When starting a blog, newcomers to blogging often get stumped with the question, “what niche should my blog focus on?” With hundreds of niches that you can start your blog in, it’s no wonder our minds go in a hundred different directions and analysis paralysis sets in. Before you know it, weeks and months have passed but you never picked a niche! But not today, Buddy! Because I’m here to help you.
How to Select a Blogging Niche
This advice might be cliche but being a veteran in the blogging sphere but it’s one that I have formed after picking niches for 15 years and experiencing successes and failures in several of them. Hands down, one of the most important factors in picking a niche for your blog is pasión! Passion will take you places where you could never imagine. Let’s discuss this further more.
Passion Is The Most Important Factor For Your Blogging Success
During my career, I have started quite a few blogs based on my passion in certain topics but I also made the mistake of picking certain niches because I thought they would be “very profitable” even if I knew NOTHING about the topic.
Oh, the irony in that! In my mind, I thought I could hire writers who did know about the topic and put together a thriving blog. And that can happen. However, there are a few reasons you should select a blog you are passionate about:
- If your blog grows too slowly and your motivation starts dissipating, passion for that topic is the main reason you will keep coming back. Don’t underestimate how much your passion for a certain topic will keep you motivated to write.
- If you have a passion for something, you already have knowledge about it. Think about all the time saved when writing an article: no need to conduct any research when you already know your topic at hand. Conducting research for each article is time-consuming but when you have passion for something, you can cut that step out for a lot of your articles.
- When you have passion around a topic and you talk or write about it, there’s a different energy behind your expression and words. People pay attention to those who know what they are talking about.
- Passion feeds some aspects of E-E-A-T. E-E-A-T is a term by Google that stands for “Expertise. Experience. Authoritativeness. Trustworthiness.“ Because you’re passionate and knowledgeable about the topic, it will show on your About page (list your experience or expertise there) as well as in your content. Google wants to show blogs and niche sites in their search that are by people who are genuinely knowledgeable about the topics/niches they pick.
- Because you have so much knowledge in this topic, you have the potential to grow your blog quicker by publishing content faster. This will help you cover your blog’s “topical map” quicker which Google rewards with higher positions for your content in its search engine.
Don’t Let Money Be the Major Factor In Picking A Niche
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to make money. However, when you choose a niche with money mainly leading the decision, you’ve already lost. If you choose a niche based on affiliate commissions or excitement over “how much money I can make in this niche”, you are discarding the fact that you don’t have any knowledge on the topic. If you or your writers don’t have any knowledge on the topic, think about how you would feel visiting a blog or buying from a blogger’s recommendation when they were faking their credibility or experience in the overall topic.
Most importantly, with no experience or expertise at all, you won’t fulfill the aspects of Google’s E-E-A-T.
There Is Money Everywhere!
We’re in the year 2023 where you have tons of options to monetize your blog: display ads, affiliate products, digital products, physical products, and the list goes on and on!
You can grow a content site based on your topic of passion and monetize it with all of the above!
There are many “gurus” who tell you to conduct research to find out if there’s money in the niche first and passion isn’t the primary consideration. My advice is: if you’re worried about monetization, do a search in Google in the niche you’re interested in and see all the sites that pull up and observe what monetization methods they are using.
Monetization should be your second consideration, not first.
A Few Ideas For Niches
Since the beginning of time, people have been interested in the topics of love, dating, pets (fish, snakes, cats, dogs, kangaroos), finances (achieving great credit, buying your first home, etc), health (ranging from disease prevention, cures, fasting, to achieving the perfect six pack), hobbies (singing, painting, drawing, collecting stamps, knitting), and so much more.
Basically, there’s an audience for mostly anything! If you’ve got a passion, there are people out there eager to learn more about that topic.
The More You Niche Down, The Better
Now, it’s worth noting that the more you niche down, the better for your blog’s success. Why?
Because the more you publish content about a very specific topic, Google’s search engine starts seeing your blog as an authority in its space. For this reason, it is super important to cover every angle of your topic as detailed as possible. Also, it’s much faster to achieve topical authority in a sub-niche than a broad topic since you’ll be covering topics closely related within the sub-niche.
Examples Of Sub-Niches
This is the fun part. Write down the main topics you are interested in then do your best to narrow them down.
For example, instead of starting a broad pet site, you could have a blog that is all about cats. But we can dig deeper and narrow it down more. Instead of covering every cat, perhaps you have had orange tabbies and have experience with them. So you settle on orange tabby cats.
Let’s try this in a few more niches:
- Sports -> Football -> College Football
- Animals -> Horses -> Arabian Horse
- Food -> Greek Food
- Finances -> How To Go From Bad Credit To Good Credit For College Students
- Hiking -> Hiking Trails In California (Or Another State)
Once you start doing this a few times, it becomes easier.
Brainstorming For Niches
If you have never, ever brainstormed for what niches you are passionate about, welcome aboard! Grab a pencil and paper and write down the answers to the following questions:
- What do you talk about a lot?
- What hobbies do you enjoy doing regularly?
- What skills do you have?
- What can you not wait to do every week?
- What do you enjoy reading?
- What types of websites do you check out every day online?
Make a list of at least 10 things. Don’t worry; the next step is all about whittling it down to your one passion.
Narrowing Down To Your Final Niche
Now, if you ONLY have one passion to consider as your blog topic, consider yourself lucky! Most of us have multiple passions and things we love and what happens is: most people new to blogging get analysis paralysis and weeks pass by with a lot of overthinking and no decisions made on what niche you should pick. Here are my tips for picking a niche:
- Write down a list of your passions, what you love/like, and hobbies
- Next, write down how much experience and knowledge you have about each
- Now, as hard as it may be, whittle down the list to two niches based on your experience and knowledge for each topic
- Wait a week and come back to your top 2 choices
- Shed tears of joy as you cross one off based on your gut
- Understand how blogs can make you money and get start!
In Summary
You can always consider more factors when it comes to picking a niche for your blog but at the heart of it all, beginner bloggers should stick to a niche that they are passionate about. The blogs that I’ve had the most success with are niches that I returned to because I was passionate about the topic at hand and over the years, I kept growing those blogs because I never got tired of those topics. In fact, picking a niche you’re not familiar with or don’t know much about could be detrimental to your blog’s success as Google wants to serve blogs and niche sites that are by site owners and authors who have expertise or experience in their niches. Have fun and get started. If you have any questions, join the Affiliate Phoenix Facebook Community and ask us.