Today we’re going to start our blogging journey. This journey begins with picking a topic. A niche if you will. While other projects we’ve done together have started at a keyword research tool, this one does not.
This project starts in you. In your heart, in your mind, in your spirit.
This one starts with passion. What is it that you just can’t stop talking about. What is you could talk about for days, weeks, years? That’s what you’re going to blog about.
Now before you start thinking let’s look at a couple thoughts to avoid:
1. It won’t be profitable: Now is not the time to think about profitability ~ there are so many ways to monetize/make money/be recognized for your blog. If you automatically dismiss your passion because YOU believe you can’t make money at it ~ you will be doing yourself a disservice. There is a way to make money with just about everything.
2. I’m not an expert: We covered your internet expert status yesterday. Just get the thought out of your head. If you can talk to your friends for more than an hour at a time about a topic you’re expert enough.
3. Yeah but, Yeah but, Yeah but…. whatever your yeah buts are let them go. This endeavor is going to be successful because you get started. You will never know if you’ve hit a profitable topic, are writing interesting posts, or if anyone else wants to read your stuff until you get started.
The biggest obstacle
The biggest obstacle in your blogging career is going to be coming up with something to say regularly (like at least 3 times a week regularly) for the long haul.
It can be hard to know in the beginning to know if this can be a long term thing. That’s when you have the most ideas flying around in your head and you have that invincible “I could write on this forever” feeling. Here’s my suggestion, and it’s made my life so much easier, both on this blog and the new one I’m doing.
If you’re really having hard time thinking of something one thing you can do is go check out some of the topics other people are blogging about. This might spark some ideas, and also help you let go of any “oh I couldn’t blog about that…” stuff going on in your head. One of my favorite places to do that is in blog showcases. This is one of my favorites. It’s Studiopress. Click on the “showcase” tab and just look at what other people are doing. We’re not looking at themes right now 
we’re looking for a topic. We’re just looking around here.
Create a mind map ~ or in a less fancy term ~ make a blog plan.
Here’s how I did mine ~ just for some ideas.
1. Take your overall topic.
2. Break it down into different areas of interest you can write on about that topic.
3. Break those topics down into smaller bite sized ideas/concepts/wanna talk abouts
You have just created a mind map for your blog.
The number 1 thing ~ is your overall topic (your title/domain name type stuff)
The number 2 thing is your categories.
The number 3 thing is your posts.
Here’s an example of how simple I’m talking here ~ not rocket science.
things 1: I want to talk about internet marketing strategies:
thing 2: free platforms, niche blogging, authority blogging, list building
thing 3: squidoo, how to set up a lens, how to use hubpages, how to create a link in a module etc
how to set up wordpress, how to get traffic etc
how to choose a topic, how to get traffic, how to build a network, twitter etc
how to create a free giveaway product, how to set up aweber, how to…
you get it? It’s very simple, and if I sat down and mapped it out you’d get, well… this blog. 
You can map this out as far as you’d like ~ write it down on a big piece of paper to do the brainstorming, then when you get to the posts part ~ write them in on a calendar. You will no longer have to waste time wondering what to write about on your blog (which totally saves me like 30 minutes a day!!).
Here’s a great post that does a better job creating a visual of this concept. If you like the more techie way of doing this you can use this free mindmap software and map it out, or this one if you want to do it completely online. 
Remember, this should be fun! This is the launching of a new project. Have fun with it. If you have kids and they have a great big floor pad of paper get down there with them. Let them have one side to create a project and you create your project on the other side. (That’s what Hanna and I did recently ~ I have since hung the big piece of paper over my (extremely messy) desk to continue writing down ideas/thoughts and other stuff when it comes)
Lighten up with this, have fun, don’t judge. You can’t get it wrong. Just play with it and see what you come up with.
If you find you can’t really think of many different things to write about on your topic you might want to go check and see if there are some forums on the topic. Go in, look around. Look for threads with lots of replies. Look for questions that get asked repeatedly. Look for hot topics. These can help spark some ideas on things to write about.
If you don’t find any forums on your topic you might want to broaden your topic a bit. This is not a tight niche site, you want to give yourself plenty of room to move around ~ but you do want to keep it related to the topic.
One other thing I particularly like about having this type of map is I can see if I’m staying on topic or not. If my idea doesn’t fit in one of my categories ~ then it probably is not a tight match for my site. (or I need to add another category lol)
One more thing about categories ~ this is how people will get around your site and find your information. We’ll get into this more when we choose a theme, but you might want to think about how many categories you’re going to have. While there’s no right or wrong ~ if every post ends up being its own category it will be hard to get around your site and find what people are looking for. (If you have or want a bunch of categories there are themes that can show your main categories and you can put more specific categories under them and see them on a drop down menu ~ which is working VERY well for my other site ~ but more about that later.)
I did a little searching this morning and found a couple other posts I really like on the topic of choosing a topic for your blog.
The first is from Yaro Starak ~ my blogging mentor ~ with his simple take on how to choose a niche.
The second is from Darren @Problogger ~ he’s the master so I thought it would be good to get his opinion!
The last one is from Steph at The Everyday Blogger ~ I love the example she gives in this post.
I know there are some of you who will freak out a little bit that we’re not doing more analytical data diving for this process ~ but just go with it. Have some fun, relax. It will be ok. I promise.
So here’s my thought and I’d like your opinion on it. For this process it’s great to take your time, but you aren’t going to know anything until you take action so I was thinking about doing a Weekly Action Challenge ~ like post them on Sunday so you can work on them through the week. The content on the blog will help you take the steps during the week.
I’m thinking about getting one of those linky things so you can come back and post your link when you finish the challenge and we can all check out each other’s blogs and spread the word around. Win/win/win/win let me know.
Since it’s already Wednesday you’re going to have to get to it this week.
Here’s this week’s challenge:
Choose a topic and create a mind map/plan for your blog.
When you get it done come back and let us know. And as always if you have any questions please ask away.
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