But instead I’ll tell you about my soon to be “opened” blog and offer ONE lucky winner $100.00. I know you can’t wait to hear about the new blog so we’ll talk about that for a few moments first and then I’ll tell you how you might have a chance of winning $100.00 from me.

I’ve been resisting blogging in a niche, enjoying the freedom a nicheless blog affords. That however is about to change. That’s right I have decided to go into a niche. I’ll answer some questions I expect to receive about this change.

What niche?

The topic of the niche will be snakes in general, Ball Pythons in particular.

Why that topic?

There are a few reasons I’ve chosen this topic, but taken as a whole it really goes to the heart of how you should choose your niche, whatever that might be. My process was as follows:

I considered various topics

I started by asking myself a few questions:

• What topics do I know enough about to teach other people about?
• What topics interest me enough to keep talking about them?
• What topics aren’t saturated in the blogging world?
• What topics will I enjoy learning more about as I go?
• What topics will benefit others by virtue of more education?

I narrowed the topics down

Once I had decided on the topics I then had to narrow it down to just one particular topic. That process looked something like this:

• What topic do I just not understand enough to write about? Biblical studies
• What topic do I know about, but I know I won’t stick with it? Pit Bulls
• What topic am I just not interested in at this point? Make money blogging

I narrowed my focus

By now I had decided I would be blogging about snakes. The next step was to dial in the niche microscope and decide exactly what snake species I would blog about. This led me to asking myself even more questions.

• What snakes do I have hands on experience with? Burmese pythons, Reticulated pythons, Columbian boas, Ball pythons, King snakes, Corn snakes, and a few others
• What snake can I get my hands on on short order without breaking the bank? Corn, Kings, Boas, and Balls
• What snake can I support in terms of housing and food? Balls,Corns, and Kings
• Which snake out of those do I prefer? Ball pythons

By now I had decided the general topic (snakes) and a targted niche (Ball pythons). I had even considered further focusing my niche to the breeding and husbandry of Ball pythons, but decided I would rather not limit my options by getting that tightly focused.

That in a nutshell is why I decided to start my new blog about Ball pythons. Nothing fancy, just some educated consideration. The moral is to blog about what you know, blog about what you’ll stick with, and blog about what someone will read.

What about this blog?

This blog will remain largely unchanged. I will continue posting 3 to 5 articles per week on this blog as I have been doing. And here’s a special announcement for everyone to makes sure you’re paying attention: Be the 150th person to subscribe to this blog via email rss (link in upper right corner) and I’ll send you a $35.00 Amazon dot com gift certificate. I’ll let everyone know a winner next Thursday (and this time I’ll be kind and gentle about it…) If it hasn’t reached 150 by then we’ll keep going until it does. Now back to our regularly scheduled blogging. You’ll notice a lot more guest posts here. If you’d like to submit a guest post for consideration please feel free to email it to me in full and I will review it. If I like what I see I will post it on this blog.

When will your new blog be up and running?

I plan to have it up and running by January 1. It might be up before that depending on how long it takes me to finish up writing the pillar posts

What’s this I hear about $100?

Back here again are we? Ok here’s how it will work. On the day that the new blog opens I will write an article with about 20 questions (give or take 5 or so) pertaining to information found in the pillar posts on the new blog. Answer the questions by sending an email to the address supplied in the contest article and one of two things will happen. Either you will qualify, or not (meaning you’ll either get ALL the questions right, or you won’t). If no one qualifies for the prize by answering the questions correctly the contest ends and noone wins the money (or in my case loses it). On the other hand if only one person answers the questions right they’ll be sent $100.00. If multiple people answer properly I’ll assign each person a number and choose the winner using random.org. Think about it all you need to do is answer some questions and you might be able to win $100.00! Think how nice that extra $100.00 will come in after your spending sprees over Christmas!

Will you tell us when the new blog is open?

Sure can. I’ll announce it on this blog among other places

Do you think the new blog will succeed or fail? Why? Will $100.00 encourage you to read the articles? You answers won’t matter the offer is on the table (so to speak) and you’re eligible to enter regardless of what your answers are.