The internet is full of advice. Some of it is fantastic, it makes you leap of your chair and start making plans to change the world. Some of it makes you sit back and think, to re-evaluate your current strategies and consider a different outlook. Some of it is just not very good.

There is a lot of talk on blogs, and especially those that are concerned with internet marketing about finding a niche and attracting traffic. The theory goes that you find a topic, or just a set of keywords that people are searching for, put up a long sales page site or 10 article blog, then slap adsense on the page to monetise it. I am sure that everyone reading this blog has seen the advice before. I am sure that this strategy would have worked great for the first 10,000 people that tried it. That is, until all of the good keywords were used up, and competition for them became tighter and tighter. This of course leads to an escalation in the amount of resources that people spend (Pay per click dollars, advertising, time) in order to get traffic to their “niche” site. Before you know it the profitable little niche that you found has been done to death by all of the “me too’s” and want to be’s. The model isn’t sustainable. It’s no way to build a business that has any long term future, or turn into a saleable asset.

To really get a niche and have a sustainable blog or online business you need to find a niche that no-one can copy easily, one that has a barrier of entry a bit higher then all the rest.

Here is another perspective : Do you think Darren at problogger, or Yaro at Entreprenuers Journey had a plan when they started? I don’t think so. Go back and read the archives for those sites, as recently as 18 months ago and see how different they are from the entities that you see today. In terms of presentation, topics, site direction, comments, overall theme they are quite different from now. The only consistency I can see is the strong personality of the great guys that run those sites. They both are confident enough in themselves to let the blog evolve to meet the different selection pressures of the internet at the time, what people are after, what other bloggers are doing.

What you need to do is write about things from your perspective, different things, new things. Start something fresh. You need to EVOLVE a niche, start of writing about what you love, and see what people react to, what they want more of, what they can’t stand. Listen to your comments, link to those that are like you, and also those which stimulate opinion, counter-opinion and genuine new thought about the areas that you are talking about.

By doing this you will create a whole new genre of blog, one that with time and effort people will be attracted too because of it’s differences, not it’s similarities to other blogs.

I have made this article part of my revolYOUtion series because the same principles can be applied to your life. Evolve the life you want, one gradual step a time. Look at your long term goals, and inch towards them day by day. Some days you may make a drastic leap forward, other days all you might do is write one email that has something to do with you end goal. But just keep progressing forward, changing your strategy to suit the time, place and situation that you find yourself in at the moment. Look for the niche in life, the place where you get value and reward for being you.

It was a goal of mine at the start of the year to spend at least a day a week working from home. In reality it has turned out that it more like a day every 3 weeks, but I am gradually starting to finish up a few contracts, and set the terms of the new ones coming up to give me a bit more discretion over my time. It’s great to be busy, and have a lot going on, but I have found the importance of staying in control of your schedule, otherwise your schedule will control you. At the moment I am also doing a wide variety of tasks for different clients. Web development, marketing, business development, seo consulting and some general IT consulting are all taxing different parts of my brains, and often have deadlines competing with each other for my attention. Not an ideal situation, but it is paying the bills and I have kept up with the challenge.

Even though I have little kids and the house is always busy, I really enjoy the variety of working from the home office when I can. It all depends on the type of work I am doing, how often I need to be on the phone, or really concentrating. Just breaking the routine of going to the office everyday gives a some variety to the week and breaks it up. You get more done and everything feels a bit more fresh.

Ideally what I want is to have work that is :

Non Time Based : Work that I can do at anytime, whenever there is time that I have allocated. I don’t want to be constrained by the 9-5 (or 8-6 in reality) of the regular work week. Sometimes I get my best work completed between 6am and 9am, sometimes between 8pm and 12pm if I have the free time. I know that there are times where I can get a ton of work done in an hour, and some where I am really pushing it to get anything done at all. Not often, but it happens.

Hopefully, as businesses move beyond the idea of keeping everyone on a digital leash, they will get more behind the idea of using the technology to free their workers and help to make them happy. Having a workforce of well rounded human beings will be just as much a part of company culture as making a profit. As long as people make the deadlines then they should have the freedom to set the hours when they work. This will also allow people more flexible time to be with family, participate in community activities and reduce the amount peak hour commuters going to work etc.

Non Location Based : Same as above, but not having an actual “workplace” where I have to be everyday. At the moment the contracts I have dictate that I am in the office of the business’s I work for about 75% of the time. I have made it a goal to reduce this by moving away from client based work and towards product based business activities. From a societal point of view, we need to decentralise the way we work. A lot of our tax dollars go towards infrastructure that must be constantly upgraded to allow everyone to work in a central location, the city. Sure, there is something to be said for working with a team, but I know in my current work that I am constantly meeting people in various locations other then the office, or over the web to have meetings and strategise, co-ordinate and collaborate.
I want to be able to take the family away for 3 weeks at a time to various places around the country, and still be able to work a few hours a day maintaining my business.

Even 5 years ago, if you talked like this people would say that you are an idealist, that you were living in fantasy land if you thought that this was possible. But modern technology, changing attitudes and just the realities of modern life are making these things possible. These practices are good for peoples mental health, good for society, good for the environment.

Start putting your plans to make them happen in action today. I know that I am.

Hi everyone, good to see a whole lot of new readers on the site. I am hitting my weekly targets easily, and showing that fantastic mathematical trend, EXPONENTIAL GROWTH.

Darren over at problogger explains it pretty clearly in this weeks video post, and I can recommend you check it out.

Over the weekend while planting my new veggie patch I had chance to ponder what the online blogosphere needs. Please feel free to correct me or add your own twist to what I have written below. These are the things that I want to see happen

* More blogs that make money, but are not about blogs making money

* Quality content that shares the owners personal views on subject, not just what everyone else is saying. That’s the whole point of social media, wouldn’t you think?

* More people commenting on each others blogs, not just the big blogs but the smaller sites in the blog community. I know it’s tough but everyone needs encouragement.

* Injection of more advertising dollars, from areas other then just adsense and affiliates. People won’t click the same ads over and over again. Fresh advertising = more clicks.

* More blogers as content producers, not just content commentators. We need more experts, and less reporters.

What we need is to make the blogosphere sustainable for future generations, not just a flash in the pan that burns up all of the dollars available. The last thing we need is for advertisers to get sick of it and start withdrawing funds and allocating them somewhere else.

Oh yeah, and before anyone gets too smart, I know that one thing we don’t need is more top 5 lists

Keep it real and positive, till next time.