The blog Mesh Body Addicts is making the news. SL Blogger Support (Canary Beck) has an article about its success, 85,000 page views per month. The article is about blogs that serve a niche. See: How one Second Life blogger niched her blog.
Um certo cais
A certain pier
Thinking about the idea of making a niche blog they omit a major point. In a changing world, your niche may, likely will, become passé or vanish altogether. I used to cover viewers in great detail. If a person was considering changing to a new viewer, this was the blog to read before changing. But, with the arrival of Oz Linden and enforcement of the ‘shared experience’ concept the Lab has pretty much taken control of viewer development. The whole field of viewer development changed, at least for what it means to me.
I wrote about viewers because I was interested in them. I was questing to find the best and newest ideas. With the split into V1 and V2 or 3 user interfaces it became harder to change between some viewers. Learning different UI’s is a pain. And best seems to have changed to which has added the latest Lab released features. The cutting edge viewer is the Lab’s RC Viewers. And 75%+ of users are running Firestorm. The Firestorm Team has classes and online tutorials. Torley has just made some nice tutorials for the Viewer Managed Marketplace. So, I’ve lost interest in the viewer niche and I think there is less need for that information. Every 3rd month or so Inara does a good tutorial on some newly released feature of a viewer. But, we used to have a need for almost weekly information.
I moved toward technical coverage of Second Life advances for the not so geeky. But, that stream of information is drying up. I am watching others covering SL tech diversify into travel, fashion, and whatever to have something to write about. The rate of change in SL is slowing and Sansar is still a secret.
While filling a niche can give you a measure of success it is putting all your eggs in a single basket and when the world changes or once you have competition your niche vanishes.
Thanks for commenting on the post, Nalates 🙂 I’m familiar with the point you make. As someone who advises business people (and SL bloggers 😉 on niching their activities, I’ve encountered this concern many times.
In such a fast-changing world, you’re right, one’s niche may dwindle in size, or vanish altogether. This is why it’s critically important to not become complacent in the face of the inevitable changes that take place in markets around you. When change comes, and it always will, if one can resist the urge to imagine things will always be as they are, you’ll see the changes coming so that you can adapt to them, so that you can penetrate emerging niches (as your talents allow and the market dictates).
One day, mesh bodies will likely also become obsolete. If Daria is smart, she’ll keep her eye on emerging trends while serving her niche. When she’s ready, she’ll be able to take a lot of what she’s learned to the next market. Far better to enjoy the success a niche enables, than to shun that high opportunity niche solely because it may one day cease to exist.
I’m wondering if you ever heard of/read the book “Who moved my cheese?” It’s all about this particular problem with becoming too comfortable in one’s niche.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDNhEYpBPbY
Enjoy! And thank you, again, for reading and sharing my articles. All the best.
Thanks for the reply.
I haven’t read the book. Thanks for the referral.
Thanks for your writing.