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How to Find Your Niche For Your Blog
Choosing the niche for your blog is a very important first step in blogging. This decision is hard to change later on without starting over. Maybe if your blog name is broad you might be able to. However, most likely you will want your blog name to be what your niche is so again it would be hard to change later on.
For example, my blog name is Mom Blog From Home and it’s about teaching moms how to blog from home. If I wanted to change my niche I could possibly spin it to where I am a mom blogging from home about a certain topic. But I wouldn’t be able to change my niche to teaching people how to care for puppies or something like that.
It just wouldn’t make sense with the name of my blog.
Personally, I have gone through deciding on a niche for my blog many times so I am speaking from experience. I have always wanted to blog but never knew what to blog about. I would change my mind too many times.
Then when I finally decided on a niche, I would buy the domain name and then panic and change my mind again but then it was too late.
I still have some of the domain names I have purchased in the past. It wasn’t until I finally went with my heart and chose to teach about blogging did it all come together.
Why Choosing Your Niche Is Important
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Can’t change it later on
As I said it is not something you can easily change 6 months down the road if you change your mind. It is worth taking the time to really evaluate and find the perfect niche for your blog.
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Needs to be something you are passionate about
One thing you will hear from other bloggers and you are going to hear it from me as well is that you need to be passionate about your niche. If you are knowledgeable about a subject but you aren’t passionate about it then that is probably not the one to go with.
Let me give you two personal examples.
- First, I feel like I am pretty knowledgeable about children. My mother ran an in-home daycare for 20 years so I grew up in that daycare for 15+ years. Once out of college I had my daughter and I opened up my own daycare that I ran for two years. Since then I have worked on and off with the 1-3-year-olds at a private school in town for a total working time of a year.
I have taken many safety courses and training classes plus obviously years of hands-on work. However, though I love them all dearly, I don’t believe that is my calling and it is not my passion.
Maybe it is a skill I have to handle little children when many others can not but again it is not a passion. I had thought about all the different niches I could use that involved children that I would be able to blog about for a long time. But those times when you have had a long day and you just don’t feel like working on your blog, it will be way too easy to give into. If you are passionate about your niche then you will look forward to working on it. It won’t feel like work at all!. Also, then you will strive to learn more and grow in your niche market!
- Second, I have some knowledge about health and weight loss. I have my own weight loss success story after finding these awesome products that I have been taking since 2012.
I started them after a friend had lost 30 pounds and looked amazing and was full of energy. I got on the products and the program and I ended up losing 20 pounds and I still am at that 125-pound mark I ended at years ago.
I learned so much along that journey that I would love to share with everyone. However, I quickly learned that people want to have their cake and eat it too….literally!
When it comes to weight loss no one wants to actually put in the work and most are quick to shut anything you say down (even if you have all kinds of proof). It is something I am passionate about for myself but I am not passionate about trying to convince people that it works. I know it does and so for me, that’s all that matters!
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You will be blogging about that topic for years (hopefully right?)
If your blog goes well then you should be blogging for years, right? If you grow your blog and you are bringing in an income then that will be your source of income for….well ever! Make sure your niche in something you can stand to blog about forever. Of course, you can also start another blog later on once this one is successful. Although you wouldn’t want to close the first one either way so again back to being able to blog about that niche for a long time.
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Investment
There is some investment in starting a blog so you once more want to make sure you know for sure what your niche for your blog is going to be before you make any purchases. The main one that you can’t take back is your domain name. Luckily, domain names are fairly inexpensive so you won’t be out much money if you do change your mind. Read more about how to choose your domain name here.
And as they say, time is money so if you get too deep into creating your blog around your niche and writing blog posts then you will have done that all for nothing.
Niche by Number – Suzi Whitford
Check out Suzi’s course that goes over the 9 steps to finding your perfect niche!
How to Brainstorm Niche Ideas
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Start big and work down
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Write everything down that comes to your mind
- What are you:
- knowledgeable about
- passionate about
- What is something you know that others don’t
- What do you:
- do for a living
- like to read about
- like to watch
- do in your spare time
- What are your interests
- What can you teach someone
- What are you:
Niche Ideas
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Here are some ideas
- Health/Fitness
- Dog Training
- Homeschooling
- Photography
- Makeup
- Pregnancy
- Lawn Care
- Gardening
- Mechanic
- Computers
- Home Décor
- Sports
- Video Games
- Recipes
- Funny Videos
- Cleaning
- Finances
- Fashion
- Make Furniture
Narrow down your choices
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Now take every topic you came up with and start narrowing it down. Here are some examples.
- Health/Fitness
- Exercises
- Healthy Recipes
- Supplements
- Clothing
- Pregnancy
- Health
- Clothes
- Exercises
- Baby room décor
- Nursing
- Health/Fitness
Narrow down your niche even more
So that you stand out even further you can narrow your niche down once more! The pool of people that will be searching for Health and Fitness is really large.
That is great but there is also a large number of people providing that information. If you narrow it down to just exercises then yes that narrows down the people looking but it also narrows down the number of people providing that information or your competition.
Then if you narrow it down once more and be very specific then odds are you will have even less competition. Yes, you will have fewer people searching but that is okay because you will have a very targeting audience. You are more likely to get a better turn out with a more targeted audience than to be lost in the crowd of every other website out there on the broader niche.
For example Mom Blog From Home: It is about teaching moms how to blog and how to use that money to pay off debt. I narrowed it down from not just about blogging but to teaching moms to blog, then to narrow it down once more to teach them how to use their blog to pay off debt.
Look for keywords
Keywords are another major part of picking out your niche. If there are keywords in your niche that you could use then that will help drive traffic to your blog. Keywords are words that are popular or searched for often. You can go to kwfinder.com to search for long-tailed keywords and see how popular they are.
If you can use a long-tailed keyword in your domain name then when people search that term you are more likely to pop up.
Competition
Of course, everyone wants to find a niche that has no competition but I once read that having competition isn’t necessarily a bad thing. That means that the niche is in high demand. It must be popular to have others in that same niche. That’s again where setting yourself apart from your competitors comes in by narrowing down your niche to be more specific for a more targeted audience.
Profitability
There needs to be a way to profit from your niche. Unless you are purely blogging for fun. If you are like me, you are looking to make an income and so you need to not only find something that you can make a profit from but something people are actually willing to purchase too.
For example, just because recipes are a popular niche doesn’t mean someone will buy your liver and onions recipes. Sorry for those that like liver and onions I was trying to think of something I wouldn’t (or most people wouldn’t) eat. So make sure that your niche isn’t all about something that no one wants.
To avoid that, a great suggestion is to do some market research yourself and see if there are others out there. Odds are if you can’t find any other sites that are like your targeted niche, then it probably isn’t a good one to go with. It is nearly impossible to be the first one in that niche. Search on Google, Pinterest, and even Etsy if it is a homemade product, to see if it is profitable.
Affiliate Marketing
If your niche is not a product you have made but rather someone else’s product(s) then you are probably looking to become an affiliate for that said product or service to receive a commission off of the sale.
You can be an affiliate for several products or services. Let’s go back to the recipe niche example, you could be an affiliate for a cookbook, cooking utensils, the ingredients, the paid cooking course someone offers, etc.
To become an affiliate either go to the website of the person or company you are interested in and scroll to the very bottom and most of the time there is a link to their affiliate program. Otherwise, you can Google search the product or service and add “+affiliate” to the end to get search results of companies that have affiliate programs within your niche.
Affiliate Network Companies
You can also look through the affiliate network companies like Commission Junction, Share a Sale, Rakuten or even Amazon!
Either way, it is a fairly simple and easy process! If you do not see a link on a certain website that you really want to become an affiliate for then find a way to contact them and just ask!
Many bloggers make all their money solely on affiliate marketing! Once you are an affiliate for someone you will receive a special link that you will add when appropriate into your blog posts and when someone clicks on that link and makes a purchase you will receive a commission! Easy peasy!
Sum It All Up
Choose something you are passionate about, something you can write about for a long time, and something that is profitable!
Happy blogging!
Vanessa
Check out all my tips on starting a blog in my 30 Day Challenge to Start a Blog
