-
About This Blog
Hello and welcome to Websites Made Simple. I'm Danny Foo and this is my Malaysia website design blog. I also co-founded a registered Malaysia website design company; Simpleet Solutions. -
Categories
Niche Market
When a niche isn’t a niche anymore than what do you do? When you thought what was a niche market, catches up with you and make you obsolete, what do you do? Do you start a new niche? Or continue to work on your niche but offer something more than the competition?
I’m not sure if everyone knows or does this, but before you start a blog, one of the steps in the plan is finding a niche market. A subject that’s rather rare but has a very high keyword value I’d say. I’ve noticed new blogs being pinged to PPS like never before and I’ve also noticed a certain market that’s being populated ever more. Have you ever noticed that there are more new technology genre type blogs being started by a Malaysian?
As far as I know, LiewCF.com was one of the first to start a Malaysian technology blog and then there was KahSoon then SapiensBryan and now ever more, I’ve seen others like IdealGadget, Geek In Me, AllGadget..etc.
If you ask me, technology blogs are getting pretty stale and these bloggers are challenging each other head on. Not to mention I’ve not even compared these blogs to the few thousand other tech blogs outside of Malaysia. Most of these blogs offer pretty much the same but some still remain a visitor’s favorite for certain reasons.
When selecting a niche, it really depends how you manage to narrow down the subject for your blog. Take tech blogs as an example, technology has a mass the size of a whale when you want to talk about new gadgets. There’s the computer, the mobile phone, the cars, the artificial intelligence..and more. Now, if every blogger were to blog about the general subject of technology, you’ll end up with a scenario I’m discussing now.
How do you curb this or try to be better than the rest? You could either start slowly introducing your blog as a technology blog with more focus on a certain subject, or offer something that these blogs don’t have; a function, a tool or even a contest. It’s a really huge challenge if you try to overpower ones blog.
Therefore my friends, before you start blogging seriously, have ascertain something that would make your visitors coming back for more. Blogs that are of personal rants, ramblings, debates, views wouldn’t have to worry much of a niche market because everyone’s life is unique in their own manner. 
Posted by Danny Foo on June 26, 2005 | Filed Under Website Lessons | 
|
Comments
7 Responses to “Niche Market”
IMHO, at the end of the day, it is the blogger, not the blog that draws the traffic. Liew is unique because he gave the personalised touch.
BTW, I kena warning by google today. *shivers* They found something I mentioned in my own forum. I thought forums aren’t counted mah. Anyway, I send my apologies and edited my words. I had exceed USD50 but yet to receive some confirmation/password. So be careful, don’t even squeak a word anywhere.
A blogger’s content definetely is part of the kingdom that leads the blog to great victory. The writer’s touch as well is what makes blogs very personal. However, as mentioned by Darren on Problogger before, there are different type of blogs. The ones that syndicate from other websites and the one that totally writes from his own source aka review.
Most tech blogs are syndicated blogs with small comments by the blogger themselves. So if everyone was doing this, I’m wondering how does one define their status in that particularly category later?
Urm, you had something said opposing Adsense that they found sensitive? Email me, I wanna know.
LiewCF.com is not the first Malaysian tech blog, but I think it is the first focus on consumer level technology.
About the content, I do mix with own content and excerpt from Internet. My objective is to share what I know and what I think it will be useful for others to know.
btw, IdealGadget.com is the fork of my blog category. It is a syndicate type of blog as you have mentioned.
I am looking forward for more different blog topics from Malaysian.
I definitely agree with you on this Danny. Claiming to be a technology blog, but what they do is simple copy and paste news from other sites without at least a bit of personal thought on the news..
Doesnt matter for me if what they say is trivial, because at least they have an opinion on the things they posts….. and that’s what i think one of the purpose of blogs … for us to share our thoughts with other people.
“Urm, Liew, what d’you mean by IdealGadget is the ‘fork’ of your blog category”. I was just trying to make out what did you really mean in that sentence? Sorry as I’ve got a small dictionary in my head.
Well, I’m also looking forward to the more niche blogs that will be able and later monitor the progress of corporate blogging too.
@Hafiz
Well, even if those Malaysians do that in their blogs, you can be sure it won’t make a difference because everyone is blogging about technology and will follow suit with a short commentary of their own.
However, Liew just cleared up that his focus is consumer level technology. In honesty, I still think it’s a broad category but I never knew his niche before he told me. So if visitors feel that his blog does have a niche then it’s good.
Others like KahSoon and SapiensBryan or etc might have a problem if they don’t plan to narrow their focus down. I understand that they’re running a personal journal as well, so that creates contrast to their niche.
On the other hand, I don’t think it’ll be right labeling the blog as just a technology blog. Most visitors probably visit because they want to read their personal thoughts than the technology update. The tech updates are just like a side dish right now.
I think contributing to a niche is pretty important because the blog has a bit more substance. You not only provide a good read to your regular readers but you also provide particular types of information people may be looking for.
Take LiewCF for example. I can always log on to his site and find some goofy post about self promoting himself to the ladies (haha…sorry LcF…I can’t seem to drop this topic!) but also I can read about whats happening in the world of technology. I agree with his objective of quote “share what I know and what I think it will be useful for others to know”
Definition helps separate our blogs like u said. Hopefully I can pull it off when I relaunch my site soon as well…hehe .. now it’s a lot of rambling …no time to write much
still waiting for ur relaunch as well danny…
LoL! You can patiently wait for mine. I’ve got lots of planning to do. I think I’m only 50% there. Need to discuss as changes go on and I might let my visitors follow the sneak peak’s as the project progresses later.