Blogging tip #4: Choosing the perfect niche

bysmartketeer

6.8K followers

Updated 6 years ago

In my previous tip I was talking about goals ... Today I'm going to share with you ...

A few more – quite important – thoughts about launching a niche blog

As I said, defining clear, realistic goals is the very first and most important step in your blogging carrier, especially when it comes about niche blogs.

But, here’s the thing: all your goals and objectives are revolving around your main target audience, and your target audience is defined by your … niche. It’s called “niche blog” with a reason … The niche itself will influence literally everything: your approach, the whole marketing strategy, the content creation process, the applicable promotional methods, etc and of course … your bank account. And after all, that’s the end-goal right? To earn money with a blog or to make a living with blogging …

This is why choosing the right niche is literally crucial to your success. And – sadly – this is the point where many marketers are going to make their very first huge mistake. Why? Because, when it comes about blogging, everybody is tempted to choose a broad monster-niche like weight loss, travel, etc. The approach is completely understandable and it’s right … until a certain point. Yes, in those monster-niches there are massive amounts of traffic, there are great amounts of money and there are a ton of people who would be more than willing to buy your products or to share your content. BUT, there is also a ton of competition! So, here’s my advice: choosing a broad monster-niche can be a good starting point, but if you are serious about blogging, you’ll have to dig a bit deeper. Choosing a narrower, equally profitable sub-niche – or a similarly lucrative untapped topic! – will allow you to minimize the competition. Instead of “weight loss” you should go for “weight loss with natural products”. Instead of “travel” you should choose “undersea expeditions” or “extreme adventures”. The point: the narrower a niche is, the better; a smartly narrowed sub-niche can be extremely profitable! and of course, don’t go too small … where is no competition at all … there is no money. Where is no competition, you can’t earn money with a blog … and you definitely can’t make a living with blogging.

I’ve seen hundreds of tutorials and I’ve heard dozens of experts saying that finding a good niche is usually a very challenging task. I don’t agree. Choosing a good niche is nothing else, but a “regular” evaluation process. And more than that, it’s a unique opportunity to clearly define those values that will set you apart from the competition. All you have to do, is to answer 5 simple and logical questions:

• are you really interested in the given topic? is not a mandatory requirement, but you should keep in mind, that regularly creating high-quality content about something you don’t even care, will be much more challenging than finding a good niche; also, your readers will inevitably discern if you are passionate about your topic or not, and believe me, if you aren’t, they won’t be either

• is the topic popular? or even better: is the topic evergreen? being interested in your topic is a great advantage, but it’s not enough; you have all the rights to be super-excited about how do ants reproduce, but launching a blog around this topic, probably won’t make you a millionaire; so, don’t forget, the very first crucial ingredient is: demand

• what competition is there? where is demand, there is supply … and competition; the more you know about them, the easier will be for you to choose the right “pond”; the most important question: what is the competition neglecting? and don’t forget, being a big fish in a small pond is much better than being a small fish in a big pond!

• will you have enough content? if you want to become a successful blogger, you’ll have to come up with fresh and useful content for long periods of time; I’ve seen this many times: relatively new blogs just disappeared, because their author simply run out of things to say; so, when you are choosing your niche, ask yourself: do you have enough within you? do you have access to other sources that can help you in your content creation efforts? do you have any chances to attract guest-bloggers?

• are there real and steady income streams? the point is, that not every topic is going to be suitable for every potential income stream, and you’ll have to find a niche, which can be perfectly aligned with your monetization strategies; some topics are suited to affiliate programs, others to contextual or impression-based ads and so on …

The bottom line: choosing a powerful, profitable niche is obviously, an extremely important step, but it’s definitely not an exact science; all you need is some time, a handy free tool called Google and a healthy dose of good, old common sense.

Once you have find the perfect niche, you can move on to define your key topics. These main categories eventually will define the structure of your niche blog.

Creating and running a niche blog is a long-term project, which will require a lot of time and effort. On the other hand, a niche blog also comes with great benefits, because:

• will help you to stay on track; focus is hard when you blog, especially if you are running a business blog; the “writer’s block” is the biggest nightmare for a blogger; when you have a well-chosen specific niche, the narrowed boundaries will help you to stay on track; a niche blog has more concrete methods of finding new, exploitable ideas, because the topic itself is “restricted”

• will help you to learn new things; the in-depth coverage of a given topic is must for niche blogs; when you have only a few main topics, you are forced to dig in deeper and deeper; you’ll have to perform continuous far-reaching researches to support your content-creation efforts, and those researches will help you to expand your own knowledge

• will give you an active and reliable audience; the narrowed, topic-specific approach will automatically generate engagement; a niche blog will give you an audience that is really interested in your content; an audience that understands you; if you can understand them too, your success is guaranteed

• will give you better opportunities to monetize your blog; first of all: a well-targeted audience will produce a higher conversion rate; secondly: a topic-centered niche blog is more attractive to advertisers