If you choose the wrong niche, you will waste dozens of hours and potentially hundreds of dollars.
When I first started blogging, I made a lot of mistakes, including picking the wrong niche, which cost me $378 and 5 months of my life.
That is why I created an 8-step checklist for you to consider before starting your blog.
Are niche sites relevant in 2022?
What exactly do I mean by “niche”?
A niche is a small subsection of a topic that is far too broad to cover in its entirety.
Assume you’re about to begin writing about fitness and workouts. To begin with, this is an enormously broad topic.
The rule of thumb is that the broader the topic, the less likely you are to appear in Google search results for people looking for it.
Fitness is dominated by broad-reaching websites such as healthline.com, mayoclinic.org, and everydayhealth.com.
Is this the end of your dream of becoming a successful fitness blogger? ABSOLUTELY NOT.
All you have to do is find a niche in the fitness industry, start with something small, and work your way up from there.
Because if you already have a loyal following interested in what you’re writing, you can start moving into more general topics once you’ve established yourself as an authority in a specific area of fitness.
Should you focus on a specific niche or keep your focus broad?
In this example, I’ll demonstrate how you can do it.
I’m going to stick with our fitness industry because you’ve already seen that ranking for broad terms won’t help beginners.
You need to find something more specific, ideally specific to your personal life. You are working out from home great now we are starting to niche down.
Home workouts aren’t as niche as they once were, and there’s still plenty of competition, so let’s go even further.
Working out without any equipment at home.
This is starting to look better now. Many people want to begin working out at home but don’t want to spend a lot of money on expensive equipment, so they begin by lifting their own weight.
What if you wanna go a step further and say you’re a mom? You could start creating workouts for other moms who want to start working out at home with their own weight.
You’ll start focusing on this niche site and become relevant to this specific group of people.
Many people believe there will be too little content to write about, but this is simply not the case. You can learn more about how to find blog topics to write about here.
Just to show you some ideas from the top of my head you can write about in this niche:
- When can I start exercising after getting birth
- Best after birth exercises
- Quiet workouts that won’t wake up your baby
- Work out with your baby
After you’ve created a lot of content about workouts, you can branch out into other areas, such as healthy cooking for you and your baby.
How do you know the niche is a right fit for you
Everyone is interesting in some way; the trick is to figure out what differentiates you or your point of view.
This can include being skilled in a creative work such as writing, drawing, or singing, as well as teaching others how to improve or sharing some of your own tips and tricks.
If your job can is very interesting; for example, if you are a nurse, you can create an entire blog aimed at future students, showing them your journey and giving them tips on how to become a nurse.
I truly believe that everyone can find something interesting to write about, and if you’re thinking, “Well, I’m just a boring person, and there’s literally nothing I can write about that some audience will be interested in,” you’re WRONG.
Even your inability to find anything is intriguing, and many people can relate to it. Begin writing about your journey, why you can’t think of anything, and what helps you find ideas. Turn your biggest weaknesses into your greatest assets.
There are billions of people, and even if we believe our problems are unique, there are thousands, if not millions, of people dealing with the same issues you are, so start writing and stop overthinking.
A good tip for you is to consider what people are asking you to help them with. This usually indicates that people believe you are good at something and are seeking your advice.
If you can’t remember anything, just ask some of your closest friends or family members. You’ll be surprised at what people think about you, especially when it comes to things you didn’t even know you were good at.
Stay Consistent with only one topic
This is really similar to the niching down.
Nowadays, in order to be successful, you must first narrow your focus and begin writing about a specific topic, then expand from there.
Your blogging success is unlikely to happen overnight, and more than 98.78% of bloggers will complete their blogging journey within a year of starting.
This process takes time; you must allow Google or other search engines to understand what your blog is about, and jumping from one topic to another will not help you in the long run.
Check to see if your content is being searched for on Google
If you are uncertain whether or not your content is being searched for, try using Google Trends.
This tool will show you how many people from which regions are searching for a specific term over time.
Try not to be too descriptive and instead focus on a more general search. The key here is to discover which general topics are being searched on and then create a specific niche in those areas.
Because your very specific niche isn’t being searched on, it doesn’t mean people aren’t interested; it simply means Google doesn’t have enough data to create a graph for you.
Look to see if any of your competitors are already creating content in your niche
When it comes to blogging, you must be very familiar with your competition.
It is essential to understand the current state of the market, what people are blogging about, and how you can position yourself in this situation.
Don’t limit yourself to traditional blogs.
Finding your competitors on Google is fine, but nowadays people use a much broader range of tools to find answers.
One of the most popular ways for people to connect with their audiences is through social media.
For example, YouTube is not only a video platform but also the second most popular search engine on the internet, so definitely look at what videos people are making about your topic on YouTube.
The great thing about searching for information on YouTube is that you can actually go to the comment section under the video and see what other people think about the topic. Many times, people ask relevant questions that were not answered in the video, which you can address on your blog.
Also, if you’re writing product reviews, checking Amazon reviews of that product in addition to FAQ where people are asking genuine questions they can’t find answers to on the product page or the internet is a great tool you can use and write about those issues.
Is there room for you to grow in your niche in the future?
Some topics are truly seasonal, such as Christmas or hunting season, and are fine to focus on, though not ideal for complete beginners.
The bigger issue is that people only write about things that won’t last long enough.
Many times, I see people begin a blog about their children or their journey to university, but once that phase of their lives ends, their content opportunities fade.
Is this to say that I wouldn’t recommend starting a blog for a new mom? Certainly not.
Just be aware that there will come a time in the future when you will need to switch your content to something new. You will be able to prepare for this moment if you remember this, and your transition will be as smooth as silk.
Another big mistake was something my friend did during the 2016 US presidential election. He essentially created the site to cover this event, and to his credit, it was a big success for a while, but as you can imagine, after the election, his audience died down and never returned.
So try to avoid events that occur only a few times a decade, such as elections, Olympic games, the FIFA World Cup, and other events that occur only a few times a decade.
Is it possible to make money from your niche?
There is obviously a monetization issue if you are looking for a blog that will make you money. You must choose something that has the potential to be monetized in some way.
Checking if other people are covering this topic a lot is the easiest way to figure out if it has a lot of monetization potential.
This isn’t to say you can’t make money; on the opposite, if you find your competitors, you can easily learn what they’re doing and improve on it.
There are a lot of ways to monetize your blog, and I’ve already covered a lot of them in this article, but as a beginner, you’ll probably only need to focus on two:
- Display Ads: It’s simple: the more traffic you get, the more ads you’ll be able to show, and thus the more money you’ll be able to make. Even though this may be the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of beginner bloggers, it is not the best place to start.
The main issue is that display ads slow down your website, affecting your search engine ranking. As a result, I do not recommend for complete beginners to start monetizing with display ads early on.
At the end of the day, you’re only leaving pennies on the table from the start; it’s far better to focus on ranking and landing on the first pages of the search engines and gain more traffic.
You can start making decent money with those ads once you reach a fairly consistent level of traffic. I’d recommend aiming for at least a few hundred visitors per day over a long period of time; this will indicate that your blog has a steady stream of visitors and it’s time to cash in.
- Affiliate marketing: This, in my opinion, is the best way for you to start making money with your blog as a beginner.
To put it simply, affiliate marketing means promoting someone else’s products and earning a commission if someone purchases that product or service through a special link created by the seller for you.
Nowadays, it is fairly easy to join affiliate programs, even for large corporations such as Amazon, which allows you to promote any product on their website and earn a commission if someone clicks on your unique link and buys the products you’re promoting.
What platform should you use to get started?
Today, in the year 2022, the best way to start a blog is to create your own website rather than starting on social media.
It’s actually a lot easier than it appears, and by following this tutorial, you can set up your first blog in a matter of seconds.
If you want to make money blogging, you must set it up in such a way that it will work for you rather than against you, earning you money even when you are sleeping.
Click this button to learn more about how to start a profitable blog with no previous experience building websites.