When you are looking to start a business online, one of the most difficult choices people have is choosing the starting point niche for their blog. A niche is the "topic" of your business. The reality is that there are MILLIONS of potential directions that you can head with your niche and within this post I am going to be walking you through the best ways to find a niche for your blog.

Before I get into some really awesome niche finding techniques, I first want to help you understand the most common issues that people have when trying to come up with their "perfect" niche.

The 3 Main Problems With Niche Selection

There are three main issues newcomers to the affiliate marketing world have when they are attempting to come up with the niche, that is, the core "focus" of their business. I think to a certain degree EVERYONE goes through at least of one of the following when learning how to find a niche for their blogs.

• Too Many Interests. When someone asks you what are you interested in and you come up with a list of 10-20 things, then this is likely the conundrum you are facing when starting out. It is great to be able to choose a passion for your business, but what happens when you have many passions? The answer to this is to choose ONE, perhaps the one that interests you most. Your first niche does not need to be your last (and it probably won't be), so you will want to choose a starting point.
  
  
• Not Enough Interests. Don't have anything that you are really that interested in? That is fine. You don't have to be involved in a passion niche (IE, something you love to do), you can love the idea of building a business and the niche can be your "vehicle" to get there. Thus, anything could be your niche if you don't have any interests. Your interest could be building a business, helping others, and being successful within the online world.
  
  
• Too Broad of an Idea. A very common mistakes people make when choosing a niche is going too broad. We have to remember that there are close to 4 billion (yes, BILLION) people online, so choosing a broad niche will surely give you a massive audience to market to, but you are going to have a tough time becoming an authority in a broad niche. I see people choosing "travel" or "health" or "dieting" or "music", when the reality is that these are far too broad and there are literally 100's if not 1,000's of targeted niches within these much broad categories.

Idea #1: Choose a Passion or Interest.

What are you interested in? What hobby or passion gets you excited?

The great part of choosing a passion or interest is that you are already actively engaged in that niche, you likely have stories and experiences to share, and you will thoroughly enjoy building a business within that niche.

Success has a tendency to follow passion and you often times those business that become VERY successful are driven by passion. Creating a successful business is hard work and when you actually enjoy "going to work", it can absolutely have a positive impact on your journey and the speed at which you achieve success online.

But you certainly do not have to choose a passion as a niche when you are staring a business. In fact, it doesn't even have to be something you know much about (right now).

Idea #2: Find Something You Want to Learn About

What is something that you have always wanted to learn about? What have you been perhaps scared to learn, for fear of not being the best? What do you want to educate yourself and become an expert within?

This can be the starting point for your niche. You don't have to have requisite knowledge within a niche to be very successful within it. One example of this are some niches I have been involved in over the years.

Several years back, I created a blog dedicated to helping people learn about and choose a voIP plan (voice over Internet Protocol), which at the time was very popular. It was an Internet over the phone service, that could help people reduce the costs of long distance calling and businesses create cost-efficient solutions for their call centers. I didn't know anything about this niche before I decided to get into it.

But with some time, energy, and consistent education, I was able to offer an amazing experience for my website visitors and I was able to help A LOT of people within this space save on their conventional phone bill and become well versed in the information they needed to make an educated purchasing decision of a voIP plan.

So, you can become an expert in any niche that you want, even if you don't have much experience in that niche. If you can speed up the research process for people (ie: do the work for them), you can create yourself a thriving authority website.

Idea #3: The Random Research Approach.

No ideas at all? Then you need to come up with a starting point for your research. Fortunately, there are a lot of awesome platforms that you can leverage out there to commence research and come up with good "niche" concepts. You can use these for the starting point for your business.

• Google. There is a well documented process that I leverage called the "Alphabet Soup Technique" and it works like a charm for coming up with niches if you have a broad or initial concept to put into your search. It is also an effective way to narrow down a niche that is too broad.
  
  Let's look at an example. Say I wanted to head in the "basketball" direction with my niche. Just an example, and something that I am interested in. I type basketball into Google.
  
  
  You can see I have been given several ideas already. Basketball Courts could be a niche, basketball hoops could be a niche, basketball shoes could be niche, basketball jerseys. I have 4-5 different niche ideas with one simple search. Say I didn't have any ideas at all. I can simply start typing letters in Google. Maybe start with a random letter, or you could start with A and work your way through the alphabet.
  
  If you want a full walk-through of the Alphabet Soup Technique, click here.

• Amazon. Amazon is the largest marketplace in the world with 100's of millions of products just a search away. They also have a very clean and useful "categorization" that you can leverage to come up with all sorts of niche topics and topics that you could then perform more research on to find even more ideas.
  
  If you go to Amazon.com, and go to the Departments tab on the homepage, you will get a list of all the categories. You can then "dig" down within any of these categories and get all sorts of ideas for niches. For example, I clicked on the "Baby" section and was given all sorts of ideas.
  
  I have 10+ niche ideas, that I could have then further narrowed down even further. Baby Travel Gear, could then be narrowed down by clicking it and you can see many more niches have been revealed.
  
  

• How to Websites. There are many websites out there that can give you some really good ideas, starting with "how to's". As an affiliate marketer you are in essence a problem solver. You have an audience that is seeking information or help about a specific topic/product/problem. If you can align this audience with a relevant product or solution, you are going to have a very successful journey ahead of you.
  
  One of the most popular "how to" websites is eHow.com and you can leverage this platform to uncover all sorts of ideas. If you go to eHow.com, and scroll through the homepage it is going to automatically load the latest "how to" or DIY walk-throughs. Here is an example of a group of 8 different ideas.
  
  
  
  From this alone, I have several niches. Cleaning Hacks, Hats or Hat organizers, Candle Making, Specialty Cupcakes, Chicken Recipes, Making Chocolates, and Earthquake Preparedness. If I were to scroll down more on that page I would have plenty of ideas and you can go along until you find a niche that clicks with you.

Down the Road, You Can Work Within Many Niches.

Before I wrap this up, I want to be clear on one thing and that is that you can absolutely be involved in many niches down the road. Your first niche does not need to be your last, and likely won't be. I personally have ventured into many niches, some passion driven, some interest driven, some randomly driven and was able to be successful within all of them.

I definitely did experence fatigue within some over time, lost interest, or had to inject a new interest into a niche by switching things up a little, but that is the amazing part about the internet. It is vast, your audience and reach is 4 billion people, and regardless the direction(s) you head with your niche, you can be successful within that space.

My recommendation is that in the early stages of your blogging life, you don't try to do too much at once. You want to focus on ONE niche and get the formula for success down within that before you diversify and get yourself involved in too many. I have always remained consistent when I say that it is best to be "great" at one thing than it is to be mediocre of average at many. It is the experts that reap all the rewards in the online world.

June 2018 Was The Month of Research at Wealthy Affiliate!

June 2018 was the Month of Research here at Wealthy Affiliate. This included over 7 hours of training covering a wide breadth of topics related to "research" in your business. This ranges from the initial niche resarch, right down to digging deep into your niche and understanding your customers.

As a Premium member, you can access the replay and watch this past event as many times as you wish. These are going to really advanced your research skills, which are imperative to creating a long term and sustainable business.

• WATCH EVENT REPLAY: Coming Up With Niche Ideas/Idea Generation
  
• WATCH EVENT REPLAY: Understanding Keyword Research
• WATCH EVENT REPLAY: Finding & Leveraging Lucrative Affiliate
• WATCH EVENT REPLAY: Researching Products & Services in Your Niche
• WATCH EVENT REPLAY: Advanced Audience & Customer Research

Now it's your turn, tell us about your experience finding a niche! Did you run into any of the 3 common issues discussed above? We would love to hear about your journey in finding a niche in the discussion below :)