Starting a blog today is undeniably a great way to stay creative, connect with others sharing similar interests, and also maybe earn a little cash along the way. However, blogging is not as easy as it may seem, with several hurdles along the way, not to lose interest in it being a major one. Picking a niche you’re passionate about, in such cases, becomes the only way to ensure that what you do is also what you like.
But, more challenging than blogging itself is deciding what to start a blog about, to pick a niche.
You can struggle with several ideas at some point and have not a single one at another. You may also choose something you like to only then find it less interesting over time. Or something that you can passionately write about for years to come, but it might not be as profitable as you’d like.
Talking in broad terms, in such cases, one needs to find a blog niche that they can stick to, grow it and grow along with it, and lastly, find ways to monetize over time. The following article discusses tips to help you choose the perfect niche from ground zero for a successful blog site, so let’s get started –
What Is A Blog Niche, And Why Do You Need It?
Beginning with the very basic step, let us first understand what a niche is and why it is important for your blog to have one.
Niche, in simple terms, can be defined as a subset of a larger market. The niche market can differ from the large market in terms of needs and preferences. However, being a subset does not imply that the niche market is smaller; rather, it focuses specifically on a unique market segment to serve a particular service or product.
Following a similar pattern, a blog niche is a specific topic you choose to write and create other types of content about to base your blog upon. Various factors from price(discount, moderate, high) to Demographic base(gender, age, educational level), occasion, culture, profession, geographic, and many more can be used to define a niche.
As to why is it important to find a niche, let us have a look at some major points –
- Finding a niche one is passionate about allows them to have fun while continuing it for a longer time.
- It saves irrelevant competition from different fields and lets you focus on the segment where you can excel.
- A niche allows the building of strong audience relationships.
- Monetizing blogs with a specific niche is much easier and profitable, considering how your content is always relevant to a particular group of people and community.
- You get to attract quality traffic from the search engines.
- The keyword research becomes more precise, effective, and easy.
Steps To Brainstorm The Perfect Niche For Your Blog
Well, to choose a niche is much like choosing a career. Too many options blur your decision, and the only way to clear your head is to ask yourself certain questions and decide what’s best. Let us look how –
How passionate are you about the niche or topic, and can they be validated?
How much you will enjoy the process of blogging or for how long you will sustain doing so with the same enthusiasm depends on whether the niche you chose is the one you really like.
A niche you pick must pique your interest. Well, it’s good if you know what you like, but if you do not, it is time to brainstorm ideas. Pick a pen, a notepad, and write down all the ideas and topics about which you can picture yourself writing a blog. You may as well search the internet for some good niche ideas, in case you are stuck.
You must have a long list of ideas in your hand by this time. And, therefore, it is time to filter and validate them. The three factors for a perfect niche that must overlap are passion, profitability, and knowledge.
Passion –
Can you or not picture yourself blogging in the same niche at least ten years from now without losing interest? The answer to it must give you an answer to how passionate you are about a niche.
However, choosing a topic only you are passionate about will leave you with not much scope of vast audience or monetization. Similarly, choosing something just because of the scope and not interest is not going to work in the long run either. Find something that balances both for ensured success.
Knowledge –
You must have enough knowledge and interest in the niche to make sure you put out unique and quality content and not just something that will pile under various similar blogs on the internet. It will also help you discover newer perspectives and topics for the blogs for fresh content.
Profitability –
If you are not blogging just for fun, chances are you also want to make some money out of it. Picking up something that makes for a relevant and profitable topic today and in the coming years will give you a smooth sail throughout.
As for methods to make money, you can make good use of several ways, from displaying advertisements and banner ads on the site to affiliate marketing and many more.
Do Your Niche Research Well And Leverage Keyword Sampling
Once you have chosen a niche, the next step is to do deep research on the niche to understand it through and through, including the target audience, their expectations, how strong the competition is, its global monthly search volume, niche profitability, etc. You may take the help of free and paid SEO tools and google trends for better niche research.
Also, since Google is the most popular search engine, leverage keywords research to ensure a higher search engine ranking. In-depth keyword research will not only allow you to understand market trends and audience interest in the niche but help you frame better SEO-rich content for blogs.
Know Your Competition Well
Competition analysis might seem of little value to many, but it is, in fact, the best way to get ahead in the race strategically without mistakes and wasted efforts. Again, for competitive analysis, make use of SEO tools. But, how exactly would you do it, and what are the details you must look for?
If you are not familiar with SEO tools, begin by initiating a regular google search on the topic related to your interested niche. Then find answers to the questions below –
- Check their site, site age, page and domain authority, and trust score.
- Verify their content’s uniqueness, length, and quality.
- Is there anything they could do to make their content better? Basically, look for all the mistakes you can point out and perhaps do better.
- Are they consistent with their posts? If yes, what is their schedule?
- What are their referral and backlink sources? Can you also make use of them?
Anything your competitor does poorly gives you a chance to direct the traffic towards your website through improved experience and content for the audience. Therefore, no matter what, do not miss to evaluate at least the top 10 google search results to your niche queries.
Know Your Audience And Serve What They Desire
It is imperative to understand that as important as it is to be creative and bring out new ideas, it is equally so to give the audience what they want to see. And, the only way to know what they want is to understand your targeted audience, right from the age group to popular interests and trends.
Closely observe your ideal audience, know their expectations, and offer them better products and services than everyone else in the market. Moving forward, focus on building a strong relationship with them to gain loyalty, trust, credibility, and growth.
Test, Alter, and Try Again
Testing your initial idea before you take your big step with the blog release and reviewing it to make adjustments is a good way to ensure success. You may do so by posting samples on social media and other paid blog sites ahead of the official release so as to evaluate the results, both negative and positive.
While things are good for positive feedback, as for the negative ones, you might want to rethink, revise, and alter to improve it.
Conclusion
Blogging is not something that serves success in a day’s effort, rather something that demands continuous hard work, thorough research, creativity, skills, and patience. For content needs, one can also make use of a reliable and good content marketing agency such as Singhjohn.com to drive quality content for blogs.
Know that a great way to ace success in the field of blogging is to go through popular blogs and learn from them, both their mistakes and things they did right, so as to avoid the former and pursue the latter. Happy Scrolling!
