What Is A Niche?
A niche is a specific topic in which your blog specializes in.
For example, instead of creating a blog about a broad topic like photography, you can “niche down” and choose a particular type of photography you are most interested in.
Some examples of photography niches are wedding, portrait, wildlife, and landscape photography.
Your niche will guide every aspect of your blog, from what type of content you’ll write to the products and services you’ll sell.
Why Do You Need a Niche?
You don’t necessarily have to choose a niche to be able to create a successful blog. We’ve all seen blogs who opted for broad topics succeed time and again.
That said, while it’s not a requisite, choosing a particular niche does come with benefits.
Here are three main reasons why you should stick with one niche:
1. It makes it easier to build an audience.
Say a potential customer landed on your site through a post you wrote about “How to travel on a Budget.”
If your niche is budget traveling, then the likelihood of that reader being interested in all of your blog content is very high.
In contrast, if budget traveling is only one of the many topics you write about, then the chances of that reader being interested in the rest of your content are slim.
By focusing on a specific niche, you’ll be much more effective in turning a new reader into a returning visitor.
2. It makes it easier to monetize
Focusing on one topic helps you to establish authority much quicker. Once an expert in your industry, it will be much easier to gain your audience’s trust.
Establishing confidence is vital if you want to turn your readers into paying customers.
3. It increases your chances of success.
One of the most common reasons businesses fail is lack of focus.
When you cover multiple topics and cater to various audiences, the tendency is to spend plenty of resources without really getting anywhere. This lack of progress can demotivate even the most driven entrepreneur.
In contrast, having a niche allows you to focus your limited resources in one clear direction. This makes gaining forward momentum for your business faster and much more manageable.
4 Factors to Consider When Choosing A Perfect Niche
So how do you exactly choose a niche?
My best advice is to start with what comes naturally. If there’s a particular topic that you enjoy talking about, I’d say start with that.
If there’s nothing that comes to mind, start by looking at the four factors below:
1. Find a Problem You Enjoy Solving
If you ask successful bloggers what’s the secret to blogging success, you’ll hear a resounding answer: consistency.
In order to succeed in blogging, you’ll need to be able to produce quality content for your readers consistently.
But most bloggers fail in this category and give up only after only a few months of blogging.
Why?
Because they eventually lose enthusiasm.
When you first start a blog, it’s easy to stay engaged in it. The novelty of blogging makes it fun and exciting. But once that wears off, most lose interest.
This is why you must choose a topic that you’re genuinely interested in.
Find a problem you enjoy solving and blog about that.
I got this idea after reading Mark Manson’s book “The Art of Not Giving a F*ck.”
Here’s what he said:
“True happiness occurs only when you find the problems you enjoy having and enjoy solving. Happiness is wanting the problems you have and wanting to solve them.”
While most of us don’t blog in search for true happiness (maybe we are
), the quote remains relevant.
Blogging requires you to consistently learn and write about a topic.
And that takes a lot of hard work, patience, and dedication.
But if you’re writing about problems you enjoy solving, it will be much easier to stick through it despite the difficulties involved.
Don’t just choose a topic just because you saw a blogger making a lot of money with it. Or because it’s something popular and lucrative.
Before deciding on a niche, ask yourself if you’ll be happy writing about it one, five, and ten years from now.
If not, you should reconsider.
Success in blogging doesn’t happen overnight. So, it’s wise to choose a topic in which you can happily commit your time and effort for an extended period.
2. Choose a Niche That People Are Interested In
Unfortunately, choosing a niche simply based on passion is not enough if you want to build a profitable blog.
There also has to be a group of people who are interested in the same topic.
Think about it; if there’s no one else interested in your niche, you wouldn’t be able to grow and monetize it.
One of the easiest ways to do this is to check if there are existing blogs in your particular niche. If there is, then there’s a good chance that there’s an audience for it.
You can also do market research using tools online. Here are two I recommend:
1. Keyword Planner
Google Keyword Planner is a fantastic tool that is 100% free to use. All You need is to have a Google Ad Account.
Google Keyword Planner gives you a range of the monthly search volume for terms (keywords) related to your niche.
If you have a list of keywords, you can paste them into the search function, and it will provide the search volume and difficulty for those keywords.
If you need help finding keywords related to your niche, you can enter a URL from a similar niche and find the keywords that the website has.
You can also find the keywords for a specific page rather than an entire URL.
Once you’ve entered the URL, Google will show you the total search volume for that term.
There’s no definite rule on much traffic volume a keyword should have for your niche to be ideal.
But, a good rule of thumb is for your main keywords to have at least several thousand searches per month.
Otherwise, it won’t be easy to drive traffic to your blog, organically.
Another thing to keep in mind is that Google will not give you the exact number of search volume for a keyword. Instead, it will spit out a but a search volume range.
If you do want to get the precise search volume, you will need to start an ad campaign.
How to Create a Free Google Ads Account
Getting access to the Keyword planner can be a bit tricky because Google is aggressive with trying to get you to create an ad campaign as soon as you create an account.
At the account creation page, you’ll find a smaller question and link that will say Switch to Expert Mode. Click this to bypass creating an ad campaign.
Next, select create an account without a campaign.
This will give you access to the Google Keyword Planner for free.
2. Google Trends
Google trends will tell you if the interest in your niche is increasing, decreasing, or holding steady.
For instance, let’s say your niche is about the “Keto Vegan Diet.”
As you can see below, this interest in this niche is rising, which indicates that it could be a great niche choice.
In contrast, the interest in the “Paleo Diet” is declining (see below), which means you may want to reassess whether or not to pursue this niche.
Keep in mind whether or not a niche is “trending” is not a be-all-end-all.
When using Google trends, be discerning in your judgment.
An ascending curve could mean that the niche is “trendy” now but won’t be for long.
Similarly, a declining curve could mean the topic’s popularity is declining, but there will always be a large group of people interested in it.
When in doubt, ask yourself this: Will this niche withstand the test of time?
Remember, blogging requires a lot of time and effort. You don’t want to invest all that energy on something relevant only for a short period.
The best niche to choose is typically the ones that have held steady in popularity over many years. This means you’ll have a large enough audience for your blog for the years ahead.
3. Choose Something That Can Generate Revenue
Popularity doesn’t equal profitability.
That’s probably one of the most critical business concepts I’ve heard since I started blogging.
What that means is you can have the largest following and traffic and still not make money from your blog.
Just like any business, what makes a blog profitable is your ability to generate revenue from it.
So, before you finalize your niche, how do you intend to monetize your blog?
As the expert, what value could you provide your readers that they would be willing to open their wallets for you?
You’ll also want to be clear on how much you expect to make.
Because while it’s true you can make money from just about any niche; it’s also true that some niches are more profitable than others.
So, grab a pen and paper and start brainstorming.
Imagine you have 100K monthly readers today, how would you monetize that traffic?
Here are some of the most common ways bloggers monetize their blogs:
- Ad Revenue
- Affiliate Marketing
- Selling Products and Services
- Sponsored Posts.
If you’re unsure, you do a little research.
Check out blogs with a similar niche and see how they’re monetizing theirs. This should help provide you with a good idea on how to monetize your blog.
Remember, you can blog every day and not make a single penny.
If you’re blogging to build a profitable business, then generating traffic is only half the battle; to win, you’ll need to know how to monetize that traffic.
4. Choose Something You're Good At
The final thing you have to consider is how much you know about your niche.
While being an expert is not a requisite, it helps speed up and make the process much easier.
For instance, I ran a food blog (my Youtube channel for that blog is still up, you can check it out here.)
I thought the blog was a great idea since, at the time, I was spending a lot of my time learning how to cook.
The problem with that is I’ve pretty much spent my entire life ordering take out.
The result?
My recipes sucked.
And although I was spending a lot of time and effort on the blog, I was still unable to produce delicious recipes consistently.
In the end, I couldn’t be consistent enough to succeed.
In contrast, when I created pixelsandwanderlust.com, I was already taking photos for several years. As a result, I could write on just about any topic with ease.
That said, if you’ve found a niche you’re not an expert in but are willing to put in the time to learn, I say go for it.
If you’re determined enough, there is no reason why you can’t build a successful blog with a niche you’re not an expert in.
Remember, you don’t have to be a leading expert on your niche for you to qualify to write about it.
All you need to be is a little ahead of your audience.
In most cases, bloggers captivate their audience, not by how much they know but how much they share.
In other words, it’s the value you provide and not your authority that will make your readers fall in love with your blog
Wrap Up
Having a specific niche isn’t necessary for your blog’s success. But, it could make it much easier to build, monetize, and grow. If you can’t decide which niche is right for you, consider the tips above. The important thing is to get started. You can always change your mind later.