Choosing Your Blog Type
September 19th, 2007 | This article was viewed 824 times so far...
Having problem deciding what type of blog to run? Have no fear, goldfries is here! In this article, I will be jabbering about the various blog types.
Overview of Blog Types
There are generally 3 type of blogs.
- Personal
- Corporate
- Niche
More About Blog Types
Alright, let’s get down and dirty on the blog types I mentioned earlier.
Personal Blogs
The easiest type of blog to run and the best choice of blog type those who want to get their feet wet in the blogosphere. 
Personal : Jayhan’s colorful blog.
Being the easiest type of blog to run also mean that it’s the most common type of blog as well. So does this mean personal blogs aren’t going to be a splash? Certainly not!
Think again, there’s plenty of personal blogs that have huge readership. What sets a personal blog apart from the ocean of personal blog is the personality of the author. So if you run a personal blog, remember to make it interesting, and make it YOU!
Here are some examples of personal blogs
- Jayhan Loves Design & Japan - self explanatory, isn’t it?
- The excavated notions - Ie Tjer and his amazing writing skill.
- Good Boy Gone Bad - Cedric and his personality filled posts.
- Stuff By Sarah - Sarah’s blog, comes with tutorials too!
- Kenny Sia - The most successful personal blog in Malaysia (not sure about Asia)
- goldfries : in person - My personal blog
I couldn’t miss out this one.
Corporate Blogs
Corporate : Dell reaches to the crowd.
Very straight-forward, a blog that is used by companies. Internal Corporate Blogs allow discussion within the company (call it a virtual discussion room perhaps?) while External Corporate Blog caters for the PR side of the company - great for making announcements, explanations, news and so on so forth.
Here is an example of a corporate blog
- Direct 2 Dell - DELL’s corporate blog
Corporate blogs are still at its infancy compared to personal and niche blogs but they’re definitely making their way deeper into the blogosphere. 
It won’t be long as more companies realize the power of corporate blogging and how it could help their business.
Niche Blogs
Niche: goldfries, a niche blog in action.
A Niche blog is probably the most difficult of blog type to run as you require sufficient knowledge on the subject you decide to blog on. A good example of a Niche Blog would be this site itself. From the categories listed on the right side of this blog, you’ll see that goldfries.com is focused on Computing and Information Technology.
Here are some examples of niche blogs
- Websites Made Simple - Danny and his posts on web design and blogging.
- Friedbeef’s Tech - James’ blog focuses on using Technology.
- My Movies Blog - Abubin writes about movies.
As you can see, Niche blogs cover a particular range of closely related topics. Quite often the topics could overlap and in this case we see goldfries.com covers similar topics as Websites Made Simple and Friedbeef’s Tech.
Again, what sets Niche blogs apart are the personality of the authors.
What About PhotoBlogs, VideoBlogs and Audioblogs?
These are NOT blog types. They are ways a blog’s content being presented.
When someone says I have a PhotoBlog, it means that their blog contains more photos than text. Same goes to VideoBlogs and AudioBlogs. I’m sure many of you have heard of Podcast as well. Again, these are just the many ways of presenting the contents of a blog.
Does Writing About My Puppy Make My Blog Niche?
Writing about your puppy makes it a personal blog. Writing about how take care of puppies makes it niche. 
Writing about cooking makes it a niche blog. Writing about every other thing you know, including cooking, makes it a personal blog. Then again if your topics are about being a housewife (which includes cooking) then it goes back to being a niche blog.
See, what makes it a niche blog is the content. If your topics are within the ballpark, you’re writing a niche blog. If your topics range from computing to gardening to pet keeping to sex to religion - then it’s not a niche blog anymore.
Have You Decided?
Deciding a blog type isn’t difficult. The choice lies between Personal and Niche. A Corporate blog is a no brainer, if it’s not being used by a company - it’s not a corporate blog.
So ask yourself - what do you like to write about? Do you have an interesting lifestyle to share? Do you plan to rant about everything under the sun? Or are you just comfortable writing about what you bake every weekend?
Your blog should be about something you have passion for, something that you would like to share to the world and for the world to learn from you.
Remember to read the rest of my articles and guides too, especially What Makes Content A Good King? and Careless Choice of Blog Address.
September 19th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
and you miss out the last part, you will try your best to blog in under any circumstances :p , and as for personal and niche, one doesn’t have to stick to one blog. You could have manage more than 1 blog; 1 for niche 1 for personal or whatever you wants to blog. But make sure that you keep your reader updated. If not, there is no point of having a blog while you update it 3 month per post.
September 19th, 2007 at 12:28 pm
Hehe. I prefer to not lump all the topics together.
And I think it’s clear that a person can have more than one blog, after all - 2 of the examples given were my blogs.
1 niche, 1 personal. 
September 19th, 2007 at 1:17 pm
I was wondering does GOLDFRIES.com has any future vision or intention to make it similar to Lowyat.net?
Does it? or has its going to have a different approach of online concept?
or just a personal blog to promote the support behind this blog?
Company blog - interesting. Hmm… perhaps there is an IDEA could be further develop over there…hmm. (pondering and wondering…)
September 19th, 2007 at 2:47 pm
Thought about it but having a forum would render the blog comments pointless.
goldfries.com is just my way of reaching to the public by using blog engine to share and educate.
It will maintain that way as I enjoy the interaction with my readers.
September 19th, 2007 at 9:19 pm
thanks for the mention of my blogs in your article. Very nice and informative article.
September 19th, 2007 at 10:14 pm
Thank you so much for mentioning my post!
Well Kennysia is indeed a successful blogger in Malaysia, I look up on him because he really has that kind of power to allow his readers to keep coming back! Love this post! Thanks a lot!
September 20th, 2007 at 12:52 am
No problem guys, I gave examples of what I found memorable.
You guys did a great job by making your blogs different with personality.
September 25th, 2007 at 6:52 am
[...] about blog lacking traffic are those who run personal blogs. Remember what I’ve mentioned in Choosing Your Blog Type about personal blogs? The easiest type of blog (referring to personal blogs) to run and the best [...]
October 24th, 2007 at 10:33 pm
Thank you goldfries, your article make me clearly understand differentiate between personal and niche
October 25th, 2007 at 1:09 am
Glad to hear that MerCuRy, I hope you’ll get to figure out your blog direction soon.
Just blog the topic you’re good at.
October 25th, 2007 at 5:04 am
[...] - What Makes Content A Good King? - Choosing Your Blog Type [...]
December 12th, 2007 at 4:34 pm
Ok.. This post might be old. But lately, I’ve this thought of creating a blog with my own domain. Of course, this would be for my personal past-time/fun of it. Any guidance from webhosting to domans registry to god-knows-what?
December 17th, 2007 at 9:22 am
You could use domain registrars like Godaddy. Web hosting? Find a reputable host and you’ll be fine.
Just get the cheapest package available.
December 17th, 2007 at 3:52 pm
do you think 1GB webspace and 20GB data transfer would be sufficient for newly wannabe blog?
December 17th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
Definitely enough!
Most websites don’t even reach 1GB per month data transfer and barely touch 100MB space usage even for the a few years.
for your info, goldfries.com used only 5.96 GB data transfer last month. Disk spaced used? Less than 200MB so far.
December 17th, 2007 at 4:17 pm
woppie.. now to think of domain name *headache*
December 17th, 2007 at 4:21 pm
Hehe. you choose a memorable one.
December 17th, 2007 at 11:09 pm
Regarding about blogs, do we need to register for the Comment box, like this one?
December 18th, 2007 at 10:02 am
Oh, the comment part comes with the blog engine.
December 18th, 2007 at 12:49 pm
is there any difference between *.com and *.net ?
July 2nd, 2008 at 3:47 am
Ah.. I finally learnt the difference between personal and niche blog(also understand what’s a niche blog now haha) Finally had time to browse through during my long awaited holiday T.T and thus gonna start a niche blog soon too ^^ Thanks for the info!
July 2nd, 2008 at 4:13 am
Let say if you writing about IT stuff but then add on about camera review, it become personal blog..?
July 2nd, 2008 at 10:07 am
not really… it is more like “add-ons” to the blog… or maybe u can call it “diversify” coz u wont be able to blog about same it stuffs all the time… for example.. u blog about the graphics card…. when nvidia n ati doesnt release anymore new graphics card for few months.. that means u wont be able to write anything for few months…
July 2nd, 2008 at 11:26 am
IT stuff? It’s a hell wide field. From external hardware like keyboard and mouse until the very internal hardware like RAM, heatsink etc can be blogged in your blog. So, it’s still an IT blog.
anyway, IT blog doesn’t mean you have to only write about IT stuff. of course you can add in your daily life experience. it’s your blog, the final decision is still up to you