How to select a perfect blog niche?
Choosing the right topic is a precondition for your blog to be successful. This guide will help you find a profitable blog niche that is also easy to scale.
Before you start a blog, you need a topic to blog about. The specific subject you choose to create content about is your blog niche. For example, koldada.com blog focuses on “jobs and career niche”.
The selection of the right niche is crucial for the success of your blog.
As you are just beginning, you may not be aware of the topic selection process.
So how to pick the perfect blog topic?
There are several factors that one should consider while choosing a blogging topic.
These include:
- Market trends – buyer intent, market size, competition
- Your interest on the topic
- Growth potential
Many ‘how to pick a niche’ guides out there suggest that you need to be passionate about the blog topic you choose.
But, there is a catch, particularly, if you are here to make money blogging.
What if the topic you are passionate about has a very limited scope? If a very small number of people are interested in the topic, you will struggle to attract a lot of traffic to the blog.
Even if you are an amateur blogger, you will need an audience to share your ideas with. So, you’ll want to check if the topic has a big enough audience. If not, better to leave it.
Likewise, there are certain topics that are hard to monetize. There are niches (e.g. news, entertainment, etc.) where people are researching for information only. They aren’t really looking to buy products.
For instance, you run a blog on the ‘best comedy movies’ niche. What is the search intent here? To get information about comedy movies and free entertainment, right?
While there is a huge audience size, yet display ads are the only option to monetize. Moreover, Google may not allow their AdSense ads (Google doesn’t prefer certain topics for AdSense). It’ll drastically reduce your blog’s commercial potential.
Some bloggers even run blogs around some objectionable/controversial topics. Maybe they are interested in the topics, but it’s even harder to find advertisers and affiliate offers. The majority of ad networks don’t allow such content.
When you operate in such niches, you will find it really difficult to make your blog profitable in the future.
Commercial viability is crucial for a blog to succeed. For that, buyer intent is a precondition. If people are not willing to pay, how will you monetize your blog even if you have a lot of traffic?
Likewise, if you choose a tiny niche, you’ll struggle to find content ideas. After writing the first few posts, you’re gonna have a hard time creating content for your blog. If there is no content, how will you make it profitable?
Sure, there are certain exceptions where you don’t need a lot of traffic or content ideas (e.g. adult niches), but these niches are not for beginners. Usually, these niches are highly competitive. Moreover, many of them may have regularity issues that as an amateur blogger you’ll want to avoid.
Last but not the least, market competition.
It is true that most of the new bloggers have limited resources. Many of them do not have huge money to invest. They may not have the necessary expertise and skills.
So, if you’ve just started taking baby steps towards the long blogging journey, and if the completion is tough, think again.
Let me explain…
If the competition is fierce, there will definitely be big players in the game. It’s like challenging a heavyweight champion on the very first day at boxing class.
First, you, as a beginner, cannot compete with them, for obvious reasons.
Second, even if you (rare possibility), it’ll take years of hard work.
Trust me, for a new blogger, initial success is the key. Small initial wins will lead you to great success in the years to come.
On the contrary, if you choose a competitive niche, you will have to face tough competition from day one.
With such a rapidly changing blog sphere, no one can say much about the distant future. Without any success for a longer time, the chances are you’ll lose your focus and motivation and finally quit.
So to conclude, go for a niche that:
- Has low to moderate competition
- Has big audience base
- Is easy to monetize – has commercial viability
By now, I assume, you know how to select the right niche for a new blog.
So, what is your topic?
Now it’s time for the next step to start a blog: How to Choose the Best Domain Name for Your Blog.
JD Bhatala is a Content Marketing Strategist with over 15 years of experience. He is the co-founder of Web Content Edge where he helps online businesses gain visibility and increase traffic, leads, and sales. Catch him online at Twitter or LinkedIn.