If you enjoy writing, starting a blog could be a good way to practice and even make some profit. First of all, you have to choose a topic or a theme for your blog. Running a niche blog can help you attract and maintain an audience while writing about something you enjoy.
What is a Niche Blog?
A niche blog is a blog that is very specialised – it targets a distinct audience in the market. Instead of writing about anything and everything, a niche blog focuses on something specific that a smaller group of people find very interesting.
The reason niche blogs work so well is that, nowadays, people look for the certain topics they want to read about through search engines. A niche blog caters to the needs of specific consumers looking for certain topics and will, therefore, rank higher in searches related to these topics.
These blogs are competitive because they target particular interests (and mostly specific demographics) but those who prove themselves can make a living of blogging.
Why Choose a Niche?
At first glance one would think that choosing a niche blog is a risky idea because it’s very specific. It would make sense to write about a broader spectrum of topics to accommodate more readers and avoid boredom, right?
The short answer is no. Writing general posts and jumping from topic to topic will make it difficult to cultivate a loyal fan base of readers.
Of course, this rule doesn’t apply to all and there are lifestyle blogs that write about a variety of topics from career tips to diet plans. However, this isn’t ideal for a blog starting out, especially if you’re alone and don’t have a big team of writers.
Tips to Find Your Blogging Niche
Now that we’ve established what a niche blog is, it is time to choose your niche. Below are some of the most important tips on choosing a niche, perfecting it, and avoiding common pitfalls.
1. Follow Your Passion, or Not
Many people will say that you don’t need to be passionate to work, while others tell you to follow your passion – there’s merit to both directions.
However, it doesn’t always happen that what we’re passionate about is interesting to everyone else or popular. You may be passionate about German poetry of the 20th century and while it’s a fascinating topic, not many readers share the same interest. On the other hand, a topic that you don’t enjoy that much may be more valuable to many readers.
You can argue that, once the money starts flowing, you can teach yourself to be passionate about a niche, but even the most successful blogs won’t create profit within weeks, months, or even longer. It’s somewhat a slow process of building up an audience.
With this in mind, you may have to regularly write about your niche for a long time before you can gain profit. A topic you don’t enjoy will result in an early burnout and no amount of future profits will keep you motivated to keep writing.
Many are advocates for finding a happy medium. You have to consider your passions when you’re choosing a niche – choose one that more people can connect with and will want to read. Finding the happy medium between what you’re most passionate about and what the audience wants to read is the first step.
2. Choose a Topic You Know
More often than not, you’ll find more than one topic that you’d want to write about. This is natural but you have to go deeper and choose only one niche.
To help with this, consider your own knowledge. Which topic do you know about the most? Which topic have you taken more classes in or read more books about?
Choosing a niche you know more about will give you a head start on the research needed for blog posts.
3. Beware the Seasonal and Temporary
This is a mistake made time and time again by new bloggers – people choose blog niche ideas that have a temporary boom in visitors. These niches are often related to annual prizes, competitions, or trends.
A good example of that is a blog that was covering the Rio 2016 Olympic games. It had great views and the number of visitors was brilliant. Those prodigious numbers didn’t last longer than a month as the Olympics came to a close.
That’s the main problem with seasonal niches – they attract a lot of readers but they won’t be loyal. You can’t expect them to wait for four years until the next game. You also can’t run a blogging career by working for two months every four years.
4. Choose a Niche within a Niche
Some niches are too big to be covered by a single blog, like cooking for example. That niche is competitive and hard to cover. The best strategy here is to target something specific within your niche and cover that.
Your blog doesn’t have to be about cooking in general. It should target a specific segment such as beginners or busy people. You could even focus on a dietary direction like vegan cooking, street food, or Paleo.
Choosing a sub-niche allows you to dominate that part, make a name for yourself and gain experience with every blog post.
Exploring Blog Niche Ideas
Having covered some of the main points to consider when choosing your niche blog, the rest of this guide will cover some examples of the most profitable blog niches. These are just meant to give you a general idea of what you could write about.
Travel Blog
The travel industry is huge and purchasing online continues to grow and shape the future of how travel is sold. Those purchases could be made at your business (if you run one) or at your advertisers. Either way, there’s a share for you if you can run a good travel blog.
Travel blogs can cover a wide variety of topics. From budget travelling and getting the cheapest flights, to the best travel destinations for the season and what you could do there. Travel blogs have huge potential for adventurous readerships, not to mention the endless opportunities for inspiration across hundreds of destinations. Blogging on staycations is a niche in demand now with sites that explore local travel opportunities, such as @documentbelfast.
Food and Cooking
A food and cooking niche blog is a timeless one. Today, however, eating and cooking have changed from being something essential for survival into a form of entertainment and a source of joy.
Starting a blog about food means you can have a huge audience (and fierce competition). The variety of sub-niches allows you to find yourself a place in the market. Watson and Co. show over 30 dedicated food bloggers in Northern Ireland alone.
You can even write about various restaurants in your local area, from the high-end ones to hidden gems. If you run a ‘brick and mortar’ restaurant, this could be your take at personal branding.
Health and Fitness
Getting fit is almost everyone’s ‘new year resolution’ and ‘summer goal’. It’s cited as the way to live a happy life and achieve a long list of other goals, making it a great blogging topic with a large, receptive audience.
The health and fitness industry is booming and it concerns everyone. The market here allows for a lot of ideas and loyal readers and due to the sheer mass of material on getting fit (e.g. workout routines and diet plans) people often look for a single, reliable source to get their answers.
Money in this niche doesn’t only come from advertisers and selling your own products, it could be made through affiliate marketing, endorsing specific brands of supplements, chains of gyms, and brands of equipment.
Beauty and Fashion
It’s true that trends come and go, but there’s always a new trend in fashion. You can be the beacon, and your blog the place where people search for fashion advice and get their updates.
Your blog could tackle specific parts within the niche. Men’s fashion, women’s fashion, or beauty tips in general. Profit could come from direct ads, affiliate marketing, selling your own approved clothes, accessories, or cosmetics if you make the investment – the list is endless.
This guide is merely to help you get started on choosing what you should write about. Starting your niche blog takes more than just knowing your niche. Choosing a name, knowing the available blogging platforms, engaging with your niche community, and analysing your competition are all necessary steps to take for a successful blog. However, choosing one of the niche blog ideas comes first.
This may seem like an overwhelming job, but it’s pretty simple once you get the hang of niche blogging and it’s even better if you have the passion for what you’re writing about. Maybe you’re running a business and would rather pay more attention to the brick and mortar shop. In this case, you may want to hire the experts to help you set up the blog.
For more information, get in touch with us today.
