How to Choose a Profitable Niche for Blogging
So, What is Niche?
A blog niche is a specific topic you’ll write (or create other types of content) about on your blog. Now, the problem is everyone has a different idea of what a “specific” topic is.
Whether you’re a travel lover, foodie, techie, bathroom singer, accountant or whatever you are in your career and life right now and planning to start a blog. first important thing and confusion is how to choose a good niche for your blog. isn’t it?
Yes, so in this post I will explain how to find a good and profitable niche for your blog to make sure your success as a blogger and online business.
Mistake Most of Newbie Blogger Make:
One thing that hold so many potential bloggers back is selecting a niche. If you think about it, the niche you select can set you up for success, or failures.
But time after time, I see bloggers making a few big mistakes when it comes to choosing a niche:
1. They choose passion without profit
I’m all for choosing a topic you’re passionate about. It’s a big part of what I suggest, but if you’re passionate about a topic that people aren’t willing to spend money on, then you won’t make money. And this is not good for any business. Right.
2. Choosing profit without passion
Then there are those who go into a niche because they know there’s a lot of money in that niche. They start creating content only to get burnt out soon after starting. That’s often because they aren’t passionate about the topic. It’s like having a job you hate only because it pays the bills.
3. Choosing niches that are too broad
Then there are those who go after a huge topic like politics or travel, news, electronic blah blah. You must avoid broad niche if you want to be a successful blogger.
While those are hot topics, they’re so broad that it’s almost impossible to stand out in the crowd and specially if you are a solo blogger even thinking about a broad niche is like a sin :). Without the ability to stand out, you are setting yourself up for failure. Ain’t nobody got time for that.
4. Choosing niches that are too narrow
Lastly, there are those who understand that they need to narrow down their topic. The only problem is that they end up going too narrow and their potential audience size is too small.
Yes, their target audience may be willing to spend money. But there aren’t enough buyers to make it sustainable. so even if you will choose a very narrow niche but search volume is not that much for your topic/niche related keywords then again. Say Big No
Then What to Select for Your Blog Niche?
Step 1: Discover your passions
This is where it all begins. If you’re going to spend a lot of energy building a blogging business, choose a passion. And if you are thinking now that I don’t know what is my passion. No problem. Here are a few questions to help you find your passion.
What do you enjoy doing?
take a pen and paper and start brainstorming some things you enjoy doing in your life. start brainstorming the things that energize you and make you feel good when you do.
What would you do for free?
If you have a lot money, what would you continue doing? would you continue your full time job? Think, what is one thing which you do even free for other people.
What people often ask you for help?
If you’re alive, chances are sometime relatives, friends and people ask you to help for somthing. Are you good at math? Do you cook tasty food?, you know about technology; you play cricket good?
Now that you have your top three, you have a good starting point. Now let’s do some real work.
Step 2: Research, Research & Research
We know what your top 3 passions are, and now it’s time to dig a little deeper. While your passion is important, it can’t build a business on its own. That’s where the research comes into play.
Here are a few things you can do to help you with your research.
Keyword Research:
Keyword research can be a powerful thing for helping you choose the perfect niche. And while there are all kinds of advanced tools out there, I like to keep things simple. Use the Google Keyword Planner to see how many monthly searches your top passions get.
What I like to say is you probably shouldn’t be choosing a niche with fewer than 1,000 monthly searches. And of course, higher is better.
The Google Keyword planner also gives you an idea of how stiff the competition is. Also, it tells you how much people are spending on ads for those keywords. My recommendation is to put your three passions (and any reasonable variations) in the tool and dig deeper.
If you want to dig even deeper into keyword research, I’ve heard good things about Long Tail Pro.
Analyze your competition
You’ve already started getting some hints about your competition. But now it’s time to do some more detailed analysis.
Go to Google and search for “Your niche + Blog”. This will show you some of the top blogs out there.
Take the top 10 blogs you find and ask yourself the following questions:
- What are they doing well?
- What are they doing poorly?
- What can you offer that’s slightly different (and even better)?
Your answers to these questions will help give you insight as you narrow down your niche
Search the “Everything Store/Ecommerce Portal”
Yes, I’m talking about Amazon, Ebay, Flipkart etc One thing I enjoy doing is searching the Kindle store on Amazon for topics.
This gives you an idea of whether people are willing to spend money for digital info in that niche. If you find lots of Kindle books in there with decent numbers or reviews, this is a good sign. If you don’t, don’t worry. This is all information you can use as you choose your niche (we’ll get there).
Also, check to see what kinds of physical products you can find for sale targeting people in your niche. This will give you an idea of options for monetization in the future.
Step 3: CHOOSE ONE (and Drill down)
At this stage, you will most likely have a general topic. When I did this kind of activity, I ended up choosing topics like Home decoration and parenting.
For you, it may be traveling, cooking or even gadgets reviews. While those are great topics to talk about, they aren’t narrow enough for a blog these days.
You want to specialize in a specific topic to help a specific person reach a specific result.
Here are some questions to help you narrow down:
What specific aspect?
Let’s say your topic is travel. The problem is that biology is such a diverse topic.There’s solo travel, international travel, family travel, honeymoon vacation, and much more. What specific aspect of travel are you going to specialize in? When I started my travel blog, I chose couple travel topic .
Choose a specific aspect of your niche to tackle and you’re on your way to a successful blogging business.
Who are you targeting?
This is one of the best ways to narrow down your niche—choose a very specific demographic. Instead of writing about travel to anyone, I would choose newly married couple to help them enjoy the travel of the world.
And you know what? When they found my content, they knew it was for them.
What specific problem are you helping them solve?
Let me tell you a secret. Well, it’s not really a secret. People will spend money to solve problems. There it is—the “secret” to your blogging business success.
Identify a problem you are going to help your target audience solve and you will see door of your success in blogging will open as soon as you start based on these research and keeping your target audiance, their problem and your interest and market trend all combined together with balance. Choose your niche!
For me it was simple – my target audience are those who want to learn digital marketing, want to be a freelancer, want to get rid of fulltime job. I teach them blogging, affiliate marketing and digital marketing.
What result will you help them achieve?
If you help them solve the problem you’re focused on, what will the result be? This is something to get clear on because it will help you in everything you do. In my case, I helped those people who want to start freelancing. so that they can start earning online.
What will that be for your blog?
Once You Have completed Your Blog Niche, research & selection you’ll be able to make the following statement:
Ask Yourself!
My niche is ___________. I help ___________ do/achieve ____________ so that they can ______________.
This may look something like this:
Example: My niche is travel. I help people decide which place is good to go and how to save money and be safe while traveling so that they can get enjoy their vacations.
