Almost every day I see some n00b posting on the web developer sites, "What should I write about? Give me a topic that I can make lots of money with!" Conversely, on the writing sites, I see writers who are certain they know what they want to write about -- but they don't know how to get the blog part started. This series of articles is about the nuts and bolts of starting that blog, ranging from picking a good subject to choosing domain names to building the site, and finally to monetizing the sucker once it starts to grow.

Over the course of this series of articles I'm going to develop a blog from the ground up, and we'll start with picking that all-important topic. No topic? No blog.

There are three basic types of blogs: personal, informational, and entertaining.

Personal blogs are about the blogger's life. If you have an interesting life, you might find success telling everyone else about it. Personal blogs can also be promotional, if you're a celebrity (author, actor, musician, etc.) trying to sell your work. I've purchased books, for example, because I liked the author's blog. (Cory Doctorow, I'm looking at you.)  And if you're a snarky famous author who can make taping bacon to a cat funny? You're golden.

Here's some examples of personal blogs, with writers from all walks of life:

Homesteading Housewife
Baghdad Burning
Cory Doctorow's craphound.com
WWdN: In Exile

The second type of blog is informational. Here are some examples of informational blogs, across a broad spectrum of topics:

Miss Snark, Literary Agent
Domain Name Journal
TMZ.com
LEGO Blog: The Brothers Brick

The common denominator here is that they're giving information on a specific topic -- they're full of reviews, instructions, education and data.  Name any subject at all, and I can guarantee that somewhere on the internet, somebody's talking about it in an informational blog. Being funny, and giving the blog a personal touch, helps gain readers. However, writing coherently and with sufficient detail to interest your readers is most important.

The third type of blog is pure entertainment. Lolcats 'n' Funny Pictures of Cats is a classic example. So is Cute Overload. Entertainment blogs exist purely to amuse. And many are wildly successful; there's just something about funny cat pictures that attract lots of people. I'll confess to looking for new LOLcats at least three times a day.

My personal advice for picking a topic to blog about is to chose something you're very familiar with and that you're good at. Select a topic that you can put your heart and soul into, be it a blog that is entirely jokes or a blog talking about the literary world. You need to be able to write with authority, and with a confident voice. Your blog will be much better if you know the in-jokes and the pitfalls and the little finicky details that only an expert can grasp, and you also need to be able to be accurate and reliable with your information.

(We once accidentally confused the superheroes Firestorm and Firestar in a news article and a famous Eisner-award winning comic book writer working on a Spider-Man project noticed. And then he mocked us on his high-traffic site, after we had fixed the error. There are risks to covering news on subject you're not 100% familiar with -- and neither my assistant nor I are all that good with Marvel superheroes. Ah, well, it was a free link from a highly ranked site.)
 
Despite the pitfalls, it is not at all unusual for a would-be blogger who wants to Get Rich Quick at writing (ha!) to pick a topic they're not familiar with. There's generally one of two reasons for them to do this.

•  The blogger has heard that a topic makes lots of ad revenue. Ads about the lung cancer mesothelioma on Google Adsense, for example, are reputed to have clicks in the $100 each range because of law firms competing for patients. It's a cancer caused by asbestos, and there's lots of litigation involved. I personally suspect that these high-dollar clicks are more of an urban legend than anything else, but there are lots of mesothelioma blogs created by people chasing those famed dollars.

• The writer is copying a popular blog. They want to be the next TMZ or Boing!Boing! and they try to match the format. Surely, they think, to be the next TMZ, all they have to do is read the news that TMZ posts, rewrite a few articles, and voila -- they'll start attracting the traffic that TMZ has.

The end result of picking a topic you're not already familiar with is generally less than satisfactory. Yes, a skilled writer can research almost any topic and create a coherent article about it. However, what brings readers back is that little extra "something" that comes from experience mixed with passion for a topic. You might be able to write a short article about a topic that you've no personal experience with after plentiful research. But can you maintain the quality of your blog for hundreds of posts, while being enthusiastic about the subject?

To take a mesothelioma blog as an example -- If you're not a doctor, or researcher, or patient, and you write a blog about mesothelioma, you'll simply be parroting what you've read elsewhere. Since your readers will find the same information on other blogs (and likely written with more authority, by experts) they probably won't come back and they won't tell friends. You'll struggle to attract traffic. On the other hand, a blog by a doctor who treats mesothelioma, or a patient who's trying to survive it, will bring in lots more readers. There will be that personal touch there.

If you write about what you know -- be it LEGOs or the publishing industry -- you'll have more success.

However, when deciding what you're going to write about, there are some additional issues you want to take into account.

The first is audience. Is there anyone who wants to read it? And how much competition will you have?

For example, if you're a farrier who's a total expert on the history of horseshoes from antiquity through the present ... you can probably write a fantastic blog about horseshoe history. But don't expect to get much of an audience. Your blog will likely only appeal to a small number of historians, the odd writer trying to figure out if his hero's horse would have shoes, and perhaps a few other farriers. On the other hand, if you expand your blog's focus to cover shoeing in general you'll appeal to more readers, and if you can expand it more with snarky tales about your quirky customers (think, James Herriot) and the horses you've worked on, you may start to attract the general public. Add some horse training tips, and articles on conformation, breed traits, and equine behavior, and you will appeal to ever more readers.

It's perfectly okay to have a blog with a narrow focus, if that's what you want. However, you won't have as many readers. If that doesn't matter, then skip this section about "audience" and write a blog about what's in your heart. There is nothing wrong with writing something for a very limited audience.

(There is, however, a point of diminishing returns when you broaden the focus of the blog. If you cover horses in your blog ... and also baseball and flower arrangements, your readers may go, "Huh? We're only interested in 1/3rd of the articles here and we don't want to wade through everything else to find them. Buh-bye.")

A secondary concern is how you'll monetize it.

This is only something to worry about if you want to make money. There are plenty of bloggers out there who aren't the slightest bit interested in making moola. However, if you're thinking of making advertising off the blog, you want to make sure that the focus is something that won't send advertisers screaming into the night.

These subjects are commonly forbidden by advertisers: alcohol, tobacco, gambling, firearms, drugs (legal and illegal), excessive violence, adult content, warez, and hacking/cracking. In some cases, sites with a focus on religion, politics, or certain flavors of activism may also not be allowed. Copyright violations will get you banned too, so be careful about the content you post. (None of my readers would be so stupid as to copy/paste somebody else's work into your blog without permission, right? You guys are smarter than that. However, you also have to be careful if you hire someone else to write something for you. Make sure it really is their work. We'll cover the ins and outs of hiring other people to write for you in another article.)

A blog reviewing sex toys and porn? Is right out as far as Google Adsense is concerned. But you could check -- if you really want to review adult items, you might find a distributor or two that offers commissions on their dildos. (Hint: Look for an "affiliate" link on their home page.) And there are a few banner advertisers who specialize in adult content; you'd have to ask around to find them. Plus, I hear tell that you can get, umm, free samples from certain distributors for the purpose of writing reviews and you get to keep the samples, though I have no personal experience with this. The mind boggles. That would definitely be a blog where a pen name would be required ... but I digress.

On the other hand, picking another topic as an example -- a blog about poultry, done by a poultry breeder? Might be surprisingly and fairly easily profitable with mainstream advertisers. Most advertisers wouldn't have an issue with the subject matter. There are quite a few chicken aficionados out there; more than most people realize. It's not a topic which is overly commercialized, so you might be able to swap ads for advertising purposes with other bloggers, forums, and web sites. You wouldn't have a huge amount of competition. And aside from pay-per-click and pay-per-view advertising, you could also make commissions on affiliate sales of poultry-related items from vendors on Amazon and eBay (eBay offers commissions to bloggers) -- and items like incubators, exotic hatching eggs, supplies and collectibles can be pretty pricey.

This is one example of how a "non-mainstream" subject might work.

We'll cover more about advertising and affiliate sales in the future, but for now, just be aware of common-sense issues with advertising, and think about the logistics of making the blog pay for itself when picking a topic.

Now, I said above that I'd be developing a blog from the ground up over the course of these articles. The topic I've chosen for myself is, "Exploring Arizona."

I'm an Arizona native, and I would be doing this anyway -- my home state is something I know and am passionate about. I can talk about Arizona all day.

And, for added reader interest, and to stand out from the crowd,  I can add the twist of hiking with goats. I'm mildly disabled and use a goat as a pack animal. This is unique enough that my blog should be memorable! However, aside from hiking, I can also cover special events, tourist destinations, museums, and the like. It'll be a blog about what makes Arizona special.

On the audience end, I know that there are significant numbers of potential readers -- both residents of the state who might be interested in a day trip or short vacation, and foreign tourists. We have lots of visitors who might find the blog useful, particularly if I include itineraries, advice on lodging, and mileage.

And as far as monetizing it, Adsense won't have an issue with the topic, nor will many other advertisers. There should be lots of matching ads, as well. And I may be able to sell items for a commission on the blog, ranging from camping and hiking gear, to hotel rooms and airfare, to music downloads on themes to match the articles. (Yeah, music. A little-known secret is that both iTunes and Amazon have decent commissions on music downloads.)

Over the next several articles, as I develop my new blog, I'll cover a number of subjects including registering a domain name for your blog, site design and setup (including optimizing for search engines), how to write articles that will bring in traffic, site publicity, how to deal with content thieves, and building your search engine rank. A new article will be posted every Wednesday, so watch this column or subscribe to the RSS feed.