When starting a blog, the first issue that needs to be dealt with is topic. What are you going to blog about?

For some the answer is easy. Perhaps you are an expert on stamp collecting, or photography, or mountain climbing. Done. Easy.

For others finding the right topic is difficult. So, a more general type blog results.

Whatever you decide to blog about, your audience (the people who read your blog) is going to make a big difference in the number of RSS subscribers that your blog has - at least initially.

I started my blogging career with a blog about parenting issues. This parenting blog has been around for about 8 months and my RSS subscribers hover around 40. For part time blogging - I am proud of that number but it is nothing to write home about. In contrast, this blog (Blog Resources Online) - which is about blogging, has been up for less than three months and has 25 subscribers. Oh yeah - I am a small fish in a big pond but I am getting there!

Clearly, this blog is experiencing faster growth than my parenting blog. Why? It definitely has something to do with my audience. Most bloggers (my audience for this blog) are familiar with RSS while non-bloggers (my audience for my parenting blog) are not as likely to use a reader.

As a new blogger, should this influence your choice of topic? If you are passionate about you write about, then it should not. But if you are undecided then you might want to take this into consideration.

Another option, is to test out a few different blogs and see which one is working best for you. If you are using a free service like Blogger, the only investment is your time. If you are paying for hosting, many hosting providers like Bluehost, allow you to host more than one site on each account. So all you need is a few domain names to get up and running.

Yesterday I posted some good tips for increasing blog traffic.