Choosing your niche or the theme of your blog is one of the very important concerns that you must address when starting your blog. Even for those who aren’t interested in monetizing their blogs, the right niche will often determine your performance in writing your blog and the potential audience you will draw-in to your site.
There is no harm in blogging about whatever you feel like when you are blogging for fun. But always put into mind that people will also be just visiting your blog for fun. There is no potential growth in such effort since what if you’re no longer fun? Or people no longer feel that it’s fun to read your blog. Eventually, you’ll just be blogging to yourself as your audience will go spend their time reading something more informative, more focused, and a lot more fun than your blog.
Your niche determines how long you can last in the blogging business. With the right theme for your blog, it’ll take a long time before you run out of things to say. There will always be fresh content every time. When you easily get bored in updating your blog, it’s obvious that the theme you chose isn’t the right niche for you. If you can’t seem to update your blog enough to cover all the news and events about your topic, then maybe you’ve got a very broad niche that needs narrowing even further.
Obviously, your blog will neither be profitable nor workable when you’re blogging the wrong niche for you. You’ll be wasting your time and effort pouring your thoughts on something that literally doesn’t work at all.
How to choose a Profitable Niche to Blog About?
Basically, we could sum it all into 4 steps.
Step #1: Brainstorm Your Blog Topic
What interests you? It’s always important to start with this question. Know what subjects can drive you to the ends of the earth to blog about it. Knowing what you’re passionate about is important in the long term stability of your blog. This will build the momentum that will catapult you onto the peak of blogging success.
Narrow your interests. It can’t be avoided to have a lot of interests popping in your head. But try imagining yourself blogging about it after several years. Can you see yourself still breathing and living its air? Remove the topics which you think seem too toxic for you to be in after years and years of talking about it. By now you should have as few topics as possible.
Don’t be too narrow. Okay, I said be narrow but don’t tighten it so much that you eventually squeeze the living juice out of it. It’s also important to spare some room for expansion. When your topic becomes too singled-out, eventually you will run out of things to say or build around it.
Don’t be too restrictive about narrowing your topic. Give room for a little creativity. If you have several topics that you can’t really get-off your head, why not try combining them and come-up with a really unique concept. Or perhaps, build a catch phrase or a cause which revolves around the remaining concepts.
Also, try to find related articles or sources about it. It’s going to be your fuel for the rest of your blogging career. Let’s admit it; we’re not an all knowing guru about our chosen niche/niches or a walking encyclopedia for that matter. We’ll eventually need a source of knowledge to get, verify, and/or base our knowledge upon with the things we’ll be babbling about from time to time. If there ain’t any around, well, it’s time to replace that niche in your head.
Step #2: Assess the Traffic Potential of Your Topic
Know how many people are looking for the topic or theme you have. If there’s only a few who are searching for it, logically, there will also be a few people who will visit your blog. Better check the topics you have if they can provide you with lots of traffic. Unless it’s a personal blog which you only share with family members and close offline and online friends, your aim for building a blog is to reach as many people as possible; and that’s a fact. If your blog whispers to nothing but air since nobody cares if it’s updated or not, your blog can’t be called profitable (at all).
There are available tools online to help you search for the traffic potential of your topic. Here’s what I’m using:
- Free keywords suggestion tool – This is a free version of Wordtracker. Just type in a keyword (your topic) in the search box then hit enter and it will give you numbers of searches made about it along with related keywords. The numbers serve as your guide for the actual search volume of the topic you have at hand. The length of the list determines how deep you can go with this specific topic and also how many keywords you can effectively target for traffic. This is an important point: Never focus exclusively on the main niche keyword but the overall search depth for the niche topic.
- Goggle analytics – This is another free keyword tool which gives you graphic data of the search volumes on specific keywords instead of numbers. Although you can’t exactly tell how many searches are made on a particular keyword, Google trends can help you see its search volume within a specific month, year, within the last 12 months, or within the last 30 days.
- SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool – This is a new keyword tool I’ve discovered lately. What it does is it provides overall daily estimates of a keywords search volume including the three major search engines: Google, Yahoo, and MSN. It provides other keyword suggestions related to your topic with its corresponding search volumes, and links to other keyword suggestion tools based on the topic you used.
Step #3: Assess the Competition
Besides the traffic, it’s also important to know if there are also others who have thought of the niche you are eyeing at. Obviously, nowadays, it’s often difficult and close to impossible to find a niche that’s going to be exclusively available for you since more and more websites are created everyday; and more and more people are probably looking at the same direction as you.
Try to find out which of the topics you have at hand have less competition. The less competition the better your blog will perform since there will only be a few of you whose going to share the traffic.
Or, if you really feel determined to pursue the topic and go head on against an overcrowded competition, try to find an approach that others haven’t gone through yet. Search engines especially Google becomes handy here. Try searching for questions related to your niche. Refine your search each time and see if there are some questions that barely have any answers. You can work on that to give you a fair advantage in the competition.
Alternatively, you can add a different flavor to your topic. This is where the creativity I’m talking about in the first step comes-in. A more novel approach can either break the competition in your favor or give you more advantage compared to others. One good example is adding your own artwork in each of your posts. It might not be much but it adds a whole new dimension to your blog.
Step #4: Determine the Blog’s Money Making Potential
Basically, your target here is to know how much your revenue generating ads will perform against the traffic you’re drawing in. You have to understand that not all advertisers are willing to pay a considerable amount of money on certain keywords such as your topic. Some keywords will yield you more revenue than others. Of course, this is not your problem once again if you puke at the very sight of ads in your priceless blog. But if you’re into blogging because you wish to earn something, it’s best that you pay attention to these matters.
Tools you can use here:
- One quick and easy method you can use to help determine a blog’s money making potential is to go to Google or Yahoo and do a search for your primary keywords. The more advertisers you see paying for sponsored results (PPC) the better. If you don’t see anyone bidding on those keywords then it may be more difficult to monetize your blog but not necessarily impossible.
- Google Adwords Traffic Estimator – Although its results are limited only to adsense, it can also be of use to the other ads (especially the ad networks) you’ll eventually place in your blog. It’s pretty technical to begin with but the only portions I tamper with in its “start page” is the keywords line, the language option, the location set to “countries and territories” and the Countries section which I set into “all”; then I hit the continue button. You can place as many keywords as you want. And in the results page, it will show you the keywords search volume and how the keyword will perform for “adwords”. Forget about the other information you’ll see. You’ll only need to focus on the figures in the estimated average CPC column. The higher the CPC amount, the more the advertiser has to pay and hence you’ll earn more by creating content which reflects the high yielding keyword you entered.
- Google Adwords Keyword Tool – This one’s quite similar to the traffic estimator. The only difference is it will only show you graphic representations instead of numbers. Also it gives you other keyword suggestions which you can also use. Although the other information are also valuable, what you need to watch here is the graphic representation of the advertiser competition. The more advertisers compete for the keyword the more revenue it will yield.
Additional Tips:
One way to know if your niche has an obvious traffic potential is by looking for community activities based on your topic such as other blogs, forums, and discussion boards. If people are discussing your subject area then that is a good sign. Try doing searches in your favorite search engines with something like “(your topic) blog”, “(your topic) forum”, or (your topic) discussion. Replace the (your topic) with your topic.
Also you can do more specific searches inside social communities like forums by typing the syntax “site:(sitename) (your topic)” in Google. Take this for example: site:groups.google.com make money online. After I entered the search syntax, Google registered something like 15,800 results which means that there are 15,000+ instances that making money online has been talked about inside “Google groups”; quite many people talking or perhaps looking to earn online if you ask me.
It might also occur to you that in all the steps above, your niche seem to be a little less profitable. What you can do is perhaps try tweaking your topic. Try the keyword tools once again and try the other keyword suggestions and see if you could stumble upon a better topic which is still related to your topic. Or maybe, perhaps, a better promotional effort can drive traffic to your blog. If you write informative and straight to the point articles based on your chosen niche and you’ve got a good marketing and promotional strategy, then by all means your blog is still bound to work.
Lastly, don’t forget to make sure that you have time for your niche. That’s one of the many ways for you and your blog content to really improve and be profitable.
Additional great reads:
Starting A Professional Blog - Qualifying Your Niche | Performancing.com
How to Choose the Right Blog Niche: A Simple Three-Step Method | doshdosh.com
7 Steps To Choose A Niche For Your Blog | Can I Make Big Money Online
technorati tags: blogging, niche
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