As a blogger I am always open to answering questions from readers and subscribers. In fact one of my goals for 2010 and beyond is to do more of this in an open forum so that others can benefit from the information provided.

I received this question from one of the members via email a couple of days ago, and wanted to share this with you as well.

“I’m new to blogging and like much but not sure what to blog about. I have many thoughts but need to see if they are good thoughts for subject. How can I see if this is good ideas?”

I have responded to the questioner and in fact, we had a great chat via Gmail and got to know one another fairly well. They are aware of this post, but I will only include someone’s name if they request it.

Anyhow, what they were trying to do was identify a means of finding a niche without having to buy a tool or software. They wanted something that would be fun and easy, so I immediately thought about Google’s Wonder Wheel. This tool was released in May of 09, so it is not totally new, but certainly worth a look.

Now to explain how to use this free tool in a blog post using only text, would make for a really long post. So I located a great video by Zeb Olsen that explains this very nicely.

Before viewing this 7:30 video, I encourage you to ask any blogging related questions you may have as well by leaving them in the comment section below or utilizing the Contact Form of this blog at any time. There is no such thing as a “dumb question” so don’t handcuff yourself in that regard.

Now on to the video.

As you can see, the free tool that Google has made available is very powerful. There is no sign-up or anything to use it, just go to Google’s search page and enter a word or term then select “show options”. You will find the wonder wheel link in the left navigation column. This is a really great way to perform some market research and all for free.

Enjoy!

Image: Flickr Creative Commons : Troy McCullough