So, you’ve made the exciting decision to start your own blog!
But now comes the challenging part: choosing a niche for your blog.
You may find yourself struggling to come up with ideas or feeling overwhelmed by the fear of missing out on something great.
Don’t worry, you’re not alone.
Even I have faced the same dilemma.
Luckily, you’ve stumbled upon this blog post before diving into the blogging world.
I’m here to help you!
What is a blog niche?
A niche in blogging refers to a specific area of focus within a broader topic. It’s like carving out your own unique space to write about.
It’s the particular field or topic they choose to write about.
Almost 80% of the niches fall under any of the below umbrellas.
- Wealth
- Health
- Relationships
- Lifestyle
- Education
- Spirituality
- Fashion
These niches are so popular because they are tied tightly to the Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, that is hardwired in the human brain.
Here are some examples of niches under these categories
- Wealth > Online > Blogging (This is where I’m, a blogger for bloggers)
- Wealth > Personal Finance (This is where Michelle from Making Sense of Cents is positioned)
- Health > Dieting > Paleo Diet (That’s where David Sinick found his market)
- Health > Workouts > Crossfit
- Lifestyle > Hobbies > Kayaking
If you go into any of the parent fields or one step into them, it’s called a niche. If you decide to go further deep into a niche, it’s called a sub-niche.
Why have a blog niche?
In any business, whether it be offline or online having a niche is very important.
As this article is related to blogging, let’s focus on why you need to have a niche in blogging.
Why you need to have a blog niche?
- Demonstrate expertise: Establish yourself as an expert in your field, gaining credibility with readers and search engines.
- Cultivate a loyal audience: Attract and retain readers interested in your specific content.
- Monetize effectively: Target your audience with relevant products and attract niche advertisers.
- Improve search rankings: Boost your Google visibility by consistently producing relevant content.
- Build a community: Foster an engaged group of like-minded individuals around your niche.
Niche angling
Niche angling is a smart way to make your blog stand out. It’s like mixing different topics you love into one unique blend. For example, instead of just writing about fitness, you might focus on “fitness for busy moms” or “vegan bodybuilding”.
Let me give you some examples:
- Stefan James from ProjectLifeMastery combined online entrepreneurship with personal development, creating a unique niche that appeals to people interested in both digital marketing and self-improvement.
- Elna Cain focused on freelance writing for digital marketing blogs, specifically targeting moms who want to start or grow their freelancing careers.
- Michelle from Making Sense of Cents started her blog to help people get out of student debt, creating a unique angle within the personal finance niche.
This approach helps you create a clear picture of who your ideal reader is. When you combine different interests, you can attract a very specific group of people who share those exact interests.
By finding this special angle, you’re not just another voice in a crowded field. You’re offering something unique that speaks directly to a particular group. This makes it easier to build a loyal following of readers who really connect with your content.
What is a perfect niche?
In order to find a perfect niche, we need to head over back to the ancient Japanese principle called “ikigai”.
You need to find a niche that satisfies the below conditions.
- Choose a niche that you love
- Choose a niche you are good and knowledgeable in
- Choose a niche that’s profitable
- Choose a niche which the world needs
Only when you blog in a certain niche that satisfies all the above conditions will you be able to answer the question – “Why are you doing, what are you doing?”. Or else, you’ll lose purpose in blogging and quit.
Your quest for passion
Many people just advice you to follow your passion when choosing a niche.
But you now know that passion alone is not enough to be a successful blogger.
You may ask me, “Okay Akshay, how to find my passion?”. If you are struggling to find your passion, ask these questions to yourself.
- What interests have I had since childhood?
- What are the things that I can’t stop talking about when I’m around my friends and relatives? Is it fitness, politics, or finance?
- On what topic would I write a book?
- What topics do my friends approach me about?
- What are my areas of expertise or knowledge?
- What problems or challenges have I overcome in my life?
- What topics do I enjoy learning about and reading about?
Reflect on these self-discovery questions. If you’re still unsure about your passion, don’t fret – it’s something you can cultivate over time.
Passion isn’t innate; it grows through experience and learning. Take my journey, for instance: I began with tech tutorials, but as I delved into SEO and blogging strategies, I uncovered my true passion. This led to BloggingX, focusing on blogging and SEO.
To nurture your passion, dive into your interests. Devour articles, books, and videos in those fields.
Your quest for profit
Passion alone isn’t enough for successful blogging. Without financial rewards, you may lose motivation over time.
Once you’ve identified potential niches aligned with your passions, it’s crucial to assess their profitability. Here are the main ways to monetize a blog:
- Affiliate marketing: Promote others’ products for commissions
- Own products: Sell your physical/digital/informational products
- Training: Offer consultation and mentorship
- Sponsored content: Publish paid reviews and advertisements
At BloggingX, I focus on affiliate marketing, sponsored posts, and my own training courses. The next step is to evaluate the availability of affiliate products in your chosen niche.
You can also search for the terms like,
- [Niche] consultation
- [Niche] courses
- [Niche] training
Say let me take “Paleo diet” as a niche.
Paleo diet consultant keywords have fairly good volume.
You can offer consultation in your niche, whatever your niche is.
Other than this, you can also find whether there are products to promote in any given niche.
Say “Kayaking”.
In the below example, I’ve searched affiliate programs for “Kayaking”. You can replace you niche keyword there and search for – [NICHE] affiliate products.
If there are good products related to your niche in Amazon, then, also you can consider monetizing your blog with Amazon Associates Program.
Apart from these, there are also many affiliate networks like Clickbank (digital products), ShareASale, CJ, ImpactRadius, JVZoo (Digital Marketing products), and others.
These things will give you a clear idea whether people are buying products in your niche.
How to come up with niche ideas?
Finding a niche is something that’s not a passive task. You need to proactively browse the web for profitable niche ideas.
In this section, we’ll be learning how you can find niche ideas by just browsing various websites, forums, and eCommerce sites strategically.
Browsing the websites for niches
You can find niche ideas by researching some multi-niche websites like Consumer Reports, CNET, TheSpruce, etc. and refer their navigation bar and site to get sub niche ideas.
In there, you need to look for the navigation bar or their categories where they have mentioned all the categories of products and topics they’re writing about.
You can even browse their sitemaps at example.com/sitemap.xml to see what are all the blog posts they are publishing lately, browse their categories, and get niche ideas and inspirations.
Now, you can make use of tools like Ahrefs to see the keywords for which the multi niche sites are ranking well.
If you see, in spite of the site being a low authoritative multi-niche site, it’s ranking good.
It means, if you start a dedicated site on a topic, you’ll gain topical authority quickly and beat these multi-niche sites hands-down.
Browse eCommerce sites for niches
You can also find niche ideas by browsing eCommerce sites like AliEpress and even Amazon.
The Aliexpress website has a really well laid-down structure and organization.
It’ll effectively help you narrow down your niche and decide upon the potential products to promote in your niche.
The greatest benefit of catalogs like this is it clearly helps you drill down deep into a niche and see what are all the products you can promote in that niche.
You’ll also be able to discover keywords based on the applications of the product.
Explore niche marketplaces
To come up with niche ideas, it’s very important to research on what sites other people are working on.
For this, the best place is to browse website marketplaces.
Flippa is the biggest marketplace when it comes to buying and selling websites and other digital assets.
You can make use of this marketplace to see the niche sites that are selling well and also their earning potential.
As it’s a marketplace, the website seller has to reveal his website, traffic, and earnings on Flippa transparently to attract potential buyers.
Just type in the keyword – “Affiliate” by adding the appropriate filters.
Explore DFY site services
Apart from Flippa, there are also various other marketplaces which sell sites that are already earning money or sell ready-made niche affiliate sites.
Here are some other marketplaces:
In these sites you can discover the sites that are for sale and also that are sold.
This validates the niche’s profitability, as both the site builder and buyer have confirmed its potential. To stay on top of new opportunities, you can use website change monitoring tools to get alerts when these marketplaces update their listings.
Explore affiliate niche footprints
How to find really good affiliate websites?
What’s the one common factor among all the top earning affiliate sites?
They all have an Affiliate disclaimer or disclosure page or text on their website.
For example, all profitable Amazon affiliate sites have the text around – “is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program”.
You can research these on Google, and come up with the sites that are Amazon affiliate sites.
Research some of the commonly used disclosure text that these sites use and see what sites on the internet are using the text, you’ll hit a goldmine of niche ideas with live examples.
Explore Upwork for niches
Upwork is undeniably the largest place where people hire top freelancers for their various needs, majorly content writing.
Most of the affiliate site owners, including me, make use of Upwork to find content writers who are expert in their industries.
To come up with niche ideas, you need to create a freelancer account in Upwork (not client account!)
Under blog writing category, in the search bar you need to enter terms like:
- Affiliate
- Amazon affiliate
- Niche blog/website
- So on
👍 With this you’ll be able to discover some potentially profitable niches. Because on Upwork people are spending many dollars on getting content created for their blog, you can pretty sure the niches are profitable.
You can do the same with other marketplaces as well like Problogger Job Board, Freelancer, etc. All you need is a search functionality in the platform to search for affiliate or blog content related contracts.
Blog niche competition analysis
Before choosing a niche, research existing blogs and competitors. This analysis reveals the competition level and potential profitability.
Moderate competition is beneficial because it:
- Indicates a profitable niche
- Provides networking opportunities
- Validates the niche’s viability
While excessive competition isn’t ideal, some competition is necessary to confirm the niche’s potential for success.
Finding out potential niche competitors
You can determine the kind of competition you have in the niche by searching in Google for “best [niche] blogs”.
Tools like Ahrefs can help identify competitors in your niche.
For instance, if you find a popular blog like ThePaleoMom in the paleo diet niche, you can use Ahrefs to discover other competing domains.
Now you got some great Paleo related blogs that are getting great SEO traffic.
SEO keyword research
Conducting keyword research is crucial for optimizing your blog’s search engine visibility.
Use tools like AnswerThePublic and Semrush to identify popular search terms in your niche. Focus on long-tail keywords with moderate search volume and lower competition.
Analyze competitor keywords and consider factors like search volume, CPC, and ranking difficulty when selecting target keywords for your content.
If you are planning to monetize your blog with contextual ads, you may want to make sure that there are enough high volume and low competition keywords in your niche for you to target.
On the other hand, if you are into affiliate marketing, you need to ensure that for a specific keyword, there are enough products that have an affiliate program for you to promote.
Keyword competition analysis
Not all keywords are equally easy to rank for.
When there are high-authority sites dominating search results for niche-related keywords, it’ll be harder to rank.
Here’s the thing:
If for a specific keyword, there are:
- 3+ forum threads in search results
- 2+ article directory results
- 5+ low-quality YouTube videos
- 2+ social media posts
- 4+ low-authority sites (DA < 15) ranking
- 3+ irrelevant pages without keyword in title
Then the keyword is of low competition.
👍 Aim for niches with 40-50 keywords that have decent search volume and low competition. Long-tail keywords (3+ words) are often easier to rank for due to their specificity.
Understand your target audience
Before diving into any niche, it’s crucial to visualize the exact type of person you want to serve through your blog. This process is called developing a customer avatar. Russ Henneberry has a great guide on this at DigitalMarketer.
You need to understand your audience’s:
- Demographics: Location, age, gender, income
- Psychographics: Beliefs, values, attitudes
- Technographics: Technology adoption, software preferences
- Pain Points: Common problems they face
Use tools like Google Keyword Planner, niche forums, Reddit, and social media communities to gather this information. Conducting surveys can also provide valuable insights about your audience’s challenges and expectations.
Is your blogging niche future proof?
What do you do to predict the future of any company? You look at the charts right?
Same, you also need to do it for your niche before starting a career on it.
You can make use of Google Trends for this.
As you can see, I compared Paleolithic Diet with Ketogenic Diet. The trend for Paleo Diet is falling, and Keto Diet is now all in rage.
Also, you can notice that for Paleo, the trend rose every year during January (notice the spikes).
Maybe due to new year health resolutions? 🤔
So, if you are in a dilemma to choose between these two niches, for example. It may be the time to consider researching about Ketogenic Diet first.
Google Trends is good at solving biggest dilemmas, whether it be choosing a niche or an online app.
Research niches for Affiliate Marketing
Explore affiliate marketplaces
I’ve already discussed some really good affiliate marketplaces you need to consider joining.
Once again, they are:
- Amazon associates: You can promote all the products available on Amazon.
- PartnerStack: SaaS B2B affiliate network.
- ShareASale: Shareasale has been around for 18 years and works with over 3,900 merchants across various product categories. WP Engine and OptinMonster, are exclusive to the network.
- Clickbank: Most popular affiliate marketplace that only deals with digital products.
- JVZoo: Only IM related products with the best commissions in the world.
- Avangate: Owned by 2Checkout and they deal with digital products.
- FlexOffers: Similar to CJ. FlexOffers has 12,000+ merchants in 25+ categories.
- CJ: CJ Affiliate is part of Alliance Data Systems, which is a Fortune 500 company. CJ Performer Program (CJP), which boasts the potential of $10,000 per month in commissions. CJ suspension 30 days inactive.
- AvantLink: If you are in the outdoor niches like sporting, camping, and adventures you’ll love this marketplace. They’ve set the bar-high when it comes to accepting new affiliates.
- Rakuten: LinkSynergy. Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Macy’s, and the like, Rakuten manages the quality and reliability of products and services being promoted.
Depending upon the niche you’re in, you need to be exploring appropriate marketplaces.
Explore on Google
You can also make use of Google search to effectively figure out the affiliate programs in your space.
Alternatively:
In Google, you need to just enter in <niche> affiliate programs or even better <niche> inurl:affiliate
When you search these, you’ll encounter the products in your space that have affiliate programs. Now, you can consider exploring more about the product.
Here are some of the questions you need to ask:
- Is this product solving a real problem in our industry?
- Is there a serious need for this product in the marketplace?
- How good is the ongoing need for this product? Or is there a big switching cost so that I get paid on a recurring basis when people buy repeatedly?
- How good the product owner is marketing the product? Are their landing pages good?
- Are there any other good competitor products to the product I’m currently exploring?
Asking these kinds of questions will be very helpful as it helps you figure out whether there are really good affiliate products in this space worth promoting.
At this point of time, you can consider exploring some other reviews, forums, or even try out the product (maybe in the form a trial) to get a real feel of the product.
Explore eCommerce sites in case of physical products
There are a lot of physical product affiliate marketplaces to consider here.
You have Amazon affiliates, Walmart, Target, CJ, and much more.
Let’s look at Amazon affiliates.
If the niche that you are researching is eligible for Amazon affiliates, you need to consider heading over to the product category page.
Here you need to check if there are enough subcategories of products you can promote.
When choosing products to promote, consider these criteria:
- Aim for products with over 4 ratings on Amazon, ideally above 4.5. If it’s below 4.5, ensure there’s a compelling reason for your choice.
- Ensure there are at least 10 user reviews, except for top-tier high-ticket items.
- Check if people are likely to buy from sites other than Amazon. If not, that’s not necessarily bad; it means other affiliate programs may be available. This diversification is beneficial, as it protects your income even if Amazon changes commission rates.
Competitor blog research
Now you need to consider researching some of the sites that are promoting the products you’re researching.
A simple way to do this is by entering any product-related commercial review keywords in Google. Now, you need to figure out what other products that these sites are promoting.
For this, we’ll be using tools like Ahrefs or Semrush.
In Ahrefs, enter in the site name.
It’ll return you all the keywords that the site is ranking for.
Here you can make use of its keyword search functionality to see what are all the commercial keywords that they are ranking for.
With this, you’ll be able to discover what additional products are there in the niche that you may have missed.
👉 You need to be analyze what kind of affiliate products will you be promoting more whether it’s digital, informational or physical.
Research niches for advertisement revenue
Research whether there are enough blogs in your niche that are monetizing their blogs with display advertising.
In some cases, even if there are a lot of high volume keywords, the blogs may have overlooked ads.
In those cases, you need to research whether there are really good high volume keywords and tap into the market.
Having ad revenue potential as well along with affiliates is a nice thing. Because income diversification is always nice.
Estimate the ad earnings
If they are getting high quality traffic from tier 1 countries:
- Traffic on their ad monetized content per month * 0.010 (in case of AdSense) = Monthly ad revenue in $$$
- Traffic on their ad monetized content per month * 0.017 (in case of other ad management services) = Monthly ad revenue in $$$
How to shortlist your niches?
To shortlist your niches, you need to research the effectiveness of a niche when it comes to advertisement, affiliate marketing and also selling your own products and services.
You need to ask an additional question – Are there enough low competitor DR/DA < 25 sites in this niche?
You need to be making use of Ahrefs competing domains feature, or manual research techniques to figure low DR/DA sites in the niche.
If there are a lot of low DR sites in the niche, then it means you can succeed quickly in your niche.
How to finalize a niche?
Once you shortlist your niches, there are various factors you need to consider before finalizing a niche.
Because you need to make sure that in the niche you are selecting there’s enough room for growth.
Are there enough good keywords?
You need to be blogging in a niche where there’s a huge demand for content but there’s a scarcity of content.
The kinds of keywords you’ll be researching depends upon your monetization method:
- For affiliates: Make sure that there are enough keywords that people search for when buying affiliate products and services. Like reviews, alternatives, comparisons, etc. You don’t need to worry too much about keyword volume. Anything between 100 – 700 is enough to go with.
- For ads: High volume and low competitive informational keywords are really important.
You can make use of the combined search volume metric in Semrush to see whether there are enough keywords in your niche.
When tools like Ahrefs or Semrush return you the keywords, you can add keyword difficulty metrics to only come up with keywords that have low competition in your niche.
Along with manual keyword research, you need to also consider plugging in some niche site URLs in Ahrefs and list down the keywords in your niche. To come up with more sites, you can make use of Ahrefs’ competitor sites feature.
♻️ You need to repeat this step for a couple of more sites in your niche until you get a really good list of at least 100 good keywords to go after.
Ease of content creation
In order to finalize the shortlisted niches, you need to ask two questions:
- Is there a need for specialized content in this niche?
- Is the content ranking high in this niche under optimized and written without keeping SEO strategies in mind.
Specialist Content
Depending on your niche, you’ll need content from either specialist or generic writers.
For niches like treadmills, routers, or airsoft guns, even an average enthusiast can write after some research.
However, for niches like supplements or high-end audio equipment, you’ll need to invest in quality content creation. Check your competitor sites to see how challenging it is to produce content in your chosen niche.
🔑 If sites rank well despite having thin content, that’s a positive sign for you.
If you’re passionate and willing to become an expert, you can tackle niches requiring technical expertise. But that’s up to you.
Underoptimized?
In an underoptimized niche, where basic SEO practices are lacking, you might find a great opportunity. Check if your competitors have done on-page SEO well.
Ask yourself:
- Are their blog posts internally linked?
- How fast do their pages load?
- Is their content well-formatted for readers?
🤔 If the sites you are researching are under optimized, and if you’re 100% sure that you’ll be able to excel over them, then it’s a good sign.
Potential for non-SEO traffic
Having the ability to drive non-Google traffic to your site will be an added advantage.
Many people drive a lot of traffic from sources like Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
You need to determine whether some top niche sites are driving non-Google traffic to their site. Make use of SimilarWeb and other tools to determine this.
For example, many blogs in the below niches rely on Pinterest traffic and monetize their site with advertisements.
- Home decor
- Art
- Travel
- Photography
- DIY and Crafts
- Design
Link building difficulty
In order for more and more sites to link to your site, your niche matters a lot.
For example, if your niche is around the casino, gambling, forex, etc. it would be a really hard job for you to build quality links to your site as nobody will be willing to link to you.
So, in order to avoid falling into the trap of selecting a wrong niche and later realizing that the SEO and link building is difficult, you need to first validate the niches for ease of SEO, especially link building.
You need to first take a look at backlink profile of some of top ranking niche sites.
Ask yourself:
- How much effort are they putting in link building?
- What link building strategies are they implementing? Can you replicate the same?
- Are the links they are building natural? If so, why are they attracting natural backlinks?
- What are the backlink profile commonalities between the top-ranking niche sites?
Identify the patterns and finalize the niche.
Time for 1K traffic per month
Determine how long it takes on average to reach 1K monthly Google traffic. This insight helps weed out niches with longer Google Sandbox durations.
Google Sandbox is a probation period where Google delivers minimal traffic while evaluating your site’s quality. Longer sandbox periods mean longer ranking times.
You’ve researched potential competitors in each niche. Now, analyze their historic traffic graphs to see how long it took them to hit 1K traffic.
If your competitors achieve this milestone in 5-6 months, that’s a good sign. Remember, their timeline doesn’t guarantee yours, but it’s a promising indicator.
Wrapping up
Choosing a blog niche isn’t just about following trends or chasing profits.
It’s about finding that sweet spot where your passion meets market demand.
Remember, the perfect niche balances your interests, monetization potential, and content creation ease. Don’t rush the process – take your time to research and validate your options.
With the right niche, you’ll set yourself up for long-term blogging success. Now go out there!
