Excellent article!

I think a lot of potential writers but so many "fences" in their own way that they just make make a go of it. "Can't make a living, who's going to read my stuff, what should I write about, where can I publish, yadda, yadda...." The problem being that with so much focus on what can go wrong something probably will go wrong.

Just hang onto your regular job and start writing. And put your writing "out there," whether as blogger or guest columnist for a niche web site. Write what you're passionate about; write about things that interest you... and stop worrying about "popularity." It's a really big world out there, so even if you have expertise and passion for something super specialized... you still could end up with 50K readers, which is plenty to earn a living, if you do things right.