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Passion Or Profit: Which To Follow For Your Blog?
Spoiler: expertise matters more.
It can feel overwhelming to choose the niche of your first monetized blog.
So you find yourself stuck between passion and profits, at which point you’ve probably run into two schools of thought:
- Follow the money since that’s why you’re here in the first place. Otherwise, why bother?
- Follow your interests since nobody wants to profit (if all goes well!) yet despise every step of the journey.
Where does that leave you?
I can’t speak for everyone, but here’s how I’ve resolved this dilemma.
Expertise means better content, faster
To start, forget passions and profits, and look to your expertise. It’s great if they all overlap, but expertise hands-down the most important factor for a new writer-publisher…
…Even beyond loving the topic. That’s great, but it’ll still be a grind, so passion alone doesn’t suffice.
…Even beyond having lots of affiliate or proprietary product opportunities. That’s also great, but display ads are available to almost everyone, so there’s always some revenue opportunity.
See, if this is your first attempt, then it’s critical to learn the ropes by doing everything yourself. Outsourcing may help you scale later, but now’s not the time.
And when it’s all on you, time is of the essence, and expertise is the surest way to work faster and with high quality.
Given the choice between knowledge you already have and knowledge you’ll need to build on the fly, the former is faster and easier, period.
The value of working fast
Nobody wants to spend days writing a single article to answer one simple, beginner-level question. If you know the niche, then you can address many (if not all) of these off the top of your head.
That’s the one and only “secret" to how I regularly write 1000-word articles in 30-45 minutes from conception to publishing!
Of course Google doesn’t care how fast the article is; only how good it is, all else being equal.
But still…
If a fun but unfamiliar topic takes you a day per post, and a dull but familiar topic takes you an hour per post, then it’s prudent to lean toward quick delivery—and therefore quick results to iterate on.
Expertise makes planning easier
Familiar niches (even if boring) are also easier to plan content for.
You already know what’s a reasonable versus nonsensical question, you’re aware of caveats that keyword tools won’t capture, and you have intuition for how topics naturally form clusters that link to each other. All that factors into your eventual rankings.
Readers will also pick up on your expertise through little details that no keyword tool and no secondhand rehashing of forum posts would provide.
Expertise focuses your learning
Finally, consider the potential for overwhelm. As a newbie, you’ll already be learning plenty about SEO and design and so forth.
Leaning about the niche at the same time can feel so overwhelming that you simply grind to a halt just a few posts in. Been there, done that, and learned the lesson.
Ask yourself: “Can I accept a smaller amount of more boring work for quicker results and probably better content, or significantly longer but more interesting work for slower results and probably poorer content?”
No topic is perpetually fun
If you want a durable, relatively stable content site, then your task is often more like writing an introductory textbook than anything else.
- Cover the essentials from multiple angles
- Anticipate every question a beginner might have
- Generally leave no stone unturned where basics are concerned
- Discuss advanced concepts only briefly (at first)
If you’ve been into a certain topic for many years, then this feels like a lot of time spent on information that’s trivial to you. That’s because it is.
Ask yourself: “If I won’t get to cover the obscure, advanced stuff I’m personally into, will it really be so fun to write about this passion of mine?”
Probably less than you think. And when the passion fades, you’re still left with expertise, which comes in handy because…
Mainstream interests require more specialization
If your expertise is along the lines of health, fitness, or finance/investing, then you’re simultaneously in the best and worst possible situation.
- “Worst” because competition is ferocious and Google gets ever more reluctant to feature obscure websites on topics with serious health or financial implications.
- “Best” because the money is potentially huge and there are countless ways to monetize content on these topics.
I know or know of several writers getting significant organic traffic to small sites on enormously competitive, mainstream subjects. Each does so through extreme specialization.
Here’s what that might look like within your area of expertise.
Go deep before going broad
Let’s say you’re a legitimate expert in travel and digital nomad lifestyle stuff. Taken as a whole, that’s a trendy and extremely competitive space.
But within all that territory, perhaps you’ve identified opportunity for writing about electronic accessories for one-bag travel (just hypothetically).
Is that your passion? Probably not.
But do you have subject matter expertise and good understanding of your audience? You probably do.
So, combined with astute keyword/topic research, you’re in a position to publish relevant information that copy-and-paste “competitors” lack the firsthand knowledge to provide.
There’s room to expand over time, but it’s in your best interest to exhaust that teeny topic before broadening your blog.
Ask yourself: “If I’m passionate about something hugely popular, will I mind writing about just one tiny portion of that topic?”
(Identifying that tiny but opportune portion is another matter altogether, but in my experience, it’s ten times easier to find within your sphere of expertise than beyond it.)
It’s enough to love the process—but not yet
Plenty of publishers have built mini-empires on topics they hardly know about, much less love.
But they’re in the game for slightly different reasons: building processes and teams. If you love doing keyword/topic research, vetting and managing expert writers, and running the whole business of web publishing, then this model can work.
Personal topical expertise is not necessary, but process expertise absolutely is.
That’s why this is not a good idea for your first site(s).
It takes a successful project or two to develop good instincts around competition, content planning, etc.
Ask yourself: “Even if I don’t like this topic, am I willing and able to do high-level planning and then outsource the writing?”
Again, if this is your first project, then the answer is probably a firm “no.”
Ads can monetize (almost) any audience
Despite what some gurus might lead you to believe, affiliate marketing isn’t the only, best, or even easiest way to monetize your site. It’s one option among several, and feasibility depends on your niche.
So, what if you’ve identified low-competition topics in a niche you know like the back of your hand…but there’s no obvious way to sell anything? Do you write it off?
Not so fast.
Unless you’re publishing on something sketchy (and if you have to ask, you probably are), display ads are a ridiculously easy way to turn on cash flow at the literal push of a button.
Rates vary tenfold (or more) depending on factors like the niche, ad layouts, and visitors’ personal attributes. But to some extent, ads turn eyeballs into money, period.
Pro tip: AdSense rates are rarely competitive. Go with Ezoic now that they’ve eliminated traffic requirements.
Ask yourself: “Do display ads open up any areas of expertise that I’d previously written off?”
What really matters?
On some level, niche choice matters less than you’d think.
Many (most?) of us fail our first time or two, anyhow, so odds are high you’ll explore more than one subject in the big picture.
- Passion alone seldom endures when you’re exhausting the minutiae of beginner-friendly topics. It’s helpful and it’s nice…but that’s it. Passion can also lead you into hyper-competitive topics, in which case you’ll need to focus (at first) on one tiny segment of that topic. In all likelihood, your passion topic will no longer feel that exciting when you have to get that specific.
- Profits alone can lead you to topics you simply don’t like or understand—at least not well enough to deliver high quality without hating the process. Unless you get lucky, it’ll take an inordinate amount of work to produce valuable information on something you’ve never actually done. Outsourcing can change the equation later…but don’t put the cart before the horse.
- Expertise alone isn’t totally sufficient, since you still need to identify areas of opportunity. But expertise helps you find them. Passion gives way to drudgery on some level, and the money is always out there in some form, so expertise is the best way to ensure high-quality content that gives your site a fighting chance.
