You’ve decided to start a blog but before you go any further you need to know what you’re going to blog about, which is called a niche.
In this post, I’m going to go over how to find a niche and if you really need one.
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Table of Contents
What is a Niche?
A particular kind of product or service for a particular type of market.
What Exactly is a Blog Niche?
A blog niche, because that’s what we’re doing; blogging; is a topic of focus for your content.
Niche blogging is creating content for a specific market, that you’re trying to reach.
What’s the Difference between a Niche and a Blog Niche?
Nothing.
A Niche is a broad definition for anything and everything that has a niche, a Blog Niche is for blogs.
Why Should You Choose a Niche?
1. A niche will help you to figure out who your audience is, the exact reader that you want to come to your site and turn into customers.
2. And a niche will help you focus on what content to write for your target audience.
3. Also what products to create for your niche market.
4. And focusing on a specific niche will help you to build authority in that niche.
After you’ve chosen a niche, it’s time to get more specific with it, which you may have heard as narrowing your niche down.
What Does It Mean to Narrow Your Niche Down?
Narrowing down is just focusing on a topic that has been broken down into a smaller topic.
If you’re blogging about recipes, that’s a good niche, but it’s very broad, and broad means that it can cover a lot of topics, and there are all kinds of recipes, but if you blog about southern recipes, vegan recipes, or just baking, that’s narrowed down to a specific audience.
Another example: there are very popular sites that blog about traveling, that’s broad because you can travel anywhere, anytime, to any place, in all kinds of transportation, but there are sites that blog about traveling with kids, teens, best places for families; their audience is families that want to travel with kids to do family stuff together on vacation, that’s narrowed down.
You’re choosing one audience for one topic but you don’t want to go too narrow because then you won’t be able to venture out and talk about other things.
Take, for example, baking. If you blogged about vegan baking, then you’re only vegan baking, and your audience is for vegans, but if you blog about baking but posted about gluten-free, vegan, and regular baking recipes, you grew your audience and added more content to publish.
So how do you find a niche? start with your purpose.
The Purpose of Blogging
First, to find a blog niche, you have to know the purpose of blogging.
The main reason people want to start a blog is to make money. But the main purpose of blogging should be to help someone.
And this makes a lot of sense; when you think about the last time you looked up a search inquiry in a search engine, how did you do it?
Most likely in the form of a question, because you needed information that was going to help you.
When I think about how I search, I use terms like “what is”, “how-to”, “explain”, or “define”.
And that is how other people search the internet also, they’re looking for help, a solution, a tutorial, maybe a guide or an idea.
When you’re trying to figure out if you should blog in a certain niche, you need to ask yourself, “what will I be able to provide to my readers that will help them?”
Because if you have nothing to offer them, how will they ever be interested in what you’re selling?
Now, how do you decide what you want your blog to be about?
Using Your Passion to Find a Blog Niche
Some say to figure out what your niche is, you should go with your passion.
So, what does that even mean?
Passion is defined as a strong feeling. Something you feel so strongly about that you’ve probably been doing all along, maybe as a job you love or a hobby.
Are you passionate about exercising? Maybe bike riding? How about healthy eating? Are you passionate about grammar mistakes and writing? What about writing reviews? Do you love creating crafts? How about cooking?
Well, there you go!
If you already know what interests you, just go with it! You don’t need a quiz or a post to help you figure out what you already know.
Don’t start searching the internet because you’ll just confuse yourself trying to take in more than you can.
You already know this!
If you love what you’re passionate about and can write about it because it’s something you enjoy doing, then use it!
Popular Money-Making Niches
Now, we all know you’re not here just to blog, you’re blogging to make money and even though it’s not a guarantee, you still want to try with a profitable niche.
Well, guess what??
There are hundreds of profitable niches out there.
And there are tons of niches out there that people think are not profitable but there are bloggers who are making money from these niches.
The thing about choosing a niche only for the reason that it’s a top money-making niche can totally backfire on you.
- What will you be able to provide to an audience in this topic?
- Can you go up against authoritative sites that are ranking on page one with what you know or don’t?
Because blogging is all about your content and making yourself an expert to gain authority.
Just because you decide to blog in a niche based on the fact that it brings in tons of money for other bloggers doesn’t mean it will for you.
You could choose any niche you want, doesn’t matter if it’s your passion, hobby, or a niche from a profitable blog list, but for it to be profitable no matter what the topic is or who your niche market is, you’re going to have to put work into it and build it up.
Blogging in a Niche That Interests You
Blogging about something that is new and exciting, because it really interests you is totally different.
I started a food blog, that’s what I do as my profession, I cook so it made sense to start a food blog, right? but here I am blogging about blogging. I picked another hard competitive niche to try to get into.
Why? Because at first, I was really, really, really, like extra really frustrated about this blogging thing and how to do it.
I looked high and low for information; blogs, websites, guides, tutorials, books, courses, anything I could find and I just couldn’t get all that I needed, it’s like everything was a secret and I thought, “if I’m having this much trouble someone else has to be experiencing the same thing”.
And I was right, for over a year, I was on every blogging group I could get on that I thought could help me and I wasn’t surprised that I wasn’t the only one who has cried while trying to start a blog, many have.
So, long story short, if you want to know the rest you’ll have to read my about page, but the point of this story is; I have always enjoyed researching and the more I got into this blogging thing and figuring it out, the more it interested me because it has something to do with what I enjoy; researching and helping people.
Blogging in a niche you know nothing about but are super interested in, is perfect.
So, if you’re interested in something that you’ve never done before, take a look at this post, blogging in a niche you know nothing about.
And if you know that you have something you can offer and it’s valuable and you’re going give it you’re all, because that’s how much it excites you, then do it.
So, in other words, sometimes we just have to get started and let our niche find us!
How to Find the Right Niche for You?
How do you find a blog niche? lets’s go over some ways:
Blog about something you already know, something you feel strongly about, something you apply to your lifestyle every day that you enjoy doing, write it down.
Then think about what interests you outside of what you already do, maybe you wanted to pick up a new hobby or learn about something you’ve always wanted to do, write it down.
Then take a look at profitable niches and see if there’s something on the list, you might be interested in.
The most popular profitable niche blogs are health and fitness, finance, and recipes.
A quick search for “best profitable niche for blogging” will bring up more lists, also search for “types of blogging niches” and read the posts that give lists, sometimes seeing something visually makes a world of difference.
Now that you’ve created your list of blogging niches, it’s time to do a little research to narrow it down.
Take your list and look at what other bloggers are doing in that same niche:
- How many searches is it getting?
- What are they writing about it?
- Do they have a lot of posts?
- What are the people saying in the comments?
Now:
- What kind of ads do they have on their sites?
- What kind of affiliate links are they promoting in their posts?
- Are they selling digital products they created?
When you think about what you want to blog about, ask yourself:
- Can I make this profitable?
- What holes am I finding in this niche that I can fill?
- What posts can I write that will provide valuable information and keep bringing readers back?
- What resources can I recommend to start my affiliate marketing?
- What courses, guides, templates, or eBooks I could create?
- What freebie can I create and offer for an email sign-up?
And last:
- What can I do to help someone solve an issue in this niche?
These are the questions you should be asking yourself to figure out if your niche is profitable or not.
When checking out other sites, you don’t have to read every site out there, pick the top three sites that you’re interested in that you think would be your competition, and do it better than them. Way better!!
Now, I’m not telling you to copy them, never ever would I tell anyone that, and if you’re not familiar with that, then you need to read about bloggers etiquette where I break down the number rule every blogger should know.
What I am telling you is to use those sites as inspiration and then create your own original content.
To Niche or Not to Niche, and Do You Really Need One?
Can You Start a Blog Without a Niche?
Yes, you can.
A lot of people start without a niche and will put content out there, I mean that’s one of the reasons we wanted to start blogging, right?
To get our stuff out there.
It’s after the content is out and getting views, that they see what types of posts are picking up traffic and that is when they start to realize what their niche is or should be because whatever is getting the traffic is what people want to read about.
Another way newbie bloggers figure out their niche is when they actually start blogging and posting, then they start to realize what interests them and what they enjoy writing and learning about.
Now if you think that you can’t start because you don’t want a niche, think again….
Do You Really Need a Niche?
No, you don’t.
Now, I know this might get confusing because I’ve been saying niche niche niche.
First off, you don’t have to do what everyone else is doing or just because other bloggers say you need one to be successful and make money.
Having a blog niche doesn’t mean any of that, that’s them and what works for one may not work for others.
There are tons of bloggers, very successful ones, that are not niched down and blog about many things and still have an audience and have made themselves into an online authority.
And if this is the route you decide to go, you’ll work your blog just like a niched-down site.
You just need to create a way to get yourself to stand out and get noticed so that people will want to come to your blog, the same thing bloggers have to do that have a niche, it’s no different.
And
- You’ll need to market yourself, which you still need to do with a niche.
- Build your brand, the same way other bloggers do.
- Write excellent quality content, the same.
- Focus on keywords in your posts, still doing the same thing.
- Make yourself an online authority, nothing’s changed, still the same thing here.
Promote yourself:
- Run some Facebook ads, like other bloggers.
- Contact other bloggers that are multi-niched and sell yourself for a guest post.
- Go where your audience hangs out on social media and interact with them and promote yourself there. Sell yourself, share your stuff and bring people to your site, because even though they come for one post, another post may catch their eye, just like other sites.
All you need to do is lead the way and get them to your site and if your site is worth something, they may become your audience, niched or not.
If you’re great at a lot of things and you want to explore writing about different things, there is no law that says you need to choose a niche and there is no guarantee that a niche blog will make you successful, the same as a blog without a niche, but in order to head in the direction of being a success, you need to enjoy your blogging journey so that you can write what people want to read.
And if you want proof of being successful without a niche, check out this post from Helene who blogs without a niche and also has an entire list of other bloggers for you to read about.
And Mommy On Purpose, another successful multi-niche site that makes over $5,000 a month and Carly has also a list of other successful non-niched blogs.
Choosing a Multi-Niche Blog
I want to say, I’m all about doing things in a certain order that makes it easy, because if you know the path, you’ll get there faster, and you’ll waste less time trying to figure stuff out.
And here is where my advice comes in, first you should create a blog strategy, catered to you and your blog niche.
Then I suggest that if you go the multi-niche route that you start out with one niche.
The reason for this is that as a starter, you are going to be everywhere and you don’t want to lose focus because you have too much to focus on.
Start with a niche site and work on your content, build your audience and grow your authority, so that people learn to trust you and then add more topics to it later.
If you do decide to go with a multi-niche blog, do your research to see what is working and what is not, just like you would a one niche site.
You definitely can do a multi-site blog, but it is harder to grow and keep in mind when reading those lists of multi-niche blogs that they have been doing this way longer than you have and blogging is much more competitive now than when they started.
Final Thoughts on How to Find a Niche?
Do what is best for you and what will make you happy, whether you choose to niche blog or not because if you’re not enjoying what you do, you won’t put you’re all into it for your users.
Find what excites you and go for it, if it’s one thing or two or multi, just make sure you treat it like a business with a plan.
Choosing to niche or not, you still need to do the same thing as all bloggers to grow your site, build your audience, become an online authority, promote your blog and write valuable quality content.
Let me know what’s your plan.