How to find your niche in blogging
Welcome to the most challenging part of starting a new blog: how to find your niche in blogging . Many wannabe bloggers delay taking their first step because they’re struggling about how to find a blog niche.
And I totally understand them. Especially if you’re new to the “How to Make Money Online” world. Probably you have many ideas in your head and there is tons of info online, but you’re still not sure what to blog about.
It’s totally normal not to feel sure where and how to start your online career. A small research can show you everything you need to know, so you can start your journey without a doubt.
The niche you’ll choose is going to affect your whole blogging career. You’re going to write about it for a long time (hopefully) and it can even affect how much money you can earn online.
Let’s take you out of this awkward position! I’m here to show you why you need to stick to a specific niche, and how to find out what niche suits you the most.
What Is a Blog Niche?
In the blogging industry, a niche is a specific topic such as “Pasta Recipes” or “Cat Training”.
Why Do I Need to Choose a Specific Niche?
To better understand how to find your blog niche, let’s look at the following example:
You want to cut a big, juicy watermelon. At your disposal, you have a Swiss Army knife and a longer, sharper knife. Which one would you choose to cut this yummy watermelon? I guess you’d pick the sharper knife.
The Swiss Army knife is like a blog that speaks generally about many topics. In this example, the sharper knife stands for a blog that covers everything about a specific topic.
Nobody is going to pick the Swiss Army knife when they have much better tools available. The same applies to the online world as well.
Imagine that someone is searching in Google about dog training. Will he choose to read a generic blog’s article that happens to talk about dogs? Or will he decide to read a post from a blog that focuses only on dog training topics? Yes, the answer is the second one.
The key to every successful blog is its audience. It’s not possible to find a big audience that is interested in everything you like.
Do you want to be a successful blogger/marketer/freelancer? Then, you should aim to a specific audience:
- Help them solve their problems.
- Provide them with value.
- Teach them how to do things.
- Show them how they can improve their life.
This way, it’s guaranteed that you’ll have a successful blog!
How to Find Your Blog Niche
In order to find the most suitable niche for you, you should consider 3 important criteria:
- Your interest in the niche.
- Other people’s interest in the niche.
- If the niche is actually profitable.
1. Your Interest in the Niche
To make things clear, you can definitely earn money inside a niche that you’re not so excited about. But it will probably be a boring process.
If you choose to blog about something you love, this process will be much more enjoyable. And you can make more than a living online, writing about your passion!
It’s time to brainwash some ideas. Grab a pen, a piece of paper (or just use your computer) and write down 3 different lists:
- #1 List: All the things you love such as your favorite activities and hobbies.
- #2 List: The things you’re good at or you have much knowledge about.
- #3 List: All the things you want to learn about. Write down all the topics that you find interesting, but you had no chance to discover yet.
I hope you got some good ideas already. But maybe you wonder “How can I blog about something I have little or no knowledge about?”
Well, if we observe the people’s reading habits on the web, we can see that they tend to follow 2 different kinds of bloggers/influencers:
- The expert
- The beginner on his new journey (as long as you avoid these Blogging Mistakes)
In the case you’re an expert on a topic, you can provide helpful and accurate information. Your readers trust you more easily, as long as you can prove your expertise. So, if you have a good knowledge about a topic and you choose to blog about it, take this route.
On the other hand, it’s very encouraging seeing a beginner succeeding and achieving his goals. People will realize that they can achieve also these goals. All they need is a little guidance from you!
Take a look at this example:
You are a beginner cook. You try to make some delicious recipes and share them with your audience on your blog. In this case, you will record the process of cooking; you’ll give some tips, list the ingredients etc.
If your audience sees that your final result is really good, they’re going to think: “If a beginner can make such a good meal, I can make it as well. Let’s give it a try.”
I hope you get my point. Don’t hesitate to blog about something that you have no knowledge about, but you’re willing to learn in the process.
Just be honest with your audience. If you claim to be an expert but you aren’t, they’ll soon find out. Your relationship with them is everything, so don’t ruin their trust in you.
2. Other People’s Interest in the Niche
Before we validate if there are enough people interested in your niche, let’s answer 3 important questions:
a. Who are you going to help? Try to define your target group/ideal reader.
Example: “I want to help dog owners”.
b. How are you going to help them?
Example: “I can show them how to train their dog without a trainer”.
c. What makes you stand out of the crowd? Think why people should choose to follow you over similar bloggers. (This is called Unique Selling Point or USP).
Examples: “I’ve trained hundreds of dogs.”
“I did an amazing job with my dogs as a first-time dog owner.”
Now let’s find out if there are enough people looking for your niche on the web. We’re going to do a small research, assuming you’re thinking to blog about “Dog training”.
The best places to search if there are enough people interested in your topic are the social media and Google:
Go to Facebook and type your topic (or terms related to it) in the search bar.
Pay attention to the number of users in the related Groups and Pages, the number of views in videos etc.
You can repeat the same process for every social media you like.
Google’s Tools
Another great tool for researching keywords or finding the blog niches that make money is the Google Keyword Planner. It’s a free tool, but you need to have a Google account to use it.
On the upper right corner, click Tools -> Keyword Planner and then type your keyword (we’re only interested in the first 3 columns). You can type the keyword of your niche or the keywords of some articles you want to write about.
This way you can see how many people are actively searching for your topic in Google. Also, you can limit your search depending on the location and language.
Note that if there is too much competition, it means that you probably have to narrow down your niche.
For example, dog training is a popular niche and it will be hard for you to rank up on Google. But the term “German Shepherd training” seems less competitive. At the same time, lots of users are searching for the term in search engines, making it a perfect niche.
The niches that have many monthly searches and a low competition are the chances you should be looking for.
3. Is The Niche Actually Profitable?
If there are many people interested in a niche, it means that you can make money out of it. Don’t be afraid of competition! If there are already many websites covering a niche, it actually means that there are making money out of it.
Check For the Best Affiliate Programs
Also read: “Affiliate Marketing Guide for Beginners: 7 Must-Follow Steps”
Do you plan to monetize your blog using affiliate marketing (by promoting or reviewing products)? Then check Amazon Associates. It’s probably the best affiliate program for physical products and eBooks.
There you can find a huge variety of products to promote or to get ideas for the best-selling products in your niche.
Also, there are many options available if you want to monetize your blog by promoting digital products (courses, programs, webinars, web-hosting etc). Some of the biggest affiliate programs are Clickbank, ComissionJunction and ShareASale.
Can a multi-niche Blog be successful?
Since I’m receiving a lot of queries regarding the multi-niche blogs, I decided to update the post & write a few words about them.
Yes, a multi-niche blog can be successful and generate an income like any other blog.
However, for creating a competitive multi-niche site, you’ll need many resources (such as hiring writers, designers for images) in order to publish frequently and update all the niches. This way, it’s not a recommending option for beginners.
On the other hand, if you love writing daily for many different topics, then go for it! You’ll need to work harder though compared to a more specific niche.
How to make it work:
The trick here is to label it (e.g. “Lifestyle Blog”). You’ll still need a target audience: people that love/are interested in reading and get informed about many different subjects.
Do you need a little more inspiration? Check below the list I created about the 80 best blog niches! (the order is random).
Most Profitable Blog Niche List 2020
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I would be happy to answer any of your questions or comments! You can post them below. If you found this post helpful, share it and follow me on social media, so we can keep in touch!
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hello
i read you blog how to select niche its nice.
but one thin i ask why every one choose health,tech,gadgets ,parenting etc niche ?
why no one choose career nice?
i am working in it education field and i want to start my blog but when i search for topic and niche ,i see most of the niche are health ,fitness,gadgets,tech but no one can choose career .
so i little confused to choose niche .
career niche is right or wrong choice ,i am confused
what is the right option
there is no right or wrong option!
The right option is to choose something you know a lot about or you want to learn a lot about it!
Many bloggers choose the niches you mentioned because they are more simple to monetize.
I’m still struggling to figure out what my blogging niche should be. I cover a lot of topics on my blog right now and I don’t know if I should trim it down or just keep going a few months more to see what sticks. These are great blog niche ideas for bloggers who need direction!
Keep going to see what sticks it’s better I guess, despite being more time consuming. Another advice is to dump those niches that you doesn’t enjoy writing!
The best article ever. Good job chris! You are a good blogger.
Thank you so much! Comments like yours are the real reward for my work!
Thank you for the break down of niches. This has helped me to figure out what posts I can do in my niche.
I’m really glad it helped you. Using your creativity & uniqueness is very important as well!
Love your advice on this! While a niche is important to success, I enjoy reading blogs that cover a large variety of topics as well.
There are some benefits of focusing only to one niche or 2-3 similar niches, but a multi-niche blog can definitely be successful.
[…] How to pick the right niche? (Check our full guide on how to find your blog niche + 80 most profitable niches) […]
Great advice! I will add that you should never discount something just because you don’t see a lot of them. I started Alternatively Speaking with a couple tattoo posts because I love the alternative culture but thought I needed to include more ‘mainstream’ topics for my blog to work with the occasional alt culture post just because I love them… low and behold, those posts are drawing the most readers and have become the focus of my blog over the last couple years.
Great post! It can be difficult to choose a niche or to drill down to something more specific.
I agree, especially if you want to make blogging your full-time job.
Great post! I am really in kind of 3 inches in one blog. It’s getting odd. To balance if you know what I mean lol
Maybe it’s still better than having 3 different but weaker blogs though!
Great insights – thank you for sharing! Very helpful!
Such a wonderful article! Thanks for sharing.
[…] you’re not sure how to decide what niches are the right for you, check this post: “How to Find Your Blog Niche (80 Profitable Niche Ideas)”. It’s for blog niches but it applies perfectly on writing niches as […]
[…] you’re not sure how to decide on your niche, check out this guide (80+ hot niches to choose from). It’s for blog niches, but it’s almost the exact same process for your writing niches. After […]
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Thank you so much for such a wonderful and helpful blog.
Thank you for your kind comments. I’m more than happy to help you!
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These are in fact great ideas in about blogging.
You have touched some good factors here. Any way keep up wrinting.
Thank you mate! Wish you good luck too!
Hey! Do you know if they make any plugins to assist with Search Engine Optimization? I’m
trying to get my blog to rank for some targeted keywords but I’m not seeing very good gains.
If you know of any please share. Cheers!
Yoast SEO is the best plugin to assist you with SEO. If your site is new, you have to be patient.
Exactly. It takes time before you can start to reap benefits from a new blog.