What is a Blog Niche?
What is a blog niche?
A blog niche, or “niche website,” is specifically catered to a specific group of people, or a target market. A blog is designed to cater to one specific market, i.e. “marketing,” and a niche blog would be a sub-category in that market. “Internet Marketing – “How to market victorian lampstands.”
What Makes a Blog a Niche Blog?
What makes a blog a niche blog?
A niche blog is type of blog that focuses on a highly targeted market. That target market may be a small geographic area (Italian Restaurants in Miami-Dade County, Florida) ,
a niche blog may focus on a specific age demographic:
(Skin care for middle aged women with dry skin who want to reduce the appearance of scar tissue)
Niche Blogging Can Focus on a Paticular Industry
Niche blogging can focus on a particular industry:
(Roofing – economically friendly roofing – solar panels)
According to Wikipedia, niche blogging , “…appeals to “geographic areas, a specialty industry, ethnic or age groups, or any other particular group of people.”
The term “niche blogging” basically implies it is a particular type of blog that targets a specific niche market.
How do Niche Blogs Make Money?
How do niche blogs make money?
Niche blogs often generate income via affiliate links or other types of advertisements. If you’re planning on making money with a niche blog, it’s always wise to do your keyword research homework before launching your niche blog. A few questions to ask yourself with regards to monetization of your niche blog:
- How much money does this industry make annually?
- What quarter does this industry make the most money annually?
- Is there more money in this, or in another keyword (i.e. Victorian lamp stand blog vs. tiffany lamps vs. modern lamps).
- Is it possible to get 1% of the income from that industry’s sales next year? If yes, how much is 1%?
- What are the largest competitors in that industry, and can you affiliate with them in order to generate more income? i.e. instead of working against your competitors, work with them?
- If you make .10% of that industry’s annual sales, is that enough to be considered “worth your time and investment?”
Niche blogs also make money via pay-per-click (PPC) advertisements. More established niche blogs may generate income via membership options, annual subscriptions & membership fees.
Types of Niches
Types of Niches
Keep in mind, the higher the profitability of a specific niche, the higher the competition. These niches are profitable niches for blogging, and you can get super specific with your blogging. I.e. if you want your niche to be “Marketing,” remember that a “marketing blog” isn’t a super specific niche. Yes, it is the target audience (i.e. internet marketing, email marketing, social media marketing), however if you really want to hone in and develop a super specific niche to get sales from an untapped niche, do a little bit of brainstorming and a lot of research.
Example
Category: Marketing
Sub-categories: Internet Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Email Marketing, Auto Pilot Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Twitter Marketing, Pinterest Marketing, Facebook Marketing
Then, get even more specific: How to Make More Auto Sales , Automotive Marketing
From here:
“I know I’d like to write a niche blog on Automotive Marketing.”
Do a little bit more research
Automotive Marketing on Social Media
Automotive Marketing through Search Engine Optimization
Automotive Marketing in Florida
Technically, you could get even more specific
Automotive Marketing on Social Media for vehicles valued between $50k – $250k.
My recommendation? Start off with a highly specific niche and then branch out from there. Think of your content like a pyramid, with your highly specific content at the top, and the broader niche topic at the bottom.
How to Choose the Ideal Niche
- What is your passion?
- What do you have the most experience in?
- Where does your expertise lie?
- Is this something you believe other people to be interested in?
- Can you help other people learn a skill?
- How will your blog solve your reader’s problem?
- Are you going to be educating your reader, entertaining your reader, or solving a problem for your target market?
When selecting the ideal niche for you as an individual, it’s critical to remember that – even though the ultimate goal is for your niche blog to generate income – it’s even more critical to select a niche topic that you are comfortable and familiar with.
Don’t select a niche blog simply because it’s a profitable industry.
Think about it this way – in 5 years from now, are you still going to love the topic? Can you see yourself writing about the topic everyday without becoming aggravated by the topic? Is it something you enjoy?
The goal of a niche blog is to turn your passion into profit – and if writing isn’t something your passionate about, then I’d recommend finding another way to generate income with WordPress. Niche blogging requires writing – a lot of writing. If you’re not comfortable writing, then niche blogging isn’t going to be something that is a good fit for you – and that is okay. There are a thousand other ways you can generate income online – and a lot of them with WordPress. I’m not trying to be discouraging – I am just being realistic. Only start a niche blog if you’re passionate about writing and enjoy it – otherwise, it will turn into something you dread – and you’ll ultimately leave the blog to wither with the rest of the graveyard domains.
Niche blogging requires you to be passionate about a topic – and the desire to educate others about the specific topic.
If the only reason you’re interested in niche blogging for is to earn commission as an affiliate, then focus more on affiliate marketing rather than niche blogging – you can still make a ton of money.
And if you believe you’d be happier with an e-commerce store promoting a shop, then by all means, build an e-commerce shop.
Niche blogging is for people that want to focus on one very specific topic – if you’re well informed about a topic, and really desire to educate others about your cause – then keep reading. Otherwise, check out this article on different ways you can use WordPress to make money online.
What is Content Strategy?
Content strategy is a plan of action with short-term and long-term content goals when it comes to making sales in Search Engine Content Marketing. Content strategy doesn’t cost a lot of money – however it does take time and effort to create a well developed content strategy.
- Calendar – Write down daily goals to achieving content development. You may choose to write down a weekly plan, monthly plan, and yearly plan.
- Set launch dates and deadlines to make your content writing a priority.
- Notebook – Get a notebook that you dedicate specifically to idea generation. Keep this notebook with you at all times – write down ideas as they come so you do not forget them.
- Brainstorming Session – Take about 30 minutes to write down as many ideas as possible focused around your niche blog content strategy. It doesn’t matter if they sound silly, write down everything.
- Write Daily– Writer’s Block comes from not writing. Even on days you don’t ‘feel like writing,’ it’s a good habit to spend a minimum of 30 minutes daily to keep the momentum. It’s easy to slip out of the habit, and before you know it, 6 months goes by and you haven’t created any new content.
- Search Engine Keyword Research Tool – Use Google Keyword Tools, SEO tools, and Google Adwords to locate the best buyer keywords and highly searched keywords. Write down all keywords with search results, and incorporate them into your content.
- Stock Photos – Lots of free stock photo sites exist, however, they usually require some type of credit given if you do not have a monthly subscription. I’d recommend purchasing your stock photos, either from an Unlimited download and license stock photo site such as ENVATO ELEMENTS. This prevents any copywriting headache and verifies that you’ve paid all royalties on the images.
- Stock Videos – People love watching videos. Multimedia is a great way people absorb information. I’d recommend creating several videos to use in your content. Envato Elements has great stock video. If you are not comfortable editing video, you can find content creators on sites like UpWork that will help you, and even work with you if you are on a limited budget.
- Infographics – Create attractive infographics for your content that breaks the monotony of content. Keep in mind – a lot of people will only be skimming through your content – provide them with easy to understand infographics with the information they seek. Adobe Stock has great infographics. You may wish to create high quality infographic vector images with Adobe Illustrator.
How to Choose a Profitable Niche
Choose a Profitable Niche
Blogs are started for 1 of 2 reasons. The blogger wants to write / document a specific topic, or the blogger wants to supplement their current income (with the final goal resulting in the full time-blogger lifestyle).
This blog focuses on the latter – our goal is to generate income from our work. For anybody that is in the second category, keep reading.
Not all blog niches are profitable. The reason? They do not have enough monthly traffic to be profitable from PPC advertisements, or the time and effort into developing a blog around a specific category just isn’t worth it – i.e. if it takes 80 hours of research to generate $200 yearly. They niche may also be something so specific, finding sponsors to pay for advertisements would be next to impossible.
Answer the following questions to help you get started on selecting the perfect niche.
- What keywords will you be focusing on? Select your main keyword, then your main 2-word-keyword, 3-word-keyword, 4-word keyword, 5-word keyword, and a few different keyword phrases that have a high search volume. Use the tools found here SEMRUSH / KEYWORD TOOL
- What topic do I enjoy writing about? It’s always a wise idea to select a topic you are somewhat knowledgable in. Why? It results in less research for you. It wouldn’t be a wise idea to write a blog about Alzheimer’s and Dementia unless you are already somewhat familiar with those topics. I’m not saying it wouldn’t be profitable, however, the topic is complicated and requires a lot of thought. It’s also a topic that people are depending on you to provide them with correct information. For people who have never had anybody close to them with one of these brain disorders, it’s difficult to explain or understand what it is. Now, if you want to do the research – by all means – dive in. Alzheimer’s Disease & Research could always use another advocate. However it will be easier and more enjoyable & personally rewarding for a person who has already completed 100 hours of research and 5 years personal experience on Alzheimer’s to develop a niche blog around the disease.
- What topic am I knowledgable in? Using the same theory above – selecting a topic you enjoy and have experience with almost guarantees that you will still enjoy writing about the topic in 5 years from now.
- Do the two topics above have a high profitability or low profitability?
- Are the topics listed above in high competition fields, or low competition? Do your research with (keyword tool). High competition fields have more results, meaning that they have more monthly searches. Low competition fields have less traffic – less possible sales – however you’ll have an easier time ranking in the search engines.
- If I find a low competition niche, answer the following questions: Why do I think this is a good field to write about?
- Is the main focus of my blog to : solve a problem for my audience, educate my audience, entertain my audience?
- Is my audience spending money for necessity or for enjoyment?
- What is the main $ figure per sale that my target market has to spend per sale in order for me to make a profit?
- How much will I earn for every $100 my visitors spend?
- How much percentage will I earn for every 100,000 spent by my visitors?
- How long will it take me to create 30 blog starter posts?
- Will I have to do a lot of individual research for my blog starter posts?
- How will I drive traffic to my blog?
- What type of content will I be creating?
- Will I be making videos? If yes, what are the first 20 videos that I will be making?
- Will I be giving the videos away for free, or will they be paid content?
- If I am in a high competition industry, what niche will I focus on to make my blog unique?
- When creating content, will I write everything before I launch, or will I create 1 post a week?
- Is this something I have to do, or want to do in my free time?
Niche Blogging Requires the Ability to Create Helpful Content
Niche blogging is a very specific type of way to make money blogging and to make money with WordPress. You have to enjoy writing in order for niche blogging to be profitable (or at the bare minimum – be a decent writer capable of entertaining, educating, explaining, or persuading consumers).
If you are not “a good writer,” but you enjoy working with WordPress, there are still a ton of other ways you can Make Money With WordPress.
What Niche Blogging Doesn’t Include
- Niche blogging is not copying and pasting or scraping content to your domain
- Niche blogging is not getting an AI chatbot to do your homework
- Niche blogging is not social media
- Niche blogging is not a get rich quick scheme
- Niche blogging is not a pyramid scam
- Niche blogging is not selling MLM (multi-level-marketing) downloads & subscriptions
- Niche blogging is not asking people for donations
- Niche blogging is not something you do if you need a $3k paycheck within 10 days (1 year is a reasonable amount of time to allow yourself to build up to a $3k monthly – some more, some less – depends on your effort and your niche).
- Niche blogging doesn’t require a huge out of pocket investment to get started. You can generally start and host a blog for the first year from $100 – $500 year. The pricing reflects the speed of the server and the storage room on the disk. You may also wish to opt in to additional security features. If somebody tries to charge you $1,000 to get started blogging, proceed with caution.
- Niche blogging isn’t “easy money.” It requires hard work, focus, and a lot of research. You get what you work for – if you provide web visitors with bad scammy spammy content, don’t expect much. However, if you provide useful and helpful content that solves a problem for your reader, you will soon find yourself enjoying the fruits of your labor.