Why I Abandoned the Idea of Sticking to a Niche

And I hope you’ll bear with me for that

If you’ve been reading my work for a while, you know that I sign off on every piece of writing with the following signature.

The author is an editor of Japonica and also writes on a wide variety of topics. His key topics are society, culture, modern work, and cryptocurrency, with the occasional fictional story, creative piece, or reflective essay. Discover his most-read stories here.

That’s a lot of topics to be writing about. The online writing experts always say that when you first start writing online, you should stick to a niche. Or two at most. The reason is so that you make an identity for yourself and make it easy for readers to remember you.

“Oh, he’s the go-to guy for this topic.”

Being the maverick that I like to think myself to be, I have always taken this advice with a pinch of salt.

Being an authority, or simply being a person?

In Martin Vidal’s Should a Writer Be a Person or a Brand?, an essay which I like very much, Vidal writes,

Many people view an author as a brand. Readers expect a thematic consistency throughout a writer’s works. It is an expectation that is applied by consumers to all creators.

I have often struggled with this. Sticking to one topic — or even two — bores me. If one is a brand, a company, or a business, it is unwise to move too far away from your field of expertise.

When I first started writing, someone who commented on one of my works as being clickbait told me that I should focus on writing things that I know about. That I should leverage my authority.

Yet, if I only stick to writing things that I know about, I end up becoming pigeon-holed. I didn’t start writing to be constricted again by rules telling me what I should do or not do.

I started writing online because unlike in my corporate job, I have almost pretty much 100% autonomy to write what I want. I don’t want to behave like a corporation. If that means less engagement and less authority, it’s a trade-off I’ll have to make.

Writing is my way of sharing a thought or an idea. If I get to educate or entertain people in the process of doing that, I think it’s a bonus. I certainly hope to attract readers who share this sentiment.

All writers become known for one or two topics, even if we write on many

Looking back at my best-performing articles, I wonder if I am not slowly becoming known as the person who writes about Japan.

My stories about Japan — the quirks of living in Japan, the downsides of living in Japan, the Japanese language, and so on — have become my best performing stories. And for good reason. I’ve written 22 stories that I classified under the list of “Japan.”

But, what is perhaps less obvious to the casual reader is that I’ve also written 20 articles I classified under the list of “Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency, and Related Technologies.”

Actually, I’m not even the most qualified person to write about Bitcoin and crypto and blockchain technology. I’m not a technical person, so I cannot write authoritatively about blockchain technologies. I cannot write about how to develop decentralized apps.

People who just want to know what is the token that is going to 100x don’t bother reading me either, because I make no promises. People who know nothing about crypto don’t bother reading me — mostly. It’s a weird position to be in, but I also feel the need to make the technobabble more accessible for laypeople to understand.

Other pieces are random musings and observations of culture and society, although I’ve also written more “business-type” articles on occasion. I’ve written about my work experience in consumer-packaged goods marketing. Or how I transitioned from academia to industry.

And I write personal stories and even creative pieces like fiction and poetry.

You’re thinking, “how much more random can this person get?”

I suspect I have mild ADHD. Or, in modern “woke language” — I may be neurodivergent. The way my brain is wired makes its presence felt in the words I write, and consequently, my work presents an inconsistent and even haphazard oeuvre.

The paradox of running an e-mail list when you write on a bunch of unconnected topics

I always leave a call to action for readers to sign-up to receive my stories via e-mail whenever I publish them. Although I’m a marketing professional, I feel a bit slimy for doing this.

The truth is, all of us are suffering from information overload. Technology has made the cost of sending an e-mail virtually zero. Crazy fact — 300 billion e-mails were sent in 2020.

That makes almost 820 million e-mails a day being sent every single day.

I certainly don’t need to dump more e-mail garbage into your mailbox. But I do it anyway unless I feel that the story is too personal, irrelevant, or just a promotional article for my editorial work at Japonica.

It is challenging to keep everyone on my e-mail list given that my topics are all over the place. I’m not surprised that my e-mail list has fluctuated somewhat. Has the quality of my writing dropped? I don’t think so. Maybe I started to alienate some writers by writing too much about Japan.

Or writing too many “inspirational” self-help topics. Or writing random stories on anything that comes to mind. Or maybe even writing too much on the divisive topic of crypto, which most people don’t care to read about.

Or maybe people just stopped connecting to my stories. People change after all, and I change. What I wrote yesterday won’t be what I write today.

So, for all my readers who bear with me for that, thank you. I appreciate all of you who sign-up for my stories. I promise to send you interesting stories that make your life a bit more interesting if only for a few minutes each time.

Final thoughts

Going forward, I am considering sending a mini-digest of all stories I have written for the past month in a newsletter format, rather than sending each story separately once it’s published. This should help to reduce the e-mails you get, and also help my readers choose what they really want to read.

I would appreciate it if you could let me know in the comments what you think of this idea.

Best regards, Alvin Jun 2022

The author is an editor of Japonica, a Japan-focused publication, but writes on a wide variety of topics. His key topics are society, culture, modern work, creator economy, and cryptocurrency, with the occasional fictional story, creative piece, or reflective essay. Discover his most-read stories here.

If these topics interest you, consider subscribing to receive new stories from the author via e-mail.