Blogging is one of the best ways to follow your passion. If you love doing something and want to share with others across the globe, just start a blog about it after you choose a profitable blog niche.
When you start your blogging journey, the first obstacle you will face is choosing a good blog niche. Finding the right niche is crucial else there are high chances that your blog might be overlooked and lost in the crowd.
What is a Blog Niche?
Many of the beginner bloggers are not much aware of the term “niche”. So, what exactly the word “niche” mean?
In simple terms, it is nothing but a specific topic about which you want to write and share your thoughts with others.
Before starting with blogging, always search for a niche to attract the target audience. But, simply searching a niche is not enough, to build a good blog, it is necessary to understand what a good blog niche requires.
While beginning with the blog, always give an appropriate name so that the audience has a clear understanding of what they are about to read and receive. For example, if you are planning to write about parenting, then choose a good blog name for your blog which fits the context of parenting niche. Inside your blog categories, you need to include the topics which your audience would love to read like various parenting tips, product suggestions, health advice, home remedies, etc.
However, if you start writing about gaming all of a sudden, you will only confuse and drive away your users. Since this does not meet your target audience’s expectations. Selecting and choosing the right blog niche is very curial before taking blogging seriously.
Study Your Audience
This is the initial step when it comes to deciding the right niche. The best practice is to know what actually people want to read. Understand their queries and suggestions.
Always everyone wants to focus on being the better version like better parenting, better-eating habits, and a better strategy to make consistent money or better health practices to stay fit and healthy. Hence studying the topic and its audience before choosing it for blogging is equally essential.
The Need for a Blog Niche
You might be thinking, why do you even have to choose a blog niche? Well, there is no rule like that, but if you choose a niche, it comes with some added benefits.
The main purpose of the blog is to write about your passion, views, thought and innovative ideas. When you put it on the web, the same concepts and ideas are shared with the entire world. Hence, once you start blogging about a single niche, you create a brand about your topic, and since it is your brand, you become an expert in that niche. You can always to be the jack of all trades, but it pays to be the master of one.
As I said earlier, there is no such written rule that you need to pick a single niche to get started, but people who choose a blog niche have seen more success rate and growth in the long term statistically.
When you write about different topics, it is not necessary that your audience would be interested in reading about all the topics which you are writing. Hence, always choosing a blog topic based on audience interest. If you follow a single niche, it is guaranteed that the audience will look forward to reading your post and follow the suggestions too.
Also Read: Things you must know about Blogging!
So we now have a clear understanding of what a niche refers to and why do you need a niche. Now, we can go ahead and understand how you can choose a profitable niche for your blog.
How to choose a profitable blog niche?
Here is a list of all the things you need to take care of when you are planning a niche for your blog. Let’s start with it.
1. Passion
Blogging is all about following your passion and writing about it. You cannot be consistent if you do not enjoy the process. Buy a domain, build a website and customize the design and choose the blog niche which makes you go all excited.
When you are writing, it should not be all about your users, but it should be an exciting experience to you as well. Many people quit blogging after a few months, totally due to lack of interest and you know what is common between all these failed blogs?
Yes, you guessed it right! Choosing a blog niche just by popularity and monetization is where people were wrong most of the times.
Hence, always focus on choosing a blog topic which motivates you to learn and connects with your audience.
Always think towards the bigger goal. Begin with thinking about your passion and what excites you. Would you enjoy doing the same in the coming years? If yes, then go ahead with the plan to blog it. Â
If you are not able to come down to a conclusion, you can start with eliminating some prominent blog niches which you are not comfortable blogging about. It can be due to many reasons like you are not much passionate about it, and you are not sure about discussing the same with your followers and readers.
You can consider only the things that you enjoy doing and would also like to learn about the same shortly. This passion for learning will help you to dive deep in the niche. During the brainstorming session, you can identify the list of niches which suit you best. If you are excited about them, go ahead with the plan.
2. Profitability and Popularity
If you are passionate about blogging, you definitely would also want to monetize the same. To earn via your blog, you need to focus on choosing topics for blogging which falls under a profitable niche. The niche should be profitable to witness monetization. When you earn a good income via blogging, you also feel motivated to work consistently and passionately.
The best possible way to choose a profitable blog niche is to do keyword analysis. If you can notice the presence of AdWords on specific targeted keywords, then it is surely is a profitable niche. This niche can offer benefits in the long term when you blog about it.
Even when you have a brilliant idea about the blog niche, you might sometimes struggle to attract the target audience. Hence, it is always important to do the research well about the niche, check the size and profitability of the niche. Look for at least top 5-7 best keywords for your niche.
Make sure to tap the niche which has a minimum of 10k monthly searches that includes the top 5 keywords as well. There are plenty of free as well as premium tools which can help you out with the total number of searches, and the same can also be used to identify the value keywords.
But while we are looking for a niche which has a good profitability score, do not forget to keep your interests in mind. You do not want to end up with your mind wrapped around money and forgot about the interest that made you start your blog.
So, look for a profitable niche that you are interested in.
3. Research
To validate the profitability of the website, also do the necessary market research. Â If you want the right solution to your question on how to choose the blog topic, always do detailed market research. Â If you enjoy writing about mountaineering as your hobbies, then you can blog about it, but it is wise to see how are the existing blogs are doing around it.
To check the audience and competition just keep a tab on the Google Trends. When you type the keyword “Mountain climbing” you can notice the number of interests shown by people. This analysis will give you an idea about how many audiences are interested to read about mountain climbing.
In fact, you can study the rise and decline of the trend, avoid the topics which don’t see any growth. Always look for a blogging niche which is stable, and the user demand continuously rises. This will help your blog to notice real organic traffic for years.
If you are looking forward to getting the accurate search volume and data go for the premium tools. This is only advisable once you get an idea about the traffic, keywords, search volume, target market, etc. Once you get a good idea, you can go ahead and do a more detailed analysis of the topics that come under your blog niche.
For beginners, Google Keyword Planner works the best. Begin with entering the primary keywords and get the suggestion of keywords on screen. Sort out the top 5 best keywords for your target niche and look for the search volume for each of the keywords. Â When you add all of them together, you can get a clear idea about the average monthly reach of the market.
Also Read: How to implement SEO in Blogging?
4. Choose a Small Niche
Choosing the blog topic for small search volume is comparatively effective and helps to reduces the competition. Look for the topic on Google search page and read the total number of search results appearing on the topic about the niche you want to write.
Like the topic “mountaineering ” is vast and there are many websites which are your competition too. To avoid competition and facing a tough fight with high authority websites, always look for a small niche.
There are lots of examples of blogs who made their authority in their own small world. Instead of coming to a really challenging niche, it is good to come to a niche which has less competition.
Even if you plan to launch your huge blog, start by choosing a sub-niche which is less competitive and work your way out of that niche. For example, if you are planning to write about “Sports”, we all know that it is one of the most competitive niches out there and with the super strong blog networks existing out there like ESPN and SPORTS, it has become almost impossible to infiltrate. But if you still want to go for the big arena, your best bet is to establish your authority in a particular sport like Cricket and then work your way up to other sports as well.
If you wish to go directly for the Big Niche “Sports”, it will take huge writing efforts from multiple writers, and that too will not create much effect as it takes times to build authority in a domain.
5. Competition Analysis
It is always best for the business to have potential competition. It means, the blog niche is in buzz and people are willing to pursue the same. The bloggers who are following the same niche are surely not competitions, it is advisable for you to get in touch with them shortly to have a better understanding of the market.
To track down potential competitions, always do a Google search for the niche. You can notice all the top blogs which are currently targeting the niche you have finalized. You should witness at least top 5- 7 blogs focusing on the niche which you want to pursue.
Apart from Google, also visit Facebook and other social media sites like Twitter and search for your niche. Check their followers count on Facebook, a great niche can easily pull at least 1000-1500 Facebook fans. The same is applicable for twitter as well. On Twitter, you can notice many references and hashtags targeting your niche.
Also Read: How To Write a Blog Post That Converts: Seven Modern Rules For Sales.
If there are any offline magazine, check for them as well. If someone is especially creating a paper magazine focusing on your niche, then it is possible that it is soon going to trend and people are actually going to search for it to get some authoritative information.
You can Google the same as well to get more details and topic which they are focusing on. Â If you even find few positive factors and points about your niche, then it is a positive sign that the niche which you have selected has good potential in the online world.
6. Monetization
Are you planning to start blogging on as a hobby or want to monetize it, the decision is totally yours!
But blogging is always a cool and reliable way to make money, you can easily earn some extra cash by following your passion. In fact, many actually are making a living by blogging about their hobby and passion.
Unfortunately, too many bloggers simply follow a random niche to make money. They pretend to have knowledge but often fail to impress the audience in the long run. After some time you might end up being not interested or running out of ideas to keep the audience engaged.
If you have found a blogging niche that you enjoy talking about, then start blogging about it, track your niche on social media platforms and offline magazines, it indicates the performance of niche and it monetization in order to ensure whether your niche is monetizable or not. You might need to do the following-
- Is anyone dealing with products or services related to the niche which you want to blog about? This can be done by a simple cross-checking your competitors, whether they are promoting any products or service in that particular niche or not.
- Research about the advertisers in your niche. It can be a big brand, popular business or even an e-commerce site. This will help you to get an idea about how you can monetize and partner up with the companies in your niche.
- Are there any niches that offer affiliate programmes in your niche? You can check for affiliates in various networks like Amazon, ShareASale, Flipkart, eBay and a lot more. Else, simply do a google search for the affiliate programmes.
Read next: How to make money from blogging?
In all, there are many ways you can monetize your blog. The one thing you need to do to start making money from your blog is making your brandable. Once you create an authority in your domain, you will see loads of offers pouring in for sponsor and brand deals.
Final Decision
Once you have gone through the steps mentioned above, you can get a clear picture of the niche, its size, market reach competition, monetization, potential audience, etc.
Once you are done, note down the information and finalize a niche. Begin with the blogging niche and start creating engaging content which your readers will enjoy reading. The best approach is to focus on one topic at a time. Begin with proper research and build strategies keeping the interest of the audience in mind.
Also Read: Common Blogging Problems & How to Deal with them.
How to Make it Big?
People at the beginning think that they can just write about anything and everything, but it is not true. The success of any niche totally depends on a lot of factors. People want to read in-depth details about all the products, tips, techniques and services. They actually are searching for reliable sources when they can get insight into the topic which they are passionate about.
While you begin to blog, always follow a schedule to post your articles on your blog. This will help your readers to know that they are definitely going to read something interesting twice a week or at least a week.
Begin blogging in such a way that the audience should feel instantly connected. If you are passionate about the niche, you can easily get the hang of it. Moreover, there are some content writing tips and SEO tricks which you should follow to grab search ranking and audience attention.
Moreover, always keep learning new things about your niche. Personal development is crucial in order to present the best information to your audience. Try to focus on giving relevant information to your fans and readers. This will improve the trust factor and overall reach of your blog. Â Focus on the broader topics first, then start circling the small yet important topics too.
Summing it Up!
Don’t simply jump into a particular niche without following any proper plan. Since now you are aware of all the things you need to do to make your blog niche successful, do implement them. If it is difficult for you to implement all the things mentioned here, choose your desired niche and then check if it passes all the checkpoints mentioned here.
Always research well. The niche should be something which you would like to write continuously for the years to come. It is always best to follow something that you are interested in and can also make it interesting to others. Be creative and consistent, you can efficiently create a successful blogging niche. Always encourage yourself to learn more about your niche.
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