In a world where bloggers are aggressively competing to find visibility, readers and conversions, it is easy to get lost in the sea of new blogs when you don’t know how to choose a profitable niche for your blog, before getting started.
Think about it. The journey to starting a new blog begins with choosing a blogging niche that will fit in with your goals as a blogger but, most new bloggers do not know how to get started.
For so many, this inability to choose the right niche has led them to labor in vain after years and years of blogging.
As someone who’s had to deal with a failed blog in my first attempt at blogging, in this guide, I’ll be sharing with you the lessons I learned and the top 7 steps you can use to choose the right niche before starting a blog.
Clarify your Goals
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You can’t possibly choose a profitable niche for your blog without identifying and clarifying the specific goals you want to achieve with the blog.
So the first step you want to take is to ask yourself, what exactly do I want to achieve with this blog? Do you want to go into full time blogging to make money online or you just want to do blog as a hobby?
When I first started blogging many years ago, I knew wanted to start a blog but i wasn’t really sure of what i should be blogging about. And i didn’t really have a blogging goal.
I remember, i had recently embraced personal development then, because that was really important to me at that stage of my life… But practically i was still more of an upcoming poet at that time.
I did lots of reflective poetry and all but somehow considering my decision to start a blog, i still felt poetry was not something that everyone will appreciate.
Without any thought about my goals, I decided that blogging about Poetry is not what I should do. So instead of poetry, I chose personal development.
And then slow and steady, my blogging journey without even thinking about anything like plans to generate income from the blog, make it sustainable or grow it for many years to come.
The problem with this approach is that this was never sustainable. First of all, this blog needed to earn some income to sustain itself but I had no clue about how to do that.
I kept blogging on and on and then after many months, I got the most terrible news from my web host saying” your account will be suspended after 7 days, if I don’t renew your subscription“.
There was no way I could get this subscription fixed on time. So, I had to watch as my labor, effort and time got “burned into ashes” of forgetfulness.
Literally, I failed at my first attempt at blogging, because I had no goal. You don’t want this to be your story so, you must clarify your goal.
Identify your Expertise & Interests
One of the easiest ways to choose a profitable niche for your blog is to identify and blog about a niche in your area of expertise, interest, passion or hobbies.
So find out, do you have a special skill, training or expertise in a specific area you’d like to create a blog about?
Where you don’t have either of the that, you can search further. Find areas that interests you like your hobbies passion or things you care about.
Write them down in a list and then get to find the easiest of all of these that you can easily get to build a blog around in the long run.
Research your Preferred Niche
To choose a profitable niche for your blog, you want to go for a niche that a lot of other people are already interested in.
This is one of the reasons I automatically ditched Poetry for personal development when i started my first blog, because I felt more people will be interested in Personal Development.
Although this was purely a guess work for me. In your own case, you want to conduct an actual research on your top three preferred niches, to find out if there are actually a number of people interested in that niche.
To have ideas about the demand for a particular niche, you can find out about the number of people searching for topics in that niche, number of top bloggers in the niche and social media conversations around the particular.
You can find these details using key analytics tools like Google Trends, Google Keywords Tools, Wordstream and Keywords hashtags.
Explore Potential for Profit
There are a number of fleeting niches with a high demand by users but low profitability.
To choose a profitable niche for your blog, you want to filter out these kind of niches entirely.
If you’re out to use monetization options like Google Adsense, you have to keep in mind that there are specific topics you can be blogging about if you want to get high performance keywords.
Where you’re interested in creating your own product or services on the other hand, you must also bear in mind that there are some specific niches that it’ll become very difficult to create a product that people can buy.
These are some of the things that should guide you as you work on choosing a niche for your blog.
Consider Long Term Interest
It is crucial to consider long term interest before deciding on your preferred niche as a blogger. This works for both you and your audience.
As a blogger, you have to consider how much interest you’ll have in your potentially preferred blogging niche, over the long run.
Also, you must pay attention to the interest of your potential audience by finding out if this niche is in an area that can command the interest of your audience for many years to come.
To put it into context, think about choosing to blog about a topic like iPhone 11 because it is currently a trending topic in a certain year.
After the said year, we have newer versions of iPhones and people move their interests to those new versions, what do you think will happen to the blog?
Obviously, it’ll die a slow death. This is why you must pay attention to the long term interest of both yourself and your audience in a particular area, if you want to choose a profitable niche for your blog.
Go for a Low Competition Niche
Don’t just choose a niche, if you want a blogging niche that will help you achieve your goals faster, choose a low competition niche. This is very important.
This is one of the best steps you’ll take to choose a profitable niche for your blog because with this kind of niche, it gets easier to build success without getting crowded out.
To make it even more impactful, allow yourself to be the big fish in a small pond. With time, as you build, grow and gain recognition, you can spread your wings and soar as far as you want.
Choose a Niche you can Grow Through
Whether you’re passionate about it at the initial stages or not, you want to choose a niche you can grow through.
You want to choose a blogging niche that you will willingly learn the nitty gritty of the process and share the journey with your audience, even if you didn’t have the experience at the initial stages.
This is the kind of niche you’ll want to have because while learning through the process, you will gain a lot of experience to share with your audience while building your brand.
Learning, evolving and applying my digital skills during my second blogging journey, to make life meaningful for others really made me feel more competent.
It grew my confidence and at the same time, creating a niche for me, not as someone churning out things he read from the pages of a book but an expert giving advice based on learned experience. This was very impactful, both to my brand and my audience.
So, to choose a profitable niche for your blog, you must go for a niche or topical area that will align with your personal and professional growth goals.
Final Words
Finally, if you’re not sure of what you should be blogging about, start blogging about topics you’re already comfortable with.
Like I mentioned earlier in the opening part of this post, you can always start from somewhere. With time you’ll get to understand areas you’re more comfortable with.
But above all, before thinking about choosing a niche, identify and keep your goals in mind then follow the steps above and you’ll find a pathway to build a successful blog.
And of course, you can learn more, get mentored and find ways to walk through the bolts and nuts of blogging by signing up for our Smart Blogging Course here.
Now, it’s over to you. What’s your biggest challenge when it comes to choosing a blogging niche? Drop your comments below.
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