What are your thoughts on choosing a language, other than english, as a niche for content creation?

For some time I did translate my blogposts to my native language (Italian – I wrote directly in English because my main, although tiny, audience was international). In the long run, that proved to be time consuming, less rewarding and adding unnecessary friction to my Wordpress setup (I later switched to static sites based on Jekyll, much simpler/streamlined). As others have mentioned, I guess it all boils down on profitability: in my niches, Photoshop color correction and extensibility development, Italians are very (very!) few and generally already used to participate to international discussions; the added values of me writing in Italian was negligible. I've got very few requests to translate my software development books in Italian but I've always refused to undergo such process; and I've never regretted that decision.

Hello Arsène, I'm also a francophone and I had the same problem as you when I started writing. As acqui_c said, it depends a lot on the niche you're writing for. As far as I'm concerned, I enjoy writing in both languages so I switch depending on the subject and the added value I think my article can address. In my case, I write a lot about the African tech ecosystem. I recently wrote an article on the backstory of mobile money, and I translated it in both languages because I know that there are not many articles in English on the subject and that my point of view could be interesting for both English and French speakers. On the other hand, when I wrote about crypto money, my article was only in French because there are already enough articles in English on the subject.

I think it's up to you to evaluate the value you want to bring through your articles. Writing in English will make you a small fish in a big pond, and writing in French can make you a big fish in a small pond. But writing in French also requires a lot more patience, as it is harder to find an audience. My articles in English, for example, have more views. For instant gratification, pick English. But if you think long term, there is a lot to win by writing in french.

I think it depends a lot on your niche. It happened the same to me (I am a native Spanish speaker). Tried developing programming content, but realized that most developers are very used to searching for resources in English. Therefore, having it available in a different language was of no competitive advantage, if not even worse. But, in the remote past, I was writing a lot about science. In that case writing in Spanish was my differentiator lot's of people interested didn't speak English.

I have also found communities that feel more at ease exchanging ideas in their own language. In this case it makes complete sense because you are building a specific community, around a topic and a language. If it is for content creation, though, you really need to see if there is an actual advantage in your niche. If you are targeting bilingual people, probably not. Also take into account that speaking English sometimes correlates with education level or economic resources, which may have a role on the content you are creating.

Taking business perspectives aside, I think we should encourage more creation in the wealth of languages we have in the world and stop defaulting more and more to English.

Try experimenting with it - take 1 or 2 of your posts with the highest traffic and translate them and then see what kind of traffic the translated versions get.