So you've decided that you want to start a blog. Perhaps you want to start a lifestyle blog or a niche blog of some sort. But as with many new beginner bloggers, one very important consideration has you stuck — what in the world should you blog about?
If you're wondering what niche you should choose for your new blog, what is the best way how to choose a profitable niche for your blog, or what are the best niches to blog about — this guide is for you.
Many people start blogging as a hobby. Additionally, many people also start blogging as a means to make money. But the truth is, whether for pleasure or as a business, starting a successful blog (one that will ever gain any real traction) is a long term investment.
A successful blog is a project that you'll be work on, grow, and build over time. And for that reason, of course, you may want to choose something that you enjoy. But it also may be worthwhile to choose a profitable niche for your blog that will make money for years to come.
If you've already decided you'd like to start a blog, you likely have some blog topics or blog niche ideas in mind.
This guide will help you not only refine your blog niche idea but also validate your idea. This way as you create your blog website from scratch and write your first blog posts, you can move forward confident that you're on the right track to profitability and success.
So what is a blog niche anyway?
A blog niche is a focused, targeted area, or topic that you serve. A niche is small (the smaller the better), a niche is specific, and a niche is known to you.
The niche of Bombshell Entrepreneur, for example, is teaching women how to start and grow a profitable blog and business from scratch.
A niche guides the approach you take with your blog — the audience you want to go after, the way you’re going to talk to them, what you’ll talk to them about, and how you’ll position yourself as an expert.
A word on choosing the perfect blog niche.
In the age of “social media influencers”, it's very tempting to start a blog centered around you. That's what a blog should be about right? Well, not necessarily so.
While it is possible to make money blogging about your life, I want to challenge you to reconsider. The fact that you stumbled across this wonderful article I put together, I have faith that you're more creative than that.
When I first started my lifestyle blog for women I wrote about all kinds of topics I wanted to share. You too likely have a bunch of topic ideas for blog posts ideas, youtube videos ideas, and products you could totally sell perhaps jotted down in your iPhone notes.
I wrote about what I cooking fr dinner, my favorite stores to shop, and random stories and thoughts I wanted to share.
The problem was — nobody really cared.
You’re reading this article right now, for example, not because you care about what I have to say. You’re reading this article because you want to learn how to successfully grow a profitable online business for yourself.
The point here is that you have to be very strategic with the niche, and by extension, the type of content you create — making sure it's not focused on you.
That's how you can grow a loyal audience very very fast as I did.
Not by blogging about your life, but by helping people to solve their problems in their own lives.
To be super successful at growing a profitable blog or business, you'll want to choose is a niche that's going to allow you to help others.
3 Core Elements of A Profitable Blog Niche
With all of that said, let's go over 3 major elements to consider when choosing a perfectly profitable blog niche. Validating your idea in each category will help you make your niche idea as likely success and as profitable as possible.
1. Has great search volume
Blogging to crickets isn't very fun. And I can tell you from past experience that it isn't very profitable either. That's why it's so important that you choose a blog niche that has considerable or adequate search volume that will lead to traffic (or people coming to your website).
People aren't stumbling onto Hello Bombshell, for example, by searching for what I personally ate for breakfast. If you start a personal lifestyle blog, they probably aren't going to be searching for what you ate for breakfast either.
They are maybe looking for breakfast recipes for themselves. And if you create posts about that, it gives people an opportunity to easily discover your blog.
????There's a great blog niche idea. Breakfast Recipes. You could call your new blog BreakfastRecipeDiva.com (check if it's available).
So how would you know if making a blog dedicated to not just recipes (that's rather broad), but breakfast recipes, has enough search volume to make it worthwhile?
Here are some questions you could consider.
- Are there blogs or youtube channels already dedicated to this topic?
If there are already blogs or youtube channels dedicated to this niche, your initial reaction may be “oh that's gonna be too competitive”. But considering thinking about it like this…
If there are already successful blogs and youtube channels with lots of subscribers and engagement dedicated to this specific topic or niche, that means that there are people interested in this topic. That means you'd already have an audience (and know where to find them). Fabulous!
You've just gotta find a way to put your own spin on that niche.
- Does the niche have any dedicated stores or shops (sporting goods, beauty supplies, nail supplies, etc)? What about books and magazines?
Is there enough of an industry to support a magazine and books dedicated to it, or enough of an industry to support stores or shops… there's likely enough search traffic to support this niche.
- Are there Pinterest pages or instagram pages dedicated to this topic?
Pinterest and Instagram are also great tools to help you gauge how profitable a potential niche could be.
The best niches are exciting enough that you’ll be motivated to continually post about it, and accessible enough that you can build an audience.
What if I can't settle on just one topic?
Instead of choosing a niche topic, you can also niche your blog by writing for a specific audience. On Hello Bombshell, for example, I write about all sorts of topics. But the ladies who like and subscribe to my blog are very particular.
2. Future Proof
When choosing a niche for your new blog it's important that you pick something that's future proof. Are the topics or niche you're considering writing about something that's just trending right now or is it going to be sustainable long term?
A free tool you can use to validate the future sustainability of a particular blog niche idea is Google Trends.
Google Trends is a search trend feature that shows how frequently a given search term is entered into Google's search engine relative to the site's total search volume over a given period of time.
In addition to choosing a blog niche that's going to be sustainable in terms of relevancy, you also want to choose a niche that's going to be sustainable in terms of interest for you as the content creator.
The Internet is littered with blogs where people start off strong, publishing posts every week for the first month or so. And then, well, they disappear.
Is your blog niche ideas something that you love writing about? Will you love writing about it one year and 50+ posts from now? A niche doesn’t have to be your passion (although that will help you to stay committed). Your niche should at least be something you're interested in.
These are important considerations when choosing a blog niche topic you will be able to maintain for years to come.
3. Diverse Monetization options
In other words, can you make money from this blog niche idea, and how? Is this a blog niche or business niche that you'll be able to monetize in a variety of ways.
In another post I wrote about the different ways to make money with a blog. In that post I mention displaying advertising, affiliate marketing, and selling products as viable ways to make money blogging.
When choosing your blog niche, it's a good idea to ensure that your blog nice idea is able to fit very comfortably in at least 2 of the different income streams that you can monetize.
Because the truth is, many bloggers don't make all of their blogging income with just one monetization strategy. Most bloggers make money blogging by using multiple streams of income and monetization methods.
Are there services that you could provide around this niche? Could you create an online course to teach people about something in this niche? Are there products from other companies that you could promote?
Blog Niche Ideas
Have no idea what you could start a blog about? Struggling with how to choosing a blog niche? Head over to my master list round-up of profitable blog niche ideas.
