26 Mar 2005

Empty Niches

With all the blogging (and increasingly podcasting) hype, and talk of how many millions of people are getting involved, it’s easy to assume that everything’s been done and there’s no point bothering unless you’re willing to settle for a miniscule audience consisting of a couple of supportive friends, your eagle-eyed boss, and that stalker you hoped you’d shaken off. But this year a couple of new weblogs has shown how some niche topics can quickly attract a strong following:

• Fontleech simply covers free fonts available on the web. Since launching in late February it’s built up 364 subscribers in Bloglines alone and its stats show over 67,000 visits. Not bad in just over a month, eh?
• Preshrunk features links to T-shirts you can buy online. It appeared late last year but has already built up over 600 Bloglines subscribers, has thousands of inbound links, and was nominated for Best New Weblog in the Bloggies. I really should get round to buying that ‘futura’ shirt…

Neither site is going to directly make anyone rich or famous, but having an audience is rewarding in itself (getting emails from readers, even stupid ones, is always fun) and can lead to all sorts of other opportunities. If you have a niche interest and the urge to communicate then give it a go for a few months and see what happens.