One of the things you’re told if you consider blogging for money, or just blogging for popularity, is to go after the “niche”. Make your blog specific. Provide information on a specific topic. Don’t do a “cat blog” where you talk mostly about what’s going on in your life.
Then I read something interesting and danged if I know where I saw it. Essentially, for writers, you need to decide if your blog is for writers or readers. If it’s for writers, well, that’s all well and good but you’ll mostly be selling to writers instead of reaching a larger audience. To reach the larger audience, you need to make sure you have posts that will appeal to your readers.
This didn’t make a whole lot of sense at the time to my information-stuffed brain. Under threat of short-circuited synapses, I put the thought away for later.
Then, while surfing recently, I came across this post, which led me to this blog. And for cryin’ out loud, it’s devoted to what she’s doing instead of going after that niche. In looking it over, I realized I really liked reading it. I’ll be going back. Because it actually is written for her niche. It just doesn’t look that way on the surface. Take a look and you’ll see what I mean.
I can’t be like her. No point even trying. But I’m starting to get a sense of what I want this blog to be (it took me how long?). And yes, I know I should have already figured this out before I even created it. I thought I had. That’s the beauty of the Internet: your mistakes exist forever and yet they also disappear in an instant.
No big changes for now. Just baby steps.
Amy Keeley 
I’ve started several blogs in the past nine years and with the exception of the one written specifically for my family, I didn’t think about target audience or purpose or niche until several months or so into the blogging. I mean, it’s true that I had some idea of whom I was writing for, but if you had asked me what special niche I planned to fill, I would have come up blank.
Then again, I’m into “winging it” . . . In stark contrast, another blogger I know said he made sure he had twenty finished drafts ready to be published before he launched his own blog. I was and sitll am simply floored that anyone can think twenty posts in advance! The most I ever do is two or three . . . and there are times when I think of closing shop because I can’t think of anything new to say.
Which is my long winded way of saying that it’s all right to figure things out as you go along. 🙂 Blog what you want to blog, and readers will come!
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I like that philosophy! 🙂
As for getting blog posts together in advance, I try to have a couple of posts drafted in case I have too little time or am feeling under the weather. But twenty? Wow. I’m not sure I’ll ever be that devoted. I’d rather spend my time telling lies…I mean, writing fiction. 😉
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