So, you want to start a blog. But if you’re reading this, it’s most likely you’re not quite sure what direction you want to go with it. That direction is what us bloggers like to call a “niche” or “nitch” — however you want to pronounce it.
What is a niche?
A niche for your blog is simply the general topic you will write about. It’s the backbone, if you will, of your theme. When you have a niche, all your posts revolve around that one topic, and that’s essentially all you write about.
With over 600 million blogs on the web today, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed about where you fit in or what niche you should hone in on. There are lifestyle blogs, tech blogs, magazine blogs, news blogs, pet blogs, beauty blogs. There’s even a blog about super weird quirky stuff like Hungover Owls.
There is a blog for just about anything.
After my first blog was successful, it made me want to share all the knowledge and wisdom I’ve acquired to help others succeed! So I started another one — this one — about how to help you do the same as I did, just avoid all the mistakes I made along the way.
My very first successful blog – niche: Lifestyle
My first blog is a lifestyle blog called Word From The Bird. I started in in January of 2018, and it’s now a six-figure income blog thanks to Pinterest.
If you want to know all about how I did it, and how to do it yourself, I wrote a course called Pinterest Traffic Masterclass you should check out.
So yeah.
Here you are. You have all these ideas in your mind, but the questions and logistics keep getting you hung up.
So let’s talk about where your niche comes into play, and is one of the first steps towards starting an online business.
Why Finding Your Niche is One of the Most Important Steps of Becoming a Blogger
Having a specific niche for your blog will not only help you stay on track with your vision, but it will also help you monetize your blog, bring more traffic, and eventually make you an expert in that specific area (if you aren’t already).
One of the biggest hurdles a blogger has to overcome is having enough time to do ALL THE THINGS. So what’s the best way to save time and energy? You narrow things down, so you don’t end up spreading yourself too thin.
When you narrow things down, you will have more time and energy to make your specific niche even better. You will be giving your audience what they want — for you to solve their problems.
So finding your niche first has to do with knowing and understanding who your audience is.
But it feels a bit overwhelming to try and figure out an entire audience, right? So what I like to do is find my perfect “person.” Who’s that ONE person you want to help? Who’s that ONE person you want to speak to and invite them in to become a part of your blogging family?
Narrow your “audience” down to ONE person: Is it someone like you? A mom who wants to save money? An entrepreneur? A small business owner? What age are they? What kind of money do they like to spend on products?
What niches are profitable?
You’ll want to ask yourself questions like, is what I want to write about profitable? And then, visa versa. Is what is profitable something I want to write about?
You can easily figure out what blog niches are profitable doing this.
Google (Blog Niche + Monthly Income or Income Reports)
From there, you can find articles from bloggers who write about their income.
Take my lifestyle blog, Word From The Bird, for example. I started out writing about topics under the “lifestyle” umbrella, including travel, food, relationships, parenting and decor.
Then, after using Pinterest to grow my traffic, I realized what resonated with people the best.
In a way, through first covering a few different topics, I narrowed in on my niche because I was willing to be flexible to what my audience needed.
I ended up mainly writing about family life — parenting, marriage, personal growth.
Because Pinterest became a high traffic generator for me, I was able to monetize my blog through ads with Mediavine and began making an income. If you want to know more about how I did this, check it out in my Pinterest Traffic Masterclass.
But basically, once I added in ads, I made $1000 the first month, and now, two years later, I have a six-figure blog where I have also implemented affiliate sales, my own products, and sponsored posts. Check it out in detail in this income repost post I did.
Now let’s talk about HOW to find your perfect niche so you can start earning money doing something you love!
How to Find Your Niche in Blogging
1. Start simple, but not too narrow
In my experience, I made a few mistakes when I started. But these mistakes also led to my success. Let me explain.
You will hear a lot of advice out there saying you shouldn’t have too broad of a niche. And while I wholeheartedly agreed with that, I went against the grain from the get-go, because I wasn’t yet sure what would be the most profitable for me, or even what I would like to write about.
Since blogging was new to me, I wanted to test the waters, so I ended up covering more topics, and then, later on, narrowed my niche down.
Example:
Let’s say you start a food blog. You love ALL kinds of food, so, of course, that’s what you want to cover — everything.
But one day, you write a delicious cookie recipe post, and it catches fire through a viral pin on Pinterest. Then, you write another cookie recipe, and that goes viral as well. You begin to notice that your cookie posts are doing amazing, but your other posts, not so much. At that point, you will want to try and recreate your success, and you begin to realize that cookies are what you’re good at, what your audience most resonates with, and so you narrow in on being a cookie blogger. That’s a perfect example of how you can start more general, but eventually narrow things down.
I also would advise when you’re finding your perfect blog name, keeping things a bit more general, so you have some wiggle room in the event of this happening.
2. Start a vision board
When I first started my lifestyle blog, I drew out a vision board.
My vision board started on a napkin, then made its way to a dry erase board. I wish I still had it so I could go back and see all the things I’ve accomplished! After you’re done, you should laminate it and put it somewhere you can see every day — this will help inspire and remind you why you started in the first place. It will also help you stay focused.
By envisioning what you want to achieve, you’d be surprised how many ideas for blog posts you can come up with for your niche!
3. Make sure what you write about is something you’re passionate about
It’s easy to get caught up in the “making money now” mindset. But something you should always consider is you don’t ever want to get stuck writing about something you dislike.
If a certain niche is profitable, it doesn’t necessarily mean you will be profitable with it, especially if you’re not passionate about it. The financial blogging world is very profitable. But because the very word “budget” makes me want to gag, you won’t EVER find me writing about it.
So whatever niche you decide to write about, make sure you’re passionate about it!
4. Gauge how much time you can put into it
When I first started writing articles for my lifestyle blog, I spent a LOT more time on certain topics than others.
For example, I did this really creative DIY project for a hanging planter. Even though it was super fun, it took me TWO DAYS to write the post and take pictures as I did the project.
But if I wrote an article about what every boy mom needs to know about their son’s emotional needs, I got it done in a jiffy! Not to mention, I didn’t have to take the time to complete an entire hands-on project.
With the limited time I had, I decided writing posts about family life came easy and was more conducive to my lifestyle as a SAHM.
So when you’re thinking about your niche, assess how much time you have. You might be surprised by how much this weighs your decisions.
If you’re going to be a food blogger, you’re going to want to calculate the fact that you will have to make the recipe and then take pictures of the finished product.
5. Ask yourself if you can offer good advice for that niche
There’s a difference between being “knowledgeable” and being an “expert.”
When you’re first starting out, it’s okay if you’re not an expert on a topic when deciding on a niche.
But you also don’t want to pick a topic you know nothing about.
Take, for example, my posts on my lifestyle blog about marriage. I am not a marriage counselor, but I’m married. Because I write from personal experiences, people resonate with it. I don’t write from an “expert” position, but rather a common ground for people to relate.
Sometimes, being an expert doesn’t always give you a relatable feel, especially if you’re writing about more personal things.
I would be quicker to take advice from a mom who had been there, done that, instead of from a child therapist who doesn’t have any kids–if you’re both, even better!
Just make sure you do all the legal work and put it in your privacy policy!
Wrapping it up with finding your niche!
Finding a niche will not only help you navigate what your articles will revolve around, but it will also help you focus your ideas and eventually monetize your blog.
With passion, knowledge, and a willingness to work hard, you will be well on your way to writing about things that people learn from and identify with.
As always, when it comes to having a niche, you always want to consider and understand who your audience is! What problems do you want to solve for them? How can you inspire them? How can best you educate them?
