Blogging For Beginners: What to Blog About

Please follow and like us:

A big struggle for beginners when it comes to blogging is what to blog about. Should you chase the money and look for a hot or trendy niche? Should you blog about something you love? What about blogging about something you’re already good at?

There isn’t one right answer when it comes to what to blog about. Some of the best blog ideas for beginners have nothing to do with hot niches or trendy topics.

This post is a part of my Blogging for Beginners series and will answer the burning question, What should I blog about? You can check out more Blogging for Beginners posts, such as my post on the 21 Common Blogging Mistakes (actually 25 with the bonus mistakes) or Using Instagram for your Blog.

If you’re ready to get started with blogging, make sure you check out my free guide on How to Become a Blogger by clicking here now.

Now, let’s get onto the reason you came here. What should you blog about?

It’s a burning question every beginner has to answer. Sometimes, it’s glaringly obvious and other times, this question halts new bloggers in their tracks.

You don’t need to be a deer in the headlights when you’re trying to figure out what to blog about. My blogging for beginners series of blog posts provides an excellent resource to get you started and this post will walk you through answering this question.

Table of Contents

What to Blog About – Chasing the Money

Like this Post? Pin it for Later!

Many so-called experts will tell you to chase the money when it comes to blogging. If you’ve seen any of my videos on my One Quick Tip YouTube Channel you know that’s not my style. While money is important, it cannot be your only reason for starting a blog. If money is your only motivation, your chances of success are about as good as winning the lottery.

Chasing money means you’ll choose a niche you think will be profitable. Yes, profits are important, but nearly any niche can be profitable when it’s approached with passion and love.

Blogging without passion will show up in your writing and your readers will know you don’t care about them. It’s very hard to fake it and much easier to be authentic when you love what you’re writing about.

For example, I am a freelance writer and have been for more than a decade. Even in high school, I knew writing was something I loved and could do rather well. In fact, there were classes I would not have passed without good writing skills, as I am not the best test taker.

Helping others, like you, become better at blogging is a passion of mine. This blog isn’t just about making money. Sure, the money is nice, but I get far more joy out of the emails I receive from readers telling me how much my blog has helped them start their own blog.

I used to choose topics or niches only for money and every single one of those blogs turned out as a failure. I remember a blog I used to have all about kitchen and bathroom faucets. It made me between $20 and $100 per month and could have been far more profitable, but I didn’t enjoy writing about kitchen and bathroom faucets.

If you love remodeling, maybe this is a niche you could go into and make a ton of cash. I was doing okay with it, but couldn’t keep up with the blogging because I didn’t enjoy the writing.

Chasing money leads to disaster in most cases. Can it be done successfully? Yes. Do I recommend starting a blog in a niche that’s only about making money? Absolutely not!

What to Blog About – Hot & Trendy Niches

Yes, hot and trendy niches can be super profitable if you know what you’re doing. However, they are fleeting and trends change over time. If you love being trendy and it fits with something you’re passionate about, this type of niche may fit well for you.

However, if you don’t really care about the latest trends in fashion, technology, or another industry, you probably won’t do well here. In order to blog about hot and trendy niches, you have to be on top of your stuff.

It’s a bit like “breaking news” and the first one to blog about it will be in a better position than the rest. You may not have to be first, but you have to be one of the first or you’ll get lost in the crowd.

I don’t recommend starting with hot & trendy niches. Instead, make this a part of your overall blog, if you really enjoy it.

For example, if you started a blog in the tech space, you might have a category to introduce the latest smartphones, computers, and devices. You’re not limited to only what’s hot and trendy, but you can still cover the trends as they happen.

What to Blog About – Your Passion

I will always tell you to blog about what you love or what you’re passionate about, even if you haven’t discovered it yet. In fact, if you don’t know what you’re passionate about, start a blog about figuring it out!

Your passion will make the harder parts of blogging much easier. Research can be time-consuming and writing is difficult if you’re new to it. Choosing a blog niche you want to learn about and you enjoy will make it easier.

I love writing, as I have stated before. This makes writing about blogging and freelance writing very easy for me because I find it to be fun.

You should always start your first blog about your passion. If you love race cars, blog about it. If you love gardening, blog about it. Even if you think your passion is odd or not a very big niche, blog about it, anyway.

Some of the most successful blogs don’t cover huge topics, such as weight loss or making money online. When it comes to blogging for beginners, choosing to blog about your passion may not make you nearly as much cash up front, but it will pay off in the long run.

How to Choose Your Passion Niche

Like this Post? Pin it for Later!

You probably know what you’re passionate about, even if you cannot figure it out right now. Often, when we look back on our days as a child or as a teenager, we can discover our lost passion. For me, it has always been entrepreneurship and writing. I started my first business before I hit the age of 10.

For you, it could be an instrument you loved playing, hiking, camping, riding your bike, or a million other things you just loved as a child. As adults, we often leave our passions behind to chase money. This leads to the difficult life of always having to act like an adult and we forget about the things we absolutely loved as a child.

Whatever you loved doing as a child will likely be the start of figuring out your passion. Think about it and figure out what you truly love and how that can translate into a niche for blogging.

Narrowing Your Blogging Niche

Before you just start blogging your passion, you have to go a bit further with the “what to blog about” question. You have to narrow your passion down to something manageable, at first. Later on, you can expand, but we want to keep things simple (the K.I.S.S. principle) for now.

Narrow Your Niche by Doing Research

For this tip, I will use the example of Gardening. I don’t blog about gardening, but I love to use it as an example because it reminds me of my mom. She loves to garden and I am sure she could do very well with a blog about gardening if she ever started one.

Gardening is a very broad niche and has several sub-niches within it. If you tried to tackle the very general gardening niche, you’ll likely be competing with major gardening blogs with huge budgets. This makes it hard to get traction, so we need to narrow the niche down to something less competitive, for now.

The first thing we are going to do is head over to Google and do a search for gardening.

You want to scroll down to the bottom of the page where it says, “Searches related to gardening”. This is a great place to find ideas for blog posts and ideas for narrowing your niche.

Just from this list, we have two options: Vegetable Gardening and Home Gardening. Both of these are a bit narrower than just Gardening.

However, we are going to take this a step further and click on “types of gardening” and “gardening ideas”. Just open these two in new tabs within your browser.

Now, you can see with the keyword “Types of Gardening” you get suggestions right at the top of Google. These are all great and provide plenty of ways to narrow your niche including:

Water Gardening
Flower Gardening
Container Gardening
Raised-Bed Gardening
Kitchen Gardening
Tropical Gardening

I know very little about gardening, but I do know, all of those are great sub-niches under the very general “Gardening” niche.

You won’t always get the suggestions from Google at the top, so we also need to scroll down to the bottom of the page. For “types of gardening” we don’t really get much, but for “gardening ideas” we get a few good choices including:

Vegetable Gardening Ideas (second mention of vegetable gardening, which means people are searching for it)
Gardening Ideas for Beginners (You could do a blog about Gardening for Beginners)
Gardening Ideas for Balcony (Balcony Gardening could be a great blog niche!)
Small Garden Ideas on a Budget (You could do a blog about Small Gardens or Gardening on a Budget)

These all have great potential and there are some very good, narrow niches to get you started here. Just use this strategy with your general niche and you can narrow it down, too.

Finding Great Blog Topics

At this point, you should have a good idea of what to blog about and it’s probably time to figure out your actual blog topics. When it comes to blogging for beginners, this can be a difficult thing. Sometimes, beginners stumble because they don’t think they will be able to find enough topics for their blog.

Trust me, there is always something new to write about if you know where to get your blog ideas. Some of the best blog ideas come from your readers, but you have to find them on your own before you have readers leaving comments and asking questions.

10 Quick Tips for Finding Blog Topics

Like this Post? Pin it for Later!

When it comes to finding blog topics, it doesn’t need to be difficult. You know your niche, so you know what to blog about, but you need topics. Use these 10 tips and you’ll have an endless supply of blog topics.

#1 – Follow the Competition

Using the gardening example from before, you’ll want to find other gardening blogs and websites and follow them. Check them out from time-to-time and see what they are blogging about. Don’t steal their blog posts, but use them for inspiration to come up with your own topics or your own take on a topic they covered.

#2 – Use Quora

Quora is a great place to search for blog topics. People ask questions and popular questions make great blog posts. Even not so popular questions can be good blog posts if they fit your niche.

#3 – Search YouTube

YouTube has a ton of topic ideas and you’ll find plenty of inspiration here. Just search for your niche and see what people are doing videos about. Then, come up with topics for your list of blog topic ideas.

#4 – Look at Amazon Books

Books on Amazon are gold for finding topics. Not only will the titles of the books help inspire you, but so will the table of contents. Look at chapter titles and sub-titles for ideas and you’re sure to fill up your topic list.

#5 – WikiHow

This site is all about the “how to” element of everything. Use it to find topics you can write about. Heck, you can easily find a how-to topic here and expand on it to make it better. Just make sure you cite WikiHow as a source, if necessary.

#6 – Google

Just as we narrowed your niche above, you can use the same strategy to find blog topics. When you don’t know what to blog about, you can search a topic in Google and scroll to the bottom of the page. You’ll find all kinds of suggestions for blog topics by doing this.

#7 – Social Media

Follow others in your niche and pay attention to what people say in the comments. Look for questions asked by followers and use them as blog posts.

#8 – Forums

Find a few forums in your niche and pay attention to the questions being asked by those in the forum.

#9 – Write About You

You are the real reason people will follow your blog and read regularly. Writing about you is important. You can write about what you’re doing within your niche or a project you have coming up.

For example, I just started a 100-day blog challenge and this is post #1. I could write about this and I probably will sometime during or after the challenge is done.

I am also working on a couple of other challenges, which could become great blog topics in the future.

#10 – Do Something New and Write about It

Even if you fail at the new thing you choose to do, blog about it. People love to see a real experience and hear you talk about it. If it goes well, it could become a great how-to guide for others.

Okay, to recap, you’ve chosen a general blog niche, narrowed it down by using the suggested topics from Google, and you’ve created a long list of potential blog topics. That’s quite a bit of work you’ve got done and you’re well on your way to starting a blog and creating a new source of income.

I like to keep a running list of blog topics so I always have plenty to choose from. Sometimes, a topic doesn’t fit with my mood and I don’t want to write about it. By having multiple to choose from, it’s easier to find a topic and get to writing.

You should know what to write about for your blog now. If you haven’t started your blog, head over to my How to Become a Blogger Page Here and get your blog up and running today!