A Beginner-Friendly Guide to Choosing a Profitable Blog Niche
One of the foundational pillars of any online business is picking the right niche. The right niche is the profitable niche although some prefer to refer to it as the“passion niche”. This means you should select your blog niche based on your passion, desire or craving.
However, only a profitable niche can truly fulfil a digital marketer’s ultimate dream of big bucks on autopilot for years.
A profitable niche also shortens the rigorous and money-wasting learning curve most online newbies are often drowned in before their eyes open to the myriad mistakes that they have been making.
Many online businesses have failed because this first step is taken in the wrong direction.
It is an open secret that most blogs fail. Most bloggers may not be able to account for the failure despite the initial motivation, excitement, hard work, research, and hope of success. They cannot make money despite these factors.
But why?
People are unnecessarily preoccupied with traffic, fancy website design, and plugins at the beginning of their online journey.
They forget to build their blog around a profitable niche from day 1.
This omission cost them success later on after wasting valuable time, tons of money, and being entrapped in the scam web of the fake online gurus.
What about the lure of shiny object syndrome?
What is a niche?
Anik Singal has equated a niche with a need. That is why Maslow’s hierarchy of needs comes in handy here. Maslow categorized human needs into five broad groups as shown below following Anik Singal:
● Physiological: food, water, breathing, sleeping, clothing.
● Safety: Employment, a home to live, security for the family, cyber-security, social stability
● Love/Belonging: family, friendship, intimacy, a sense of connection with others
● Esteem: achievement, respect from others, confidence
● Self-Actualization: creativity, spontaneity, morality, acceptance.
From a narrow angle, a niche is the topic or subject-matter around which an online business is built.
On a broader level, a niche is a class of blogs that appeal to the same group of people. This group of people usually, but not necessarily, possess similar psychological and technical affiliation to these blogs, e.g. parenting, dog training, diet and nutrition, make money online, muscle building and gardening.
There are thousands of niches and millions of blogs. However, all blog niches are not created equal. Some niches are broad, e.g. marketing, make money online, gaming, and health. Some niches are narrow, e.g. scuba diving, fishing, book-binding, and biking.
Top Tips for Choosing a Profitable Blog Niche
1. Are popular blogs making money in that niche?
A good indicator of a profitable niche is that there are popular blogs making megabucks selling products in it.
You should ensure that you blog in an online space where a pretty reasonable number of popular blogs are already making decent money.
2. Is there competition in that niche?
Beginner bloggers see competition as bad for business. They are scared of the challenges. Competition is actually good. Ask WHY?
It is actually a lot easier to make profit in an online business where there is already a proven or verified demand for information and products.
Understanding the competition is a key aspect of the game. The formula is: Who is making money and who is not and why?
This means that you can make money at the outset. Trials and errors are virtually eliminated from day 1 of your business. Time wastage and frustration are also knocked out.
It is like a successful scientific experiment where the hypothesis has been proven to be a theory or a principle. You transit from the realm of “may be” to “it is”.
3. Are there opportunities for selling digital products
Selling digital-friendly products can substantially expedite your blog profits. Digital products are online courses, e-books, checklists, infographics and pdf downloads.
Your blog’s ability to sell these items means you can fulfil your customers’ orders on demand and collect money immediately without hassles.
Popular vs Unpopular Blogs
A popular blog operates in a popular niche, gets massive traffic and social media attention.
The blogosphere is like a massive forest where minions and giants co-exist- small trees, tall ones, tiny little insects, huge elephants and mighty anacondas.
Many unpopular blogs are amateurish, malnourished content-wise, and ignorantly optimized for bankruptcy.
A vast majority of these blogs are doomed for failure. They die the death of ignorance after a while or remain stagnant for years living a mediocre existence. Many blogs belong to this pitiable class.
On the other side are the popular professional blogs- well-funded, content-rich, sufficiently-staffed, and optimized for conversion and regular profit. They also make money in the right manner. They do not game the system. They are also patient. They also have a robust list building regimen.
Why it is hard to succeed in an unpopular blog niche
The simple answer is that it is very difficult to get your blog noticed and your content will not be read if you are not in a popular niche.
Popular niches are not equally profitable.
Profitable niches make big profit. For instance, personal development is much more profitable than parenting, health is more profitable than news, and relationship niche is more profitable than travel.
Ultimately, the profitability of a niche could be a function of the set-up of the blog, the traffic volume, conversion rate, and the monetization options it can muster and optimize. My candid advice for newbie bloggers is that they should not waste their precious time on niches that do not make profit.
Narrow vs broad niches
Oftentimes, the majority of newbie marketers get confused from the outset with the broadness of the niche they want to base their blogs on.
A broad niche may require high start-up capital and big ad spend. A broad niche is not too good for SEO. Trying to sell to everyone online is a recipe for disaster. The narrower your niche the better.
A narrow niche allows an online marketer to do focused marketing, build an authority status in the chosen niche, increase conversion, build more trust and boost overall profit.
For example, in the relationship niche, there are three main sub-niches: dating advice for women, dating advice for men, and saving your relationship. It is wise to pick one, though narrow.
How do profitable blogs monetize?
The six major ways real blogs make their money are:
- Affiliate marketing- whereby they sell other people’s products.
- Membership programs- monthly subscription on information product offering.
- Online courses- they sell courses or a study plan on a subject.
- Digital downloads- e.g. ebooks, apps, cheat sheets, templates.
- Physical products- e.g. planners, books, t-shirts, gifts.
- Services- e.g. consulting, coaching.
Of all the above, the most profitable are arguably numbers 1, 2, and 3. Why? Because of their formidable capacity to generate money on autopilot, otherwise referred to as passive income.
A bit of soul-searching is needed when picking a profitable niche. The simple question to ask is: Can I engage my audience with the monetization options above and succeed on my blog big time?
If the answer is a loud and confident YES, then you are good to go given the right mentoring.
The next step is to find good examples of blogs that are succeeding in that niche and reverse-engineer their strategies.
Do not be the first person to go into one obscure micro niche and believe you will capture the golden fleece. Follow those who have seen it all. They have made mistakes and corrected themselves before achieving success. Hence, they have done the heavy lifting for you.
Use Feedly to your advantage in your niche research
Feedly is a content aggregator; meaning that it allows you to add blogs, YouTube channels, topics, online publications, and organize them by topics. It allows you to search for the best sources for any topic- perfect for researching topics you have not even considered before.
You can also follow any of the real gurus in your niche by adding them to your feed. Find as many blogs as you desire and add them to your feed.
Feedly will also show you the actual URL of the website and tell you a bit about it. In your search, you should be interested in these questions:
a. How many followers do the blogs have?
b. What is the relevance of the blog to your topic?
c. How frequently do these blogs publish?
Feedly also permits you to look up the sources of content to assess its relative popularity to inspire you into further research. While not suggesting that Feedly is a definitive source it should be used with Google and other tools.
What niches are most profitable?
The followin are the most profitable main blog niches.
- internet marketing 2. diet/nutrition 3. learn to sing 4. sports 5. writing
6. entertainment 7. online dating 8. muscle building 9. spirituality 10. travel
11. natural health 12. loans and financing 13. wholesale sourcing
14. green energy 15. save your relationship 16. self-help 17. fiction
18. fashion and beauty 19. survival 20. pregnancy/fertility 21. weight loss
22. pets 23. education 24. tech and gadgets
It pays to update your knowledge at any time you may wish to choose an online niche market. This could be done utilizing Google Trends, Google Keyword Planner, and other keyword research tools.
