In this first of 10 steps for our online course, Blogging For Profit For Beginners, we will talk about how to choose a blog niche, and ensure you have a good market size.
The idea with choosing a blog niche is to get clear about what you’re going to be writing about, and who you’re going to be writing to.
When you know your blog niche, you are a step above many other bloggers, who don’t really have the clear direction that we’re going for.
While this article is long, it is also pretty exhaustive, so you will have a really clear picture on how to choose your blog niche after you finish this article.
Blog niches are so crucial for the beginner blogger.
Even former Boston Consulting Group and McKinsey employees would benefit from reading this, if they are starting a blog.
Identifying your blog niche is a foundational step to starting a blog for profit.
When you are clear about what your blog topic is going to be, and who you’ll be writing for, then you’ll be lightyears above the competition.
How To Find Your Blog Audience
Identifying your blog audience is as important as identifying your blog niche or blog topic.
In business, there is a term called product market fit.
It means you want to have a product that fits a market of customers and prospects.
With blogging, your product is your blog, and your market is your readership – and potential readership, as well.
So, with blogging, you want to establish blog market fit.
You want to therefore identify your market, also known as your blog audience
For fashion bloggers, your market will be Millennial women in their 30s who shop for clothes.
For sports bloggers, your market will be Millennial men in their 30s who love watching and playing sports.
Identify your market, sort of like doing buyer personas.
You can even have a blog audience of one person, and you write all your articles to one person, even though you could have a readership of thousands per month.
When you know your blog audience, you are well on your way to blogging for profit.
Define Your Blog’s Value Proposition And USP
A really helpful tool in business is the value proposition.
A value proposition is a paragraph long statement about what value you bring to your market, or your readership, and what makes you different and unique from the competition.
When your value proposition is articulated, you’ll have a clearer picture of your blog and its general direction.
Also useful is the USP – unique selling proposition.
Like the Value Proposition, the USP lets you speak to why your product should be bought as compared to the competition.
In other words, what sales value do you bring to market?
For blogs, it’s all about what’s the reason your readers should buy from you?
When you define why your readers should read your blog and then buy from you, you’ll be at a higher level in terms of competition.
You’ll be incredibly happy with the results, and it only takes 3 minutes to write each.
Get Clear On Your Blog Differentiation
Establishing blog differentiation is the next step to profitability after doing your value propositions and USPs.
In order to understand blog differentiation, it’s helpful to understand the topic of Differentiation in general.
Differentiation is all about establishing what makes your company and products unique from the competition.
Usually, with respect to marketing, product type, brand, messaging, and web.
With blog differentiation, it’s often about choosing what makes you different.
It could be an innovative or minimal web design.
It could be your promotion of your blog on social media.
Also,it could be a smart SEO strategy.
It could be the way you author your articles.
When it comes to blog differentiation, think about the big competition between Apple and Microsoft.
Both are computer companies, but they’re so different.
What makes them different?
For Apple, it’s marketing and brand.
It’s new products such as the iPhone and iPad.
It’s the messaging.
Or, it’s the way Apple makes you feel.
With Microsoft, it’s dominance in business.
It’s new products such as the Surface that Apple doesn’t compete with.
It’s maintaining a competitive edge, and standing out with the best software on the internet.
Both companies are great and both establish differentiation to claim their edge of the market.
For your blog, how can you be different?
How can you claim your edge of the market?
That’s the main concept behind blog differentiation.
What Is A Blog Niche?
A blog niche is the blog topic that you are going to be writing about day in and day out with your blog.
Also considered your blog topic, a blog niche is the core of your blog.
It’s what you’ll be writing about to your readership.
If you have a blog on working out, then your blog niche is exercise, and also health and fitness.
If you have a blog showing off your latest photos, then your blog niche is photography.
There are dozens of profitable niches out there for you to choose, and when you choose one, you will give your blog direction.
Generally speaking, you want to have a single blog niche for your beginner blog.
The idea is that when you narrow down the topic of your blog, your readers get clear on what this blog is about and why it has value to them.
After you choose your blog niche, the next step is to find offers that you can later promote that add value to your readers and are part of the same topic as your blog niche.
The Blog Niche Of “You”
The blog niche of “you” concept stipulates that you get clear about who you are and what your interests are.
After you have done that, you can form a blog niche based on the summary of your interests, hobbies, and passions.
The best way to do this is to get a Word document or piece of paper and take 3 minutes to write down your top 5 interests, hobbies, and passions.
When you do that, you get clear about what you are interested in.
Writing a personal blog is often a labor of love, so you’ll want to be interested in what you’re writing about day in and day out.
When you are clear on your interests, and also, on yourself, you’ll be able to build a blog around the interests that define you.
So get clear on who you are.
Get clear on what you like, dislike, and love.
And when you do, you’ll know what blog niche to write about.
What Are The Benefits Of A Focused Blog Niche?
There are many benefits to having a focused blog niche.
First of all, the internet is already relatively cluttered by millions of blogs, websites, and online stores.
It’s imperative that you cut through the clutter to get seen by your readership.
Many people read about marketing, or even digital marketing, but when you narrow your niche to a specific topic, you’ll get people to read your blog that will engage with your content to a greater extent.
So if you start with the topic of health and fitness, you might narrow your focus to bodybuilding, or precision weight lifting.
When you write about less, you can say more.
Importantly, when you have a focused niche, you get readers who are more focused on what you have to say.
That means people will be more likely to sign up for your email list, and click on your referral links.
Focus your blog niche to get clear on what you’re writing, and your audience will love you for it.
How To Identify Profitable Niches?
The key to blogging for profit is to identify profitable blog niches where you can monetize your blog.
First, you want an interesting blog niche.
Second, you want to monetize your blog so that you can turn all your web visitors into profits.
To identify a profitable niche, look for big referral programs where you think you will have a lot to say about the topic.
A notable example of a profitable blog niche is in the health and fitness niche.
You want to narrow your niche and write about bodybuilding, or weightlifting, or even supplements.
The money is in the supplements because you can add a CTA – call to action – at the bottom of your blog, encouraging readers to buy supplements that are related to what you’re writing about
You will also want to establish an email list – I use ConvertKit – where your email list lets you send emails to your fans featuring courses, digital products, and referral offers.
You’ll want to identify the revenue potential in your blog, and when you choose a niche, evaluate that blog niche for profitability and revenue potential.
Choose Your Blog Niche Based On Big Referral Programs
When it comes to blogging, most profitable bloggers make money by promoting referral programs on their blog.
That means, the blogger refers the reader to another site, with affiliate tracking, and when there’s a sale the blogger makes a percentage of the sale in commission.
It’s important to check the commission percentage of the programs you want to sign up for.
It’s also important to note the Earnings Per Click – EPC – and find referral programs with a high EPC.
These programs tend to get sales – convert – more than others.
You’ll want to have 50-100 articles written on your blog before you go to the referral programs.
In this way, you’ll be more established with the affiliate manager, and you’ll stand a better chance of getting accepted into the referral programs – many of them require you to apply before you get in.
Find 20 to 40 referral programs for your niche, and build an Excel spreadsheet with all of them, before you get started writing your blog.
You can always add to this later.
When you do this, you can be sure that you’re writing about a topic where you have an opportunity to monetize your blog and earn plenty of profit.
Keep in mind, there are a lot of referral programs for software for businesses.
Known as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), there are dozens of lucrative programs there.
If you are willing and able to write about business at an elevated level, you can make some real money by promoting these SaaS offers.
100 Profitable Blog Niches To Start Your Blog
There are so many profitable blog niches to start a blog.
Here are the categories I found that make the most money:
- Travel & Leisure
- Health
- Fashion & Beauty
- Fitness & Sports
- Hobbies
- Technology
- Business & Finance
Within these categories, you can easily find 100 profitable blog niches.
Take Travel & Leisure, for example.
Here are the blog niches I came up with that are all profitable when you do a decent job and add in your referral programs.
- Adventure Travel
- Backpackers
- City Guides
- Cultural Nuances & Differences
- Luxury Travel
- Learning Languages
- Leisure & Relaxing
- Museums & Art
- Site Seeing
- Travel Tips & Advice
- Traveling For Work
- Traveling With Family
- Travel News
- 7 Wonders of the World
Naturally speaking, we can see the blog niche list for Health as well:
- Atkins Diet
- Confidence
- COVID Health & Safety
- Diets
- Doctors & Nurses
- Keto Diet
- Gluten-Free Diet
- Herbal Remedies
- Homeopathy
- Low Carb Diet
- Master Cleanse
- Meditation
- Mindfulness
- Nutrition
- Organic Food
- Self-Care
- Supplements
- Traditional Medicine
- Veganism
- Vegetarianism
Next up, we have blog niches for Fashion & Beauty.
- Acne
- Anti-Aging
- Couture
- Designer Brands
- Eco-Friendly Fashion
- Fashion
- Hair Care & Styling
- Haute Couture
- Jewelry
- Luxury Brands
- Men’s Fashion
- Millennial Fashion
- Makeup
- Men’s Gear
- Natural Cosmetics
- Skin Care
- Shoes
- Tattoos
- Women’s Fashion
- Watches
- Women’s Beauty
Next up, we have blog niches for Fitness & Sports.
- Athletic Gear
- Bodybuilding
- College Sports
- CrossFit
- Cycling
- Extreme Sports
- Hiking
- Jogging
- Marathons
- Mountain Biking
- Personal Training
- Pilates
- Pro Sports
- Running
- Staying Fit
- Snowboarding
- Skateboarding
- Weight Loss
- Weight Training
- Yoga
Next up, we have blog niches for Hobbies.
- Art
- Astrology
- Astronomy
- Blogging
- Boating
- Dance
- Drawing
- Gambling
- Gardening
- Golf
- Horseback Riding
- Interior Decorating
- Martial Arts
- Motorcycles
- Music
- Painting
- Pets
- Photography
- Video Games
- Writing
Next, we have blog niches about Technology.
- Artificial Intelligence
- Android
- Apple
- Augmented Reality
- Coding
- iPhone
- Machine Learning
- Meta
- Microsoft
- Programming
- UX/UI Design
- Virtual Reality
- Web Design
- Wearable Tech
Finally, we have blog niches about Finance & Investing.
- Bitcoin
- Crypto
- ETFs
- Insurance
- Investing
- Financial Independence
- Options
- Pension
- Personal Finance
- Retirement
- Stock Trading
There you have it!
121 great blog niches that you can make money from.
These profitable blog niches are great for your next blog
All you need to do is start your blog, and choosing a blog niche from this list is a great way to begin.
The 777 Method To Finding Your Blog Niche
The 777 method to finding your blog niche is based on an article from SmartPassiveIncome.com, a great intro website for many new bloggers.
It involves identifying your 7 passions, 7 problems, and 7 fears.
This takes 3 minutes to do, but it’s really valuable.
When you take note of your 7 passions, you get clear about what you want the most for yourself.
When you identify your 7 problems, you then do problem solving to come up with a blog topic that gets results
Also, when you identify your 7 fears, you know what you’re running from, and that gives you insight into how to live your life.
It takes about 3 minutes to do this in a Word document.
For me, I found that when I did the 777 Method, I turned every passion, problem, and fear into a keyword that people could search for on Google.
By doing this, I was able to monetize my inner world with a blog that improves my circumstances both relationally and financially.
“Start With Why” To Get A Perfect Blog Niche
I once took a personal retreat to South Carolina.
While on my retreat, I brought with me a book called “Start With Why” by Simon Sinek.
What I found is that most people start with WHAT – the topic of the blog, naturally.
But when you start with WHY, you gain massive insight into why you’re really doing this.
It makes you better.
It gives you an edge.
When you identify your WHY you’re blogging, and then HOW you’re blogging, and then WHAT you’re blogging about, then your blog niche becomes really clear.
You get incredible insight into what drives you.
And you’ll build a better and more profitable blog.
Choose A Blog Niche From Hobbies And Lifelong Interests
When you choose a blog niche, you’ll want to outline your hobbies and outline interests to help get clear on what it means to be a blogger.
Let me explain.
When you write down your top 5 hobbies and lifelong interests in a 2-minute Word document, you’ll get even clearer on what you want your blog to be about.
It’s obvious that you’re going to want a profitable blog.
The good news is there are so many referral programs, that you can start a profitable blog about any topic.
The idea here, therefore, is to outline your hobbies and interests.
Then, choose the blog niche with the best market potential.
We have already talked about blog market fit.
Now, think about choosing a blog topic that is both personally interesting to you, as well as comes with a large market segment that you can write to.
You’ll want a large enough audience for your blog, with a blog niche that is personally compelling to you.
When you have this figured out, you’ll be well on your way to monetizing your blog with referral programs that are related to your blog niche.
Summary
This article is the first chapter in a 10-chapter course on how to start a profitable blog.
Here we are writing about how to choose a blog niche with a good market size.
First, we wrote about how to find your blog audience.
Paying attention to blog market fit, we want to identify our core audience, so we know who we are writing to – sometimes, an audience of one.
Next, you’ll want to define your blog’s Value Proposition and USP.
Next, you’ll want to get clear on your blog differentiation.
Like Apple versus Microsoft, differentiate your blog with design, brand, content, and social media to stay on top of the competition.
What is a blog niche?
We’ve defined a blog niche as the topic of your blog that you can use to write great content and then monetize through referral programs related to your blog niche.
The blog niche of “you” is a great way to get clear on your personal interests, to write a blog that is meaningful and relevant to you and your blog community.
Next, we asked what the benefits of a focused niche are.
A focused niche brings out your core audience that will be more interactively engaged with your blog content, because everyone is looking for something specific on Google.
You can identify profitable niches by looking for plenty of referral programs in the genre or niche of your blog.
You can also choose your blog niche based off big referral programs.
For example, if you are writing about project management, you can join a referral program for Monday.com and make plenty of money by writing to business customers.
Next, we identified more than 100 profitable blog niches for you to successfully start your blog profitably and get on the right foot.
We looked at the 777 Method for uncovering profitable blog niches, by looking at your 7 passions, 7 problems, and 7 fears.
We also looked at the Start With Why method for revealing profitable blog niches, because when you know WHY you’re doing something, the HOW naturally follows, as does the WHAT.
Finally, we learned to choose a blog niche based on lifelong hobbies and interests.
Now that you know how to choose a blog niche, choose wisely!
We’ll now move to Chapter 2 of our 10-Chapter online course for How To Start A Profitable Blog, For Beginners.
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