Why the Micro Niche Wins Before You Have a Track Record
Here is the challenge facing you when you pitch a request for a guest post to a macro niche publication: there are fifty other writers who currently have a byline in relevant places, write on the same topics, and have years of editorial groundwork to lean on — and the editor has no particular reason to choose you instead. That's why your pitch on "health and wellness" gets buried under far more qualified competing submissions, regardless of how enthusiastic an opener email you send.
Not so with a micro niche. When you pitch the small, very specific site, you're immediately in a much better position. This holds true both for the basics of getting a guest post published and, more importantly, for broader topical authority building downstream. Here's why.
To start, you're much more likely to get a guest post slot from a micro niche publication. When you submit your query, you're competing with fewer writers. Those who do pitch the micro site are likely to have less topical expertise (a problem not endemic to this approach, but one that definitely affects the long-term viability of your own topical authority, discussed below). Most crucially, you can demonstrate a closer fit with the target audience for your post. You can speak directly to their needs in greater depth than you ever could for a larger, more diverse audience. In short, you have a much higher chance of getting accepted for a guest post, and it won't require you to jump through as many hoops. This is important not only for getting your foot in the door but also for the value of the post to the receiving site. A micro-niche publication gets precisely what it needs from your post — a deep, targeted piece of writing focused on a narrow set of problems it has, and an exact set of solutions for those problems. By contrast, a macro-niche site is receiving a much more generic post, which is less valuable both to the audience and the publisher. Even a single piece of writing can help if you're targeting a very specific site. That's why, in the context of getting a guest post published, a micro niche is so much more valuable.
One final point before moving on: when people read this argument, the most common counter point is, "But I'll have nothing to write about!" This is why I specify a fairly narrow micro niche. Within that, there should be dozens, if not hundreds, of questions your audience will have. If you can't come up with thirty specific problems your niche audience will have, you're not ready to pick a proper niche. You need to think at a more specific level and target a very particular set of problems that your audience will have.
Think from the recipient's point of view. If you're targeting a larger publishing site, you're competing against many other writers. Many of them are targeting the same broad niche that you are. There are dozens of other topics you could write about. You're just one voice among hundreds, and the editor has no reason to choose you over anyone else. Even if you manage to get past the slush pile, you're much more likely to get a second chance from the same publisher than from a larger one. That's the value of a micro-niche publication. You can offer the editor a few very specific ideas for posts that will engage their audience. You're targeting their very specific problems, and you have an idea for how to solve them. The post will be useful and relevant, and therefore valuable to the publisher. Specificity wins out over breadth. If you can demonstrate that, then from the perspective of the publisher, there is no reason to say no. If the writer is targeting a narrow niche, and the publication fills a specific need for that niche, then they're both speaking the same language. The publisher will recognize that, and it will help them decide to accept the writer.
This does not mean that macro niche publications aren't a valid option. It means that, for most people, they're probably not a good option right away, and that they're best pursued later, after building a track record.
Macro publication editors are looking for writers who already have a substantial following, and who have demonstrated topical expertise. They don't want to waste their time with anyone else. When you're first starting out, you need to build that topical expertise, which means publishing on narrower and narrower topics. That way, when you're ready to move to a macro publication, you have a body of work that demonstrates your expertise in the topic area. The same goes for your relationship with other editors. If you have experience working with other editors, and can demonstrate that you were a good partner to them, you're much more likely to get noticed by a macro publication. They trust their peers, and are therefore willing to listen to someone new based on that recommendation. You can't get that track record anywhere else if you're targeting very broad topics. You need to narrow your focus so that each post builds on the previous one, demonstrating your knowledge of the topic.
There's also a practical SEO reason to focus on micro niche publications in the early going. Google has been very clear that in their eyes, articles written primarily to promote another site (usually by getting a backlink) are much less valuable than articles that were written to inform or educate the audience of the receiving site. By its very nature, writing a guest post in a micro niche publication leans you towards the latter category. You're writing for an audience that is interested in very specific problems, and you're providing them with specific solutions. This is good SEO practice, and it puts you in a much better position to benefit from your guest post than if you'd targeted a much broader site. In that case, you might have been writing primarily to promote yourself, rather than to educate the audience of the receiving site. The more irrelevant the publication is to your post, the more likely it is to hurt you in the long run. A micro niche publication reduces the risk of that happening. If the publication and the post are both very relevant to the same niche, the writer wins.
A Practical Rule of Thumb for Choosing What to Write About
When you're looking at a list of possible sites to target for guest posting, and you can't decide between a large general one and a smaller, more specific one, here's a question to ask yourself: Can I think of three specific problems that the readers of this site have, that I can address in a post? If yes, then you should go with that site. If no, move on. This rule of thumb will serve you much better than any other approach to selecting sites for guest posting.
The niche doesn't have to be very small, but it needs to be specific enough that you can address very particular problems that your audience will have. The goal is to publish posts that have value to a real audience. Once you've done that, those posts will serve as endorsements of your topical expertise, letting you move on to larger sites and more general topics. But it all starts with finding a niche that's small enough that you can speak directly to the problems it has, while still being large enough that you're able to actually get a post published somewhere. The people who are still struggling at the first step are the ones who can't narrow their focus enough, and therefore end up without a post published anywhere. The people who are successful are the ones who are able to identify a specific audience and speak directly to their needs, using the language of that niche and addressing the problems it has. All of this allows you to get published, which in turn lets you move on to the next stage.
