There are countless people who started a blog and gave up before finding the fame they deserved.
What I find most interesting here is that most of them echo the same voice:
- I quit because I couldn't drive traffic to my blog
- I quit because I couldn't make money.
- I did not succeed
- I had no luck
To me, this is disheartening to hear because the problem is not the hard work of these dropouts, but the lack of understanding of profitable blogging and especially the lack of understanding of the blogging niche.
Today I am going to reveal the secrets of niche selection, which will be the basis for building a profitable blogging business.
It's a long read and you should also bookmark this guide for future reference. Drink a good cup of coffee or green tea and stay away from distractions.
Read every word with the clear intention of learning something new, and you'll not only succeed in your next blog, but you'll avoid making the niche-selection mistakes that fail so many bloggers.
What is a Blogging Niche?According to the dictionary
Refers to or relates to products, services, or interests that appeal to a small, specialized segment of the population.
The most common way to think about a blog niche is:
What is your blog about?What is your blog about?
Biggest mistake in niche selection?
There are some mistakes that many beginners make when it comes to niche selection. Allow me to list a few.
1. Enter the general niche:
A general niche is a broad niche, usually very competitive and very broad. For example, health niche, technology niche, fashion niche.
A better way to analyze it is to focus on a narrow niche within a broader niche.
This alone will make your blog a hit in terms of popularity, traffic and money.
Plus, you'll become an expert as you spend more time researching, learning, and writing about a particular topic.
You should broaden your horizon and focus on a niche that offers you an option for more monetization opportunities.
This may take the form of (but is not limited to)
- Direct advertisers
- Affiliate Programs
- Online course
- Marketing
Read my guide on how to make money blogging, it will help you to know more options for blogging monetization.
3. Without research, failure occurs:
If your goal is to build a sustainable business (income stream) from your blog, you need to spend time researching and using data to choose a niche.
It may take you 2-3 days to start your blog. But, this exercise alone will help you validate your thinking and not just base your decision on taste and hunches.
On the contrary, intuition is not a bad thing, as long as you are well fed with the right information before starting your blog.
4. Sticking to the wrong niche:
"Okay, I'll do it," this kind of thinking often leads to disappointment in the near future and eventually you stop working on your blog.
Often when you realize that you are working in the wrong niche, you can start a new website (in a new niche) and work for yourself. In fact, your second blog may be a hit because you use your knowledge from the old blog in the new one.
In my 12-year blogging career, each new blog has become more successful than the last. So don't be afraid to leave your old niche and start a new one when you realize that the old niche is too saturated or you are no longer interested in it.
Take all of this advice with a grain of salt and think it through before making any decisions about changing your niche. If you are part of ShoutUniversity, you can always ask me about your niche.
5. It does not start due to lack of niche:
Choosing a niche is definitely step #1 to profitable blogging success, but you shouldn't stay at this step for too long. Many other challenges are waiting for you and you have to complete the whole niche selection process in a week.
Even if it means you picked the wrong slot, you can always fix the price later. The key here is not to get bogged down in the niche selection process.
Let's get into the benefits…
What are the benefits of niche selection?
1. More Traffic - Google Love:
The more you use data to choose a niche, the more likely you are to build a high traffic blog. Also, since you are working in a laser-focused niche, Google is likely to reward you more in terms of organic traffic.
2. More loyal users
Being in the right niche will also help you attract the customers you want. Since your blog is about a single topic, being in the right niche will also help you attract your target audience.
Since your blog is only about one topic, your readers will be more.
You will notice that it has a low bounce rate, high average. Over time the page and your community will grow. This whole process may be slow at first, but eventually, one day, everything will change.
3. You can become an expert:
Learning is a slow process, but as you spend time learning about a topic on a daily basis, you will be in the top 1-5% of that particular area.
The best part is that you don't even realize how you acquired this kind of knowledge because your thirst is never quenched. This difference is mostly noticed by others or you notice it when you compare your recent works with old ones.
4. Marketing Made Easy:
This is the reason why you need to spend a lot of time in choosing the right place. When you have a targeted blog, your marketing efforts become a little easier than an untargeted blog, and you get better results with less effort.
5. No Mulla 💸:
Once your blog starts gaining traction, advertisers will come to you. This phase in your career can be a game changer as your initial niche selection will help you earn more money than your peers.
Because of the laser-focused niche, ads should get a high CTR from a hyper-targeted audience, which is the ultimate thorn. In one of the niches I worked on, he made over $12,000 in a single day because he was in a targeted niche. Now, you may or may not replicate my result, but it's definitely better than starting a blog without a niche option.
- General niche vs. Laser-focused niche (microniche)
- Freelancing vs Freelancing for Writers
- Tech blog vs tech blog for Apple users
- Fashion and lifestyle blog vs college fashion and lifestyle blog
- SEO vs backlink building
5 Principles for Choosing a Niche for Your Blog:
1. Your interest is also known as passion.
Use your past experience, hobbies and learnings, current interests, readings and learnings, and life achievements to choose a niche. For example, if you've lost weight, you might consider starting a health blog, or if you're financially free, you might start a finance blog.
Always remember: you learn best by teaching!
To do this, I made a list of things I like, then check out the other filters listed below.
This ensures that the niche you choose is not only one you are passionate about but also profitable in the long run.2. A less competitive slot means an easier win:
Another factor to consider before targeting a niche is competition. You should avoid highly competitive niches as many other webmasters are building websites in the same niche.
You should remember this as a very important principle for successful niche selection. Your goal should be to pick a niche that isn't very competitive and has few consumers interested in it. At the same time, it has the potential to evolve over time to gain a clear understanding of it (see trends in niche selection).
3. Your Area of Expertise:
Well, passion is a compass to find a good niche, you should not ignore your existing niche selection experience. Above all, since many websites depend on Google search to generate traffic, experience is a factor to consider.
A few years ago, Google made it clear that it was looking for a writer's expertise to rank a website. A higher ranking means you will be rewarded with more organic traffic, which will help you succeed in your blogging business.
Of course, Google took the lead and started downgrading websites that clearly lack experience, especially in everything related to health, finances and money. .
Common categories like fashion and tech are great right now, but we can't be sure they'll be the same in the near future. Your qualifications, your official status (eg: Engineer, Ph.D., MBA) should be taken into consideration while choosing the appropriate position.
5. Is your niche monetized?
This is another important factor that you should consider while finalizing a niche to start a profitable blog. It's not uncommon for new bloggers to start a blog on topics they're interested in, but have trouble monetizing.
The reason is that there are many high traffic niches that are difficult to monetize. The reason is that there are not enough advertisers who want to advertise in these niches.
Google AdSense or Media.net is undoubtedly the most common way to monetize any niche, but as I shared in my webinar on how to make money blogging, there are higher monetization levels that generate more income.
There are many ways to measure monetization opportunities and one of them is to analyze those niche websites. This strategy is also known as competitive analysis.
Analyze other blogs in a similar niche (broad or narrow) and see how they monetize their blog.
Some things to pay attention to:
- Are they only using contextual ad networks like AdSense to monetize?
- Are you running direct ads? If so, what are all the brands?
- Do you have affiliate links on the site?
- Do they sell products (courses, e-books, marketing)?
- Can you advise?
This kind of study can give your blogging business plan an edge and also slow down.
Final words for successful niche selection:
Before going into niche selection FAQ, I want you to know one thing:
This guide should be used as a guiding principle for your niche selection process, not the only one. There are often outliers who think it's unpredictable, and you have to keep that in mind.
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