Finding Your Blog Niche

If you’re in the first stages of starting a blog, finding your blog’s niche can be a challenge.

You want to make sure you pick a blog niche that’s right for you and is in line with your goals.

Plus, you may be thinking about your website name and URL and the niche you choose may influence that choice.

Fortunately, there’s some simple steps to follow, to find the blog niche that is right for you.

Finding the Right Blog Niche

For the purposes of this blog post, let’s assume you’re planning on making an income from your blog.

If your goal is to create a hobby blog, then don’t worry so much about choosing the right niche.  Just make your blog about something that makes you happy to write about.

However, if your goal is to monetize your blog in some way, then you do want to put thought into finding the right niche.

What Does Niche Mean?

Niche means the topic your blog will be about.

It’s the overall subject of your website and the main theme of your online business.

All your content revolves around the niche you choose.

It’s important that you stick to your niche as you develop your website over time.  This will ensure your readers and the search engines understand what your website is about.

People are looking for specific answers in specific subject areas.  By sticking to your niche, your site will gain authority over time in that particular niche, resulting in more targeted visits.

Try not to deviate too far from your niche as you develop your content.

Additionally, the narrower your niche is, the better.  Trying to please everyone will end up pleasing no one.

Bottom line…  Choose what to focus on and then stay focused!

By doing so you will increase your expertise in your niche and gain authority as time goes on.

Then, as your authority and expertise grows, there’s a good chance more and more people will seek your site out, over others.

Starting with the End in Mind

When starting a blog or website for profit, it’s important to remember that your goal should be to eventually provide a product or service to your target audience.

It may be in the form of a digital ebook or online course.  Or perhaps coaching and consulting.  Or something else.

While you may also be considering other forms of income from your site, your ultimate success will come from selling your own products and services.

So, with that end in mind, let’s figure out how to craft your blog niche to achieve that goal.

Note:  This strategy also works great for affiliate marketing.

The Intersection of Your Skills, Your Passions and The Market

If you’re a visual learner, the picture above cuts to the chase and shows you exactly what your niche should be.

The niche you choose should be the intersection of your skills, your passions and the market for what you have to sell.

Let’s take a look at each of these.

Your Skills

Ask yourself the question, “What am I good at?”

You may immediately know what skills you have and what you’re good at.  However, consider some different ways of looking at this.

What is it that people always to come to you with, when they have a problem and know you’ll have the answer to help them.

Think about that.

Those things are big clues as to what skills you have and what you’re good at.  You may not even think you’re an “expert” at these things, but other people do.  If you weren’t good at those things, people wouldn’t be coming to you for advice.

Here’s some example that come to mind:

• Finances.
• Organization.
• Crafts.
• DIY.
• Fitness.
• Healthy recipes.
• Cooking.
• Exercise.

I’ll share my own example…

One thing I’m really good at is wine tasting.  I have a knack for knowing the ins and outs of wine and people seem to trust my opinions about wines I like and dislike.

My opinions help people make their buying decisions in restaurants and wine shops.

So, that’s a skill I have and is a big reason I have my Honest Wine Reviews website.

Your Passions

Ask yourself the question, “What do I like?”

These are the things you can’t stop talking about or just make you happy when you’re doing them.

Passion is important in online business.  When starting an online business you need to plan to be in it for the long haul.

You also need to produce content for your website for the foreseeable future.

This will likely take the shape of blog posts and you’ll be writing a lot of them!

If you’re not passionate about what your writing about, you won’t be able to sustain it over the long haul.

The last thing you want to do is get bored with what you’re writing about.  You’ll stop producing content and your business will go into a decline.

So, give thought to what your passions are.

Hint, they’re probably similar to the things you’re good at.

Sticking with my example, I love the craftsmanship that goes into winemaking.  And also, the nuances of different types of wine and different regions wine comes from.

It amazes me how much work goes into producing a great bottle of wine and I thoroughly enjoy writing about it!

It’s a passion that I find easy to sustain and that allows me to keep producing wine related content on my website.

The Market

Ask yourself the question, “Would someone buy the things I can sell?”

This is where things can get a bit complicated.

You may love something and be good at it, but there may not be a market for it.

A Lesson Learned

Awhile back, I decided to produce on online course to teach people how to start a wine blog.

I worked hard on it and produced a great course.

Then, I spent a lot of time generating buzz about it through my own wine blog.

When launch time came, I immediately got a few buyers.

However, subsequent launches didn’t yield further buyers.

The reality was, there wasn’t much of a market for people who want to start wine blogs.

I discovered this when I tried running paid Google Ads to my course.

It turned out that there’s only about ten people a month who search Google for information about starting a wine blog.

I think I found all of them in my first launch!

Now if that number was ten thousand, I would have had a winner.  Heck, even one thousand would have been worth it.

Lesson learned, research demand before you create a product.

Fortunately, there are plenty of other monetization opportunities in the wine market and I do take advantage of those.

Market Opportunities

In the online business world, there’s several different ways you can monetize your website.

They include:

• Ads on your site.
• Affiliate marketing partnerships.
• Coaching and consulting.
• Digital products (Online Courses, eBooks, Membership Sites, etc.).
• eCommerce (tangible products you can buy online).

It comes down to determining whether or not there is a market for any of these things in your niche.

A good place to start, is to think about the things that YOU buy, that are related to your niche.

You can also peruse related websites in your niche and see what they sell.

Another smart move is to check Amazon and see what related products (including books) you find.

If you find an assortment of products being sold in these locations then there’s most likely a market for that niche.

Now you don’t necessarily have to focus on product sales (including digital products) when determining if the market is there.

Putting ads on your site and affiliate marketing are additional monetization choices.

If, as you’re looking at other websites in your niche, you see ads on their sites or products being recommended, then there’s probably a market for that niche.

Using Google Keyword Planner

A great way to evaluate a market is to create a Google Ads account and then go to their keyword planner tool.

In there, you can enter search terms related to your niche and see how many people are searching for those terms each month.

You’ll also be able to see what it costs marketers to bid for those keywords.  The higher the cost, the more competition and the bigger the market.

If you see that several hundred or more people a month are searching for key terms in your niche, and the bid costs are a few dollars or more, then there’s probably a good market in that niche.

Finalizing Your Decision

In the end, your goal is to determine if there’s a market for your niche.

Give the ideas above a try and couple that with some good common sense to decide if a market exists.

If it does, you’re good to go!

If it doesn’t, then give serious consideration to finding a different niche.  There’s no point in making it hard on yourself if your goal is to make an income from your blog.

Conclusion

As we covered above, here are the key steps to finding your blog niche:

1. Start with the end in mind.  Your goal is to see if your niche will support monetizing your website in some way.
2. Understand that the intersection of your skills, your passions and the market is where your blog’s niche should be.
3. Evaluate your skills and what you can bring to the table.
4. Make sure that you’re passionate enough about your niche so that you can sustain it for the long haul.
5. Research the market, either for what product you want to sell, or for advertising and affiliate marketing opportunities.
6. If it all comes together, you’ve found your niche!

I hope you found this blog post helpful…

What are your thoughts?  Are you trying to find your blog niche?

Leave a comment below and let’s talk about it.