Need some help finding a good niche for your blog? Looking for niche ideas? You’ve come to the right place! We’ll also give you helpful tips and advice on how to choose a niche that’s a good fit for you.
Picking the right niche is vital if you want to build a profitable, successful blog. It’s not hard to find a good niche if you know what to look for. After reading this article you’ll be able to make a well-informed decision.
What’s a Niche?
According to dictionary.com a niche is a “distinct segment of a market.”
Many people make the mistake of thinking a niche is the same as a market. It’s not. It’s only a small part of a much larger market.
Let’s look at some examples that’ll illustrate this point:
If “weight loss” is the market, then “keto diet” can be a niche within that market.
If “self-improvement” is the market, then “productivity” can be a niche within that market.
Trying to cover a whole market such as weight loss isn’t practical. It’s way too broad. You’ll never be able to establish yourself as an authority in such a broad market. And, if you want to succeed you’ll have to be seen as an authority or you won’t be taken seriously.
Do You Follow Money or Passion?
The fact that you’re reading this article about niche ideas implies your primary motivation is to make money from your blog, right? If passion was your primary motivation, you’d not be looking for niche ideas. You’d already know what you’re going to blog about.
It’s great if you’re passionate about a topic you want to blog about. However, if you want to build a profitable blog your focus should first and foremost be on financial considerations.
You need to have the mindset of a business owner. See yourself as the CEO of a startup.
It means you need to do thorough research to make sure you pick the right niche. A niche that’s full or hungry buyers, and large enough to provide you with a good income.
There are three steps in this process:
- Find niche ideas.
- Research your niche ideas.
- Pick a winner.
How to Find Niche Ideas
Looking for niche ideas is fun. It’s nearly like going on a treasure hunt. You never know what you’re going to find, but it’s exciting.
As you go through the process, make a note of markets or specific niches in that market that appeal to you. Try to find topics you’re at least interested in and want to learn more about.
Building an authority blog takes time and effort. If you have no interest in a niche it’ll be hard to make a success of it. Even if you decide to outsource everything, which is not a bad idea, you still need to know what you need.
NOTE: We can help you skip the niche selection process if you’re ready to get right to growing your own blog. Check out Brand Builders’ regularly updated list of pre-made niche websites for sale right here!
Consider your personal interests and expertise
Think about possible niches you already know or are eager to learn more about.
Here are some ideas to get your creative juices flowing:
- What job experience do you have? Can you profit from sharing your experience and expertise with others?
- Do you have a degree or a diploma? Having a degree or a diploma in the niche you want to blog about can boost your credibility.
- What hobbies do you have? Do you spend money on it? Would other people be willing or eager to spend money on it?
- What personal challenges have you overcome? It can be shyness, a difficult financial predicament, or relationship issues. People love personal success stories.
- Is there something you’ve always wanted to do or learn more about? Why not do it now and share what you learn with others as you go along?
- Ask your friends or family. Sometimes other people see things in us that we don’t see ourselves. Your family or friends may come up with ideas that you’ve never thought about.
If you think of something, make a note of it. Even if you’re not sure whether or not it can be a good niche for your blog, you can research it later.
Search for niche ideas
There are many websites that can help you find niche ideas worth considering.
Magazines.com
If there’s a magazine covering a certain topic, you can be pretty confident there’s a big and profitable market for it.
Magazines.com lists magazines covering many different markets.
Some of these markets, are:
- Animals & Pets
- Art & Photography
- Home & Gardening
- Psychology
- Sports & Recreation
- Hobbies
- Parenting
- Crafts
- Business & Finance
- Cooking, Food & Beverage
- Education
- Health & Fitness
- Lifestyle
In order to get niche ideas within a certain market, you have to drill down deeper.
For example, if you click on “Crafts” you’ll see there are several magazines covering quilting, knitting, crochet, and embroidery.
If you click on the category “Hobbies,” there are 143 magazines.
Have a look at the front covers to see what topics they cover.
If some of these niches are of interest to you, get a copy of the magazine. It can give you good ideas on popular topics to blog about.
ClickBank.com
ClickBank is a huge affiliate marketplace. Founded in 1998, it’s very popular with digital content creators. It has thousands of products to choose from.
It’s also a great site for finding niche ideas. If ClickBank has a product category for a topic, you can be sure there are people willing to spend money on it.
To get some niche ideas, have a look at their marketplace.
Some of the categories and subcategories they cover, include:
Arts & Entertainment
- Architecture
- Art
- Body Art
- Dance
- Fashion
- Magic Tricks
- Music
- Photography
As Seen On TV
- Auto
- Backyard Living
- Health and Beauty
- Kitchen Tools and Gadgets
Betting Systems
- Casino Table Games
- Football (American)
- Horse Racing
- Lottery
- Poker
- Soccer
Business / Investing
- Careers, Industries & Professions
- Commodities
- Debt
- Derivatives
- Economics
- Equities & Stocks
- Foreign Exchange
- International Business
- Management & Leadership
- Marketing & Sales
- Outsourcing
- Personal Finance
- Real Estate
- Small Biz / Entrepreneurship
Cooking, Food & Wine
- BBQ
- Baking
- Cooking
- Drinks & Beverages
- Recipes
- Special Diet
- Special Occasions
- Vegetables / Vegetarian
- Wine Making
Education
- Admissions
- Educational Materials
- Higher Education
- K-12
- Student Loans
- Test Prep & Study Guides
Employment & Jobs
- Cover Letter & Resume Guides
- Job Search Guides
- Job Skills / Training
Games
- Console Guides & Repairs
- Strategy Guides
Health & Fitness
- Addiction
- Beauty
- Dental Health
- Dietary Supplements
- Diets & Weight Loss
- Exercise & Fitness
- Meditation
- Men’s Health
- Mental Health
- Nutrition
- Remedies
- Sleep & Dreams
- Spiritual Health
- Strength Training
- Women’s Health
- Yoga
Home & Garden
- Animal Care & Pets
- Crafts & Hobbies
- Entertaining
- Gardening & Horticulture
- Homebuying
- How-to & Home Improvements
- Interior Design
- Sewing
- Weddings
Parenting & Families
- Divorce
- Education
- Genealogy
- Marriage
- Parenting
- Pregnancy & Childbirth
- Special Needs
Reference
- Automotive
- Catalogs & Directories
- Consumer Guides
- Education
- Etiquette
- Gay / Lesbian
- Law & Legal Issues
- The Sciences
- Writing
Self-Help
- Abuse
- Dating Guides
- Eating Disorders
- Marriage & Relationships
- Motivational / Transformational
- Personal Finance
- Public Speaking
- Self Defense
- Self-Esteem
- Stress Management
- Success
- Survival
- Time Management
Software & Services
- Anti Adware / Spyware
- Background Investigations
- Dating
- Digital Photos
- Foreign Exchange Investing
- Networking
- Other Investment Software
- Personal Finance
- Productivity
- Reverse Phone Lookup
- Screensavers & Wallpaper
- Security
- System Optimization
- Video
- Web Design
Spirituality, New Age & Alternative Beliefs
- Astrology
- Hypnosis
- Magic
- Numerology
- Paranormal
- Psychics
- Religion
- Tarot
- Witchcraft
Sports
- Automotive
- Baseball
- Basketball
- Coaching
- Cycling
- Extreme Sports
- Football
- Golf
- Hockey
- Individual Sports
- Martial Arts
- Mountaineering
- Other Team Sports
- Outdoors & Nature
- Racket Sports
- Running
- Soccer
- Softball
- Training
- Volleyball
- Water Sports
- Winter Sports
Travel
- Africa
- Asia
- Canada
- Caribbean
- Europe
- Latin America
- Middle East
- Specialty Travel
- United States
If you’re interested in a certain topic, you can click on it to get more information on what’s being sold.
Udemy.com
Udemy is a platform where content creators can sell online courses on a large variety of topics. According to Udemy they have 100,000+ courses on their platform and 24 million students.
It’s a great platform to browse through if you’re looking for niche ideas.
Udemy has 13 main categories:
- Development
- Business
- Finance & Accounting
- IT & Software
- Office Productivity
- Personal Development
- Design
- Marketing
- Lifestyle
- Photography
- Health & Fitness
- Music
- Teaching & Academics
If you click on one of the categories it will display secondary categories. And, if you click on one of the secondary topics it will display “Popular Topics” under that category.
In the above screenshot, you’ll see that if you click on “Personal Development,” it will list 14 secondary categories:
- Personal Transformation
- Productivity
- Leadership
- Personal Finance
- Career Development
- Parenting & Relationships
- Happiness
- Religion & Spirituality
- Personal Brand Building
- Creativity
- Influence
- Self Esteem
- Stress Management
- Memory & Study Skills
If you click on the secondary category “Productivity,” it will display popular topics, such as:
- Personal Productivity
- Time Management
- Speed Reading
- Focus Mastery
- Visual Thinking
- Goal Setting
- Organization
- PowerShell
- English Language
What’s nice about Udemy is that you can really drill down into the topics. For example, if we select “Goal Setting” from the above list, we get the following result.
Based on the screenshot, Udemy has 593,958 students learning goal setting. There’s obviously a strong demand for this topic.
If we click on the first course, namely “Goal Setting to Success: Life Coach Certification…” we can get more detailed information.
More than 12,000 students have enrolled for this course, and it has 1,977 ratings.
Should this be a topic that appeals to you, Udemy makes it super easy to get content ideas for your blog. If you scroll down, you’ll get detailed information on what it covers, including a complete course outline.
Note: Never copy someone else’s work. It’s important to know what topics other people are covering. However, your blog should contain high quality, original content.
By now you should have been able to make a list of several niche ideas worth exploring.
Here’s a final bonus resource.
At Brand Builders we’ve spent dozens of hours finding, vetting and organizing a list of 1,452 niche ideas. Download our list of 1,452 niche ideas. It’s a free download and will save you a lot of time.
The next step is to research your niche ideas so you can pick one that’s right for you.
Research Your Niche Ideas
It’s very important to understand what Google wants. It requires us to go back in history.
There was a time when it wasn’t difficult to rank on the first page of Google for an exact keyword such as “goal setting.” You just had to make sure your whole blog was 100% focused and optimized for that one keyword.
This is no longer the case.
Too many people were over optimizing keywords for search engines to rank well. Many of these sites were highly optimized for a specific keyword, but offered a poor user experience.
Google launched a series of algorithm updates to counteract this behaviour. The first major one was Panda, followed by Penguin. Millions of webmasters saw their page one rankings disappear overnight.
In 2013 Google implemented another huge algorithm update, referred to as Hummingbird. With this update Google started using a “knowledge graph” to link certain keywords / topics together.
Despite the Hummingbird update, some poor quality sites continued to rank well. Google launched Quality Update to address this. Then, in 2015 Google launched RankBrain to better understand the user intent behind search queries.
Is this knowledge really important when it comes to researching niche ideas?
Knowing what Google wants is crucial to your success. Picking a good niche with many hungry buyers isn’t enough if you can’t structure it correctly. Before you make your final niche selection, you need to be sure you can make a success of it.
The best way to explain this is to do a case study.
Most people start with doing keyword research. You’ll soon understand why keyword research is important but also why it has serious limitations.
For our case study, let’s use “goals” or “goal setting” as we’ve already touched on it.
Niche Research Case Study
By going through the following steps, you’ll soon discover if you have a viable niche on your list of niche ideas.
Step 1. Keyword Research
Let’s assume you want to build a niche around “goal setting.”
If you use a keyword research tool such as Ubersuggest, you’ll notice that “goal setting” should not be hard to rank for.
It has a SD (search difficulty) score of only 30/100.
At first glance goal setting might seem like a good keyword to target.
However, if you look at the competition, you’ll see the average web page that ranks in the top 10 has 254 backlinks and a domain score of 83. Suddenly “goal setting” seems a lot harder to rank for.
Based on Ubersuggest, the top ranking page for “goal setting” gets an estimated 23,417 visits a month from Google. And, it doesn’t only rank on the first page of Google for “goal setting.” It also ranks on the first page of Google for “goals” and other keywords.
If you’re only relying on traditional keyword research to research and validate your niche you won’t see the bigger picture.
Step 2. Analyze the top ranking page
The top ranking page for “goals” and “goal setting” is https://www.mindtools.com/page6.html.
The page title is: Personal Goal Setting: How to Set SMART Goals
Note: The page title is a ranking factor for Google.
The page description is: Setting goals gives your life direction, and boosts your motivation and self-confidence. Learn how to set SMART goals and achieve your dreams.
Note: The page description is not a ranking factor for Google but it gives visitors a good idea of the page content.
The h1 heading (the most important heading on the page) is: Personal Goal Setting.
It’s clear that the page is highly optimized for the keyword “goal setting.”
What’s very important is how well they cover the overall topic.
Looking at the page, we can see they cover several topics related to the main keyword, such as:
- Personal goal setting
- How to set a goal
- Why set goals?
- Set personal goals
- SMART goals
- Tips for setting your goals
- Achieving goals
- Example personal goals
- Setting lifetime goals
- Setting smaller goals
This is what Google wants to see. They don’t want to see the keyword “goal” or “goal setting” being repeated over and over. They want to know that the article covers the topic. They look at the depth of the article.
Traditional keyword research mainly focuses on search volume per month, and how easy it is to rank for a keyword.
Step 3. Analyze the home page
The homepage is https://www.mindtools.com/.
The site title is: Management Training and Leadership Training – Online
The site description is: Use MindTools.com resources to learn more than 2,900 management, leadership and personal effectiveness skills, helping you to be happy and successful at work.
The homepage has two h1 headings, namely:
“Time-Management Workbook Offer!” and “Allow Your Team to Learn From Home”
Note: A page should only have one h1 heading. They’re making a mistake by having two.
The keyword “goals” doesn’t appear anywhere on the homepage.
Underneath the site logo it says: “Essential skills for an excellent career.”
It’s clear this blog is in the personal development / skills development niche, focussed on the workplace. It covers categories such as problem solving, time management, career skills, and communication skills.
The time management category has seven subcategories, including goal setting. There are 14 articles in the goal setting subcategory. It’s clearly an authority site.
Case Study Conclusion
Goal setting can be a good topic to include in your niche, if relevant. However, it’s not a standalone niche.
There’s not a single website that ranks on the first page of google for the keyword goal setting that’s only about goals. Rather use it as a category or subcategory within your niche.
Ubersuggest is correct in saying goal setting, with a SD score of 30, isn’t that difficult to rank for. However, this is only true if you use the right sight structure. A small 5-page website that only covers goal setting won’t cut it.
Niche Selection Criteria
Based on the above case study, use the following criteria to help you decide on the right niche for your blog.
1. Are you comfortable building an authority site around your niche?
You should ideally have at least five categories with 10 articles per category.
Your category page, also called a pillar page, should give a comprehensive overview of the category topic. A category page shouldn’t go into too much detail but should at least mention topics relevant to the category. It covers width but not depth.
The category page should link to articles that will cover the topics mentioned on the category page in detail. Articles should have depth but not width.
If you don’t think you can achieve this, rather move on to the next niche idea on your list.
2. Can you write high quality, comprehensive content for your niche?
Want to be on the first page of Google? The quality of your content needs to be at least as good as that of your competitors.
Have a look at what your competitors are writing about. Can you come up with better, more comprehensive content?
If you don’t think you can, rather move on to the next niche idea on your list.
NOTE: At Brand Builders, we can supply you with premium quality SEO optimized content for your blog. So, if writing is not your thing or you would rather outsource it, which is a good idea, we can help.
3. How are you going to monetize your niche?
One way is to look at what your competitors are doing, but it may not always be the best way. In our article “How to Make Money Blogging From Home” we list 12 ways to monetize your blog.
Do you think you can monetize your niche to make it worth your time and effort? If not, rather move on to the next niche idea on your list.
4. Do you have enough people interested in your niche?
In order to make a decent income from your niche, you can’t be the only one interested in it. It shouldn’t be too specialized. We’ve looked at how you can do keyword research for free on Ubersuggest.
If it’s unlikely you’ll get at least a couple of thousand visitors a month, rather look at another niche.
5. Make sure your niche is not too broad.
You want to be seen by Google and your blog visitors as an authority in your niche. You’ll never be seen as an authority if you only cover a small fraction of the potential topics in your niche.
Take travel as an example. It’s way too broad. It potentially has hundreds if not thousands of categories. You can never do it justice. Rather focus on something like “good but affordable holiday destinations for single mothers.”
If your niche is too broad, try to narrow it down to something that’s more manageable.
Conclusion
Searching for niche ideas for your blog can be exciting, and it should be! It’s the beginning of a new adventure that has the potential to help you earn more money. It’s even possible that it can turn into a profitable, full-time business.
Take your time to find, research, and validate niche ideas, as discussed in this article. By doing so, you’ll be taking your first steps in the right direction.
Finding the right niche is only a small part in your journey towards becoming a successful blogger. At Brand Builders, we understand this. This is why we would like to invite you to a one-on-one coaching call for a nominal amount.
This is a great opportunity for you to let us help you get to the next level. Reserve your spot now for a coaching call with us while we’re still offering this service.
