Want to start a blog to earn online, but aren’t sure where to start, What to write about, How to choose a niche or topic for your new blog? Or are you already running a profitable blog or online business, but just aren’t feeling it?
If either of these situations describes you, it may be time to find – or re-evaluate – your niche.
If you’re nodding your head, you’re definitely not alone. No doubt, choosing a blog niche is one of the hardest parts of starting a blog and making money from it – it makes all the technical stuff seem like a cakewalk in comparison!
You might have a million ideas bouncing around your head for your new blog. Or, you might be struggling to come up with just one. No matter what, I’m here to help you zero in on the perfect niche for your new blog that is very profitable and makes a lot of money for you.
You’ll learn the questions you need to answer to come up with a blog niche that you can grow, stick with, and maybe even monetize down the road.
Let’s dive in!
What is a blog niche?
What is a niche exactly?
A blog niche is a specific topic you’ll write (or create other types of content) about on your blog to make money.
But is that enough about it. No!
Very Important: When you decide on your blog niche, you need a clear understanding of who your target audience is.
Here’s what I mean: Let’s talk through an example of a niche.
Instead of writing for anyone that was into gaming, we can get specific about our ideal audience. Why? Because, the gaming industry is massive. If we just carved out a small chunk of that, it would have been incredible. So instead, we could have picked a specific type of game and owned it.
Something like MMORPG’s, platformers, real-time strategy, first-person shooters, etc.
Let’s look at another example…
I’m often asked whether tech is a good niche, so let’s use that as an example. If I were starting a tech blog, I’d look at the different types of people that would buy devices for specific purposes.
These could include:
- Expats
- Graphic designers
- Developers
- Recording engineers & musicians
- Writers
- Marketers
- Podcasters
And these examples would fit a lot of other niches too. A blog just about freelancing could focus solely on graphic designers. Or a blog about personal finance could be focused just on helping freelancers.
Your topic may be specific enough already and don’t need further narrowing down…
However, if the topic you choose is specific on its own, you should be good to go. For example, I’m guessing if you started a blog for food truckers, that’d probably be specific enough.
Another thing: Consider your future goals, too!
I mean, when starting a new blog, I like to keep the blog name fairly broad so I have the freedom to expand my target audience without rebranding. Yeah because rebranding would be a pain!
After reading this post, I don’t want you to be this, but, I wanted to mention it because a lot of people don’t consider this until after they launch.
Why do you need a blog niche, anyway?
Let’s start at the beginning – why does this even matter? Why do you need a blog niche in the first place?
The purpose of a blog is to share your thoughts and ideas with the world, right? So why can’t you just…share your thoughts as they come to you? Sounds simple and nice? But… It’s not!
Basically – why do you have to pick a single niche?
Well, there’s no police over the internet that will come break down your door if you don’t stick to your one niche. But this is the issue most of the time i.e your readers aren’t guaranteed to be interested in all the topics you personally love. So unless you can make yourself the main topic of the blog (which is possible, mind you), it’s difficult to build an audience and traffic that way.
On the other hand, if you stick to just one topic, you can guarantee that people who are interested in one of your posts have a high chance of being interested in all of your other content, as well.
How to find a profitable niche for your new blog?
Now that you have rightly understood what exactly is a niche and why you need it, now it’s time to find your profitable niche that would make a lot of money in the future for you.
Here are the key steps to reach there.
1. Evaluate your passions and skills
This is the most important factor that you need to keep in mind while you step your feet into the world of blogging.
Don’t just choose a niche because you’re “kind of interested” in it; to be sustainable, it should ideally be something you can see yourself being passionate about for at least 5 years or 1 years or probably for the rest of your life/1
Is this something you love to do in your free time, or that you’d do even if you weren’t getting paid for it?
This could be a great option for your niche.
Furthermore, It’s also important to think about which areas you have special skills or experience at? What do people regularly tell you you’re good at? What’s your training or education? What special skills or knowledge have you developed through your life until now?
Finding an area that you’re both knowledgeable about and that you love is the sweet spot for identifying your niche. I personally did this with my productivity calendar and it’s done very well for me.
However, this is not a done and dusted rule; There are exceptions to this rule.
2. Figure out if there’s a market/demand for your niche
Having a passion for a particular niche isn’t just enough (I wish it were!); You also want to make sure there’s a need for it; otherwise, your work will stay a hobby, which is hard to grow into a lucrative business.
One way to start figuring out the market is with some basic keyword research. The Google Keyword Planner is a great tool for this.
But How to do about it? So, just plug in some keywords related to your niche, and see which words and phrases get suggested. Narrow down the suggestions by monthly search volume, competition level, and suggested bid.
For search volume, stick to 1K-10K per month. Any less than this probably means there’s not much of a market for it; any more and it may be too hard to rank for in Search.
For competition, go with low-medium. While this means how competitive the word or phrase is in AdWords (not organic search), it can still give you a general idea of organic competition levels.
For suggested bid, higher bids often indicate a high level of commercial intent for that particular keyword. So, higher bids often mean people will pay more because they make more when they rank for those keywords.
3. Check out the competition for your choosen niche
While keyword research is important, but you’ll also want to see for yourself what the competition is like for your niche.
Google some of the keywords you’ve found to see which sites come up on the first page. You’ll find one of three things:
- There are a lot of well-known sites ranking for those keywords. This means that this niche may be oversaturated and it may be better to find one that isn’t quite so popular.
- There are no sites ranking for those keywords. This means that be careful here – this could indicate that there’s lots of opportunity, but more likely it means other people have already discovered there’s no market for this niche.
- There are some sites ranking for those keywords, but they’re generally smaller or low quality. This means that this is generally a good sign that this niche is worth pursuing. There is likely some market for this niche, and the competition won’t be too harsh.
Congratulations! up to this point, you’ve chosen a niche and scoped out the competition. Now it’s time to see if this niche is really as popular and lucrative in the future as you’re hoping.
4. Test your niche
While the market research you’ve already done is helpful, testing the market in real-time can really show you whether you’re on the right track on picking up your favorite niche or not?
But you might be wondering, How to test your niche? Well, one way to test your niche – before you set up an entire website – is to create a landing page that promotes a free info product related to your niche. This is easy using a tool like Leadpages.
Next, drive traffic to that landing page using Google Ads. This will allow you to see how much interest there actually is in your niche and/or product – both in terms of traffic and downloads you get. However, it’s important to keep in mind that if you’re getting lots of traffic through Google Ads but not many conversions, it’s more to do with your landing page copy…not the niche!
Another way to validate the selection of your niche is to survey your target market. Just promote your survey anywhere you have contact with your target market: in your guest posts in industry-related groups, on social media, via Google survey etc.
Given what you’ve learned through your PPC testing and surveys, you should now feel confident (or not!) in setting up your first niche website and social media profiles. Good luck!
How to start brainstorming a niche if you’re stuck? (Bonus)
In this whole process of selecting your profitable niche, it’s quite possible that might get stuck about finding your desired niche. This is where brainstorming can help.
Beyond just staring at a white wall and running through ideas in your brain, some good ways to come up with ideas are:
- Your room/house. Just look at the objects you own and see if any of them spark an idea.
- Your daily life. Same idea – think about what you do on a daily basis and see if anything pops out.
- Blogs you read.
- Magazine articles.
- Amazon, eBay, and other shopping sites (look at the popular products, categories, or your order history).
Final thoughts
While this 4-step process won’t guarantee you’ll succeed in your niche, it should spark some ideas and give you a great place to start. It will also help minimize the risk inherent in starting a niche site, saving you time, money and frustration.
