Blogging can be a very lucrative career; it has made many people become the boss of their own, answerable to no one. There are millions of people like myself out there who don’t like to work full time under anybody and may find blogging a very interesting career. But hey you! Do you wish to start a blog and become a professional blogger? But you don’t know how to pick your blog niche yet, follow me along in this article as unfold how to validate your blog niche.
Want to have time for yourself, and be free financially, it’s a nice idea. Many dream about it and become it; you too can become a successful blogger in no time. Though blogging is not an easy career, it’s not for lazy people. It required time, dedication and passion to be successful as a blogger.
However, you need to consider certain things before choosing a topic for your blog because your successes in the blogging industry depend solely on the right topic you choose to blog about. Building a successful blog entails many things and I will highlight some of the factors you need to put into consideration before you choose a topic for your blog.
The truth is if you fail to choose the right topic for your blog, you may fail as a blogger! Because you need an audience to grow your blog and chances are that not everyone on the internet will be interested in your topic.
Now let’s dive into it step by step. Before I begin to analyze what you need to know before choosing a blog topic for yourself. Let’s know what a blog topic is and why is it necessary
What To Consider Before Choosing Your Blog Niche in 2024 Share on XTable of Contents
What Exactly Is A Blog Niche?
A blog niche is an act of creating a blog that focuses on a specific subject, topic area or audience, this allows every blogger to centre their entire blog posts around a particular subject. A niche blogging refers to writing about a specific category or topic, thus catering for a specific target audience
Every blog has a niche, a particular area it covers. Scribeage niche is all about blogging SEO and digital marketing.
There are millions and one area a blogger can choose from. Ranging from tech to health but before you narrow your blog to a particular niche, there are certain things you need to put into consideration and that’s what we discussing today.
Why do Bloggers Need a Niche?
Most time I got a question like this from many people. Why do I need a blog niche? After all, I am multi-talented I can blog about just anything that comes to mind. If you’re a newbie and you belong to that league you will fail big time in blogging. Every blog has a specific audience and target market.
Take for instance, if you’re blogging about recipes, sports, tech and creativity and possibly adventures. You will end up writing for yourself and not for any audiences, because when people that want recipes got to your blog and discover that you are blogging also about sports, you’ll get them confused and you will leave them with no option but to abandon your blog for a blog that carter for their needs alone.
Why blogging about just anything? When you can centre your blog on particular target audiences.
Below are the highlights of the benefits of having a niche for your blog
Make it Easy to Target Your Audience
A blogger’s main aim is to attract readers. If you are a niche blogger your blogs will cater to a specific audience. It will, therefore, become easier for you to target your audience through networking and producing relevant content.
The moment you know who your audiences are, it easy to target them on social media platforms like Facebook because a well-targeted audience gives you better results and advantages than your counterpart who focused on multi-niche blogs
Makes You an Authority in Your Niche
When you blog about 50 posts on a particular topic over time, people will see you as an authority in that field than someone who has only 2 posts on the same topic. Mastering one thing for a long period will stand you out among your equals because you have vast knowledge about that field than anyone.
You become an expert at something when you practice that thing constantly and repeat that action over and over again until it becomes instinctive and part of your daily life.
”I fear not the man who has practised 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practised one kick 10,000 times.” –Bruce Lee
Focusing on a blog niche makes you an expert in that niche more than someone else who blogs about just anything.
Make it easier to Think of Blog Post Ideas
Having a single blog niche helps you come up with more blog post ideas than operating a multi-niche blog. Since content is everything about blogging, it becomes a lot easier for anyone with a single blog niche to come up with unique and great blog posts frequently without repetition than those covering different niches on their blogs.
Make it easy to Build a Loyal Community af Audience
A niche blogs provide you with a more reliable audience because you’re providing valuable content about a particular topic to your readers, they are more likely to remain loyal to your blog. A niche blog makes it easy for you to create a community of readers on your social media groups or any other channels. A blogging community can be your Facebook group or LinkedIn group where you communicate and engage with your readers frequently, this gives you a chance to get familiar with your readers and know them better.
A niche blog, give you chance to provide answers to your audience quickly if you run a niche blog than brainstorming in a multi-niche blog
There are chances that a person who visits your blog today and is satisfied with your content will come back to your blogs in future for any information related to the topic. This is because you understand the needs of your target audience well and accordingly produce content that is relevant to their needs.
Make it Easier to Monetize
The purpose of blogging is to make money, but making money blogging could be a lot easier in niche blogs because your audience is well-defined and targeting them with your products or services won’t be difficult. Once you narrow down your blog into a niche, monetizing such a blog becomes easy, you already know who your audiences are and what they want and they are committed to your content, selling items for them won’t be a task at all.
For instance, if your blog is about weight loss, it will be very easy for you to sell e-books and videos about losing weight to your audience. And also easier to monetize your blog with related ads on weight loss.
What to Consider before Choosing Your Blog Niche
Now that you have known some benefits of a single niche blog, it’s time to look at some factors you need to consider before you choose a niche for that your blog.
Just before you choose your blog niche and start blogging, you need to be sincere about certain things around the niche you wanted. Many people jump into blogging because they have a passion for a certain niche without considering other factors. Passion alone is not enough in blogging because the topic you have a passion for might has a short life span. Imagine wanting to blog about an event that only happened once in history.
It’s very important to put some factors into consideration before you pick that niche. Let’s take a look at some important questions you need to answer correctly just before you get started.
Do I have Passion for this Topic?
Passion is said to be an ardent affection for something. Before you choose a niche for your blog, you must be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that you have a passion to write frequently about that topic for very long years to come no matter the odds that may be against you in the process.
Yes! It’s very easy for anyone to look around and decided to venture into any profitable niche, like the recipe, how to make money online and so on. Because you’ve seen many people succeed in it. But no matter how much resources and time you put into a niche you never had a passion for, it will lead to nowhere. You will likely get tired on time and end up not making any money from it.
Do not pick anyhow niche just because you are told it is a searchable niche and you can easily monetize the blog. Many blogs failed, not because the owners were not good enough but because there was no passion in their approach to the topic.
The passion they said leads to originality, if you are passionate about something, you won’t run out of ideas, you won’t be tired no matter what and you will do everything possible to stand out. With passion, you will make your blog the best place to be on the web for anyone searching for content like yours.
So, before you pick your blog niche ensure you’re genuinely interested in that topic, make sure it is something you are sincerely passionate about not just something someone told you will generate enough traffic and sales.
Because without passion for a topic, you will quickly get burned out and lose focus and that’s worse than failure in life.
In early 2016, I saw a unique opportunity in the “health” blog in Nigeria; I saw the need for people to be informed about their health especially women because of the high rate of maternal mortality. I discussed the blogging idea with my best friend who is also a health practitioner, we share ideas and I went to work. I designed a very responsive, functional, with a unique interface blog, she started the blog. But I tell you, she could only blog for 4 months because there was no passion for it. That was how the blog was abandoned.
So, you see, if you’re not genuinely passionate about a niche, there’s no point trying to blog about it, it won’t last because you have won’t have enough zeal to sustain the blog for a long time. Although, being passionate is not enough as there is more to it.
Do I have Enough Knowledge about this Niche?
Another thing you need to put into consideration before choosing your niche is skills, this is very important. Having a passion for something without enough skills is like someone who loves driving but doesn’t know how to drive.
“Without a better understanding of the subject and establishment of clear deep-thinking goals, it will be impossible to stay on top of your niche for a second”
When choosing a topic, don’t choose a topic you know little or nothing about. It’s wise to start a blog your readers will find helpful because most of your audiences are talented and skilful in that field; they just want to add to their depth of knowledge. It’s ideal to choose a topic within your field of expertise because your readers expect you to have some level of expertise within the niche.
For instance, if you are a graphic designer your readers will be expecting to see unique and creative graphic designs within your blog. No one would want to read from a graphic designer whose blog logo is awful. They will expect a graphic designer who walks the talk, not just talking for the sake of it. Having enough knowledge about your niche would earn you respect and place you in a position of authority as your readers would always want to read from you.
Though, some niche requires formal qualifications and certifications before you can venture into them, while you can train yourself, learn a skill and become talented in some. For instance, if you want to blog about finance your readers expect you to be a certified economist or accountant before they listen to you. If you want to blog about “health” you are expected to be a trained and certified health practitioner else no one will listen to you. Would you listen to health advice from a quack? I guess no!
Not all blog niches require a formal qualification, you can learn a trade and become an expert at it, you can as well learn a skill and become a legend in that skill even do better than anyone else, that’s one good thing about knowledge.
So, you need to choose a topic you have authority over because when people read your blog, they should know that not only are you passionate about the subject matter but you are also an authority within the field.
Are there Enough People Searching in Your Niche?
If the answers to the last two questions are yes; Congratulations! But choosing a topic based on your passion and knowledge may not be enough. Now, it’s time to figure out who are the people who will be reading your blog. It’s time to have a clear understanding of your target audiences, who are the people your niche is meant for? What every successful blogger do before they chose a niche is to have a clear understanding of what people are searching for in their niche.
Target Audience simply means the group of consumers or people who are most likely to read your blog post, purchase your products or services.
You should ask yourself these questions:
- Who will read your blog?
- Where are they from?
- What’s their level of understanding about your niche?
- Would they continue reading from you for a long time?
- How old are they?
You will agree with me that keyword research and searching through endless keyword lists is a difficult task especially for a starter because the internet is so complex but with a free tool like Google Trend, you can lay your hand on some vital information about your niche. With Google Trend you can determine the following about niche:
- You can determine if people are searching for your niche online or not
- You can know how many people are searching for your topic online in the last 5 years
- You can as well know the region in which your topic is more popular
Google trend may not give you enough insight into what you need to know about the search volume of your niche but it’s a good starting point. If your topic is trending upward for the last five years, it means you are good to go with it but if the topic has become less popular, you may need to have a rethink.
All you need to do is go to Google Trend
- Choose your region of choice
- Enter your niche main term in the search box and clicks enter.
The above Image shows that music is a popular search term in Nigeria for the last 5 years, so, if you want to blog about anything music you are certain you will have an audience. If you want to compare your niche to others just to know how popular your niche is, you can use the Compare button:
The image above shows that in the last 5 years the average number of people searching for music online are more than people searching for football term. You can as well check for the search results in the sub-region of your locality.
The image above breaks the popularity of each term searched according to the sub-region of your country. Google Trend alone does not guarantee your audience, they called it “trend” not “permanent” you should try to do more research and be open to information about people around you. Keyword research online can be a useful tool to find out what people are searching for online, but that doesn’t give you the whole picture, you still need to think out of the box.
To have a clear understanding of what people are searching for in your niche including the monthly search volume may look impossible but that’s why the following free online keyword tools come into play.
One of my favourite apps is KWFinder, this app will give you deep insight into how many people are searching for your topic monthly from all around the globe. This tool provides you with other related keywords to what you are searching for and how many people search for those keywords.
The main focus of conducting all these searches is to ensure your intending niche is a searching topic so that you can make accurate decisions based on the search volume of your keyword
Twinword Ideas is another great tool that can help you define your target audience easily. Twinword is an AI-powered keyword research tool that can automatically detect user intent for each keyword suggestion. This wonderful tool does not provide you with keyword suggestions alone, you can as well search for statistics about the keyword and also get trends keyword
Login to Twinword Ideas type in your niche main term into the search bar and click “Search” and wait for Twinword Ideas Artificial Intelligent software to do wonders by giving you not only the search volume of your keyword but also provide you with several related keywords with estimated monthly searches in your region.
The image below shows an example of a search on “fashion”, with the result showing a long list of related keyword suggestions on fashion with monthly few searches. You can as well use the Popular Topics filter on the left to narrow down your search and select the most appropriate topic with higher monthly searches.
You may ask why you need to do all these searches to identify your target audience. The reason is simple; you want to ensure there is enough search volume for your intending niche. Because the higher the search volume, the more people are searching for that keyword and that would help you to make the right decision about your niche.
One thing is certain, if you are passionate about a topic and you have deep knowledge of that topic, you will be able to know the exact people who need your service.
How Relevant is Your Topic?
Another thing to consider before you pick that niche of yours is to find out if your niche is addressing the need of your audience, you need to find out if your niche will solve issues facing your audience. Your blog must have a significant and demonstrable bearing on the matter at hand, relevant content starts with needs, identifying problems and developing solutions to such problems and needs. If your topic can solve real issues, then your blog will be accepted.
To know how relevant your topic is to the need of people around, you need to answer the following question.
- Is your topic appropriate to the current time, period, or circumstances of contemporary interest?
- How applicable is your topic to your target audiences’ situations?
- What problems will your topic solve?
Knowing all of the problems your topic can solve is a critical step to helping you identify the right target audience. Remember, the relevancy of your topic must be channelled towards providing solutions to particular problems your target audiences are facing.
Relevancy is very crucial in choosing a topic for your blog, you don’t just write for the sake of it, you must write within the scope of your niche and it must solve problems and be timeless as nobody wants to read outdated information.
Note: For your blog to be accepted you need to arm it with relevant facts and figures
Can I make Money from this Topic?
Having answered all other questions correctly, you should know if the topic is worth writing about or should be changed. The next thing to figure out is if you can make money from the chosen topic.
Take for instance; if you’ve decided to blog about diet and weight loss, it’s very important to ask this final question, are there paying audiences for this topic? No matter how little, you should make money from your blog at one time or the other either by selling your products and services or by promoting other peoples’ products.
But how would you know if your blog topic will earn you some money? To know whether or not paying audiences exists for your blog niche you will need to do the following.
- Look into other blogs in your niche:
The first thing you need to do is look into popular blogs in your niche, check if they sell or promote their own created products or offer a service-based program, such as online training or any membership program to make money from their blogs. If other blogs in your niche do this, then you can make money by doing the same around your good and compelling content.
- Are there products advertisement targeted towards your audience?
This is another way to find if you can make money within your niche. Take for example; if you’re considering a niche in “fitness”, you can Google search some products used to get fit; if there are ads about the products show up. Then you know for sure you can monetize your blog using ads.
- Are there Companies in your niche offering affiliate program for their products
Let’s say you’re considering a niche about “Fashion” you need to look at companies and stores paying bloggers like you to advertise their products and services through affiliate marketing and product reviews. If there are companies producing products or services in your niche, then there’s a good chance you will make it through affiliate marketing on your blog.
If you look around and search online to find the answer to the above questions and many more and the answers are yes. Then congratulations! You are ready to go with the niche.
Ready to Pick a Niche Today?
Having a broad blog niche may not be an easy task, especially for a starter as you’re expected to pick a niche just before you get started. And it’s not wise to pick a niche just because of the market share or profit.
If you must build a better brand reputation online and generate traffic and sales, you are expected to pick a profitable niche that you are:
Passionate about
Have a Deep understanding about
Have higher search Volume and trending upward
Relevant to the needs of your readers
Easy to monetize
Ensure you think about different topics, do thorough searching about them and pick the very best you know you’re passionate about and can write about for a very long time.
It may look hard at first but I bet you if you dig deep you will find an interesting topic you can handle without stress and easy to make money from for a very long time. A topic your target audience will keep coming back for. But remember, combining knowledge with passion will help you greatly not only in choosing the most profitable niche but also in identifying ways to make money from the blog.
Ready to hit the ground running with your blog niche? Then head over to my step by step guide to starting your new blog?
0 Comments