel. I actually enjoyed helping people blog more than helping them travel. That’s when I realized this niche wasn’t the best niche for me but it was the perfect stepping stone.

And I plan on creating products about blogging. So from a business point of it, it doesn’t make sense for me to create content about one niche and then create a product that’s not related to it.

I’ve also tried creating content about both niches and got so overwhelmed that I burnt out and stopped. So I knew that did not work for me. And I highly recommend that you choose one niche, not two.

3. It doesn’t align with who you are and who you want to be in the next five years.

What we do today will affect where we’ll be tomorrow. So if your blog doesn’t align with your goals in the next few years, it’s time to change it.

I have this really amazing newspaper article written about me on my wall. It’s a huge milestone for me and I’m very proud of it. But I couldn’t get over seeing “travel blogger” in large text every time I saw it. The thought of being known as a travel blogger didn’t light me up anymore. In the next five years, I don’t want to be known as a travel blogger or a travel expert. But I do know that I want to be known as an expert on something. So asking myself that same question, “Five years from now, what are my blog posts about that has helped thousands of people?” For me, it’s helping people become fully self-expressed. And teaching them one way of doing it.  And letting them know they have a voice that’s worthy of listening to.  The travel niche didn’t align with that so that gave me a reason to switch.

4. It doesn’t make you happy and it’s not your passion anymore.

A lot of the time when we start a blog, it’s because we want to talk about something we’re passionate about. Life is short and I would hate for you to blog about a niche you’re not absolutely excited about. Especially if your plan is to turn your blog to a business. Pursuing your passion and talking about it makes you happy. And being happy makes the journey of business & entrepreneurship that much more enjoyable.

The truth is, you’re not always going to love the process of blogging. Sometimes you’ll publish a post that bombed or launched a product that no one bought. The only thing that’s going to keep you going is your passion. Without it, you’re much more likely to quit.

3 reasons why you should not change your blog niche

1. It’s too crowded or it’s too hard to stand out.

Guess what, you’re in luck. A crowded niche means it’s popular. Meaning there’s a high demand for it. No matter how many blogs there are in your niche, there will always be people searching for advice & tips about it. How you make yourself stand out is with your personality and consistently showing up with helpful content.

2. It’s too small or there aren’t enough people interested in it.

There is no niche that’s too small or too “niche” to blog about. Even chinchilla blogs can succeed. There are people out there with the same interests as you but you won’t attract these people until you blog about it. And because it’s a smaller niche, you can easily set yourself apart from the crowd.

3. You’re not an expert.

If you know more than a beginner in your niche, then you know more than enough. The reason for this is because most people online are searching for beginner tips and asking beginner questions so as long as you know more than beginners in your niche, then you know enough to create content about it.

Also, you’re much more relatable when your readers find out you’re only a few steps ahead of them. They know they can easily achieve what you teach them because you did it yourself without being an expert.

And don’t underestimate what you know. You’ll find it surprising that your readers aren’t as knowledgeable as you are. That’s why they ended up in your blog to learn.

How to switch your blog niche

1. Get to the source of why you’re switching.

Are you switching because you feel like it, or because it’s not your passion anymore? Take your time to get to the source. It took me an entire year to reach my decision because I wanted to make sure I was actually committed to it.

2. Communicate with your audience.

The next step is to tell your audience the changes that are going to happen to your blog and why. Let them know you’d love for them to continue along your journey. And also let them know it’s okay to unsubscribe if they’re not interested. You want to make sure you’re providing your audience content that’s useful to them and you wouldn’t want them to hang on if it serves no purpose for them. Don’t worry about losing your subscriber count going lower because it’s going to come back up again.

3. Rethink your brand and the vision of your blog.

Go back to the drawing board and rethink your core values, as well as your mission and vision statement. Update your ideal reader profile and restrategize your content to fit with your new goals.

4. Update your website, logo, and tagline.

If you’re doing a complete rebrand, you might want to rethink the design of your website, logo, and tagline. Does what you have currently still serve the purpose of your new brand?

5. Update your social media presence.

Do your profile pictures, bios, and descriptions represent your new vision? If not, then it’s time to update it.

6. Understand that it can take years to completely pivot your blog.

Depending on how far you’ve blogged into your first niche, it may take a while for your audience to adjust to it. When I first made this decision, I thought it would only take a few months to pivot my blog. But I’m learning that it’s going to take my audience a few years to adjust to it. I understand that not all my subscribers will continue to follow me because they have no interest in blogging & working from home and that’s okay. I understand that my subscribers will drop and it could take a few years for my audience to get back to the point it once was.

I recently cleaned up my email list of 5000 people and it went down to 3000. It took years to reach 5000 subscribers but with 3000 people, my open rate and click rate went straight up. So even though I lost 2000 people, my audience became much more loyal & interested in what I had to say.

Conclusion

I hope I gave you some insight on why you should and shouldn’t switch your blog niche. And if you ever decide to, how to switch your niche.

I know this process can be a little bit scary, just like when you first started your blog. But just continue to trust the process. This is how the journey looks like and if you’re scared but it excites you and you know it’s your calling, make the switch.

Thank you for watching. I’m Jojo LeBouef and I now help women grow their blogs & work from home. I’m super excited for this change and I have a lot of amazing content coming up for you. If you have any questions about blogging, I have a Facebook group you can join so we can chat about it. Click here to join!