I think it’s awesome that you want to become a blogger. I’ve been trying to talk friends and family into doing something like it for years. A few of them have taken my advice, while others haven’t. I’m a huge proponent of blogging because I think it can add value to a person’s life. Instead of merely living, a blogger lives with purpose. Instead of merely taking photos, a blogger photographs with purpose. I’ve been blogging for decades and I’m not sure where I’d be without it. It’s added so much to who I am and has had a profound impact on what I do.
Many bloggers think they can become successful without direction, and some can. Some people are so good at writing about their daily routines that anyone and everyone follows them with great interest. Most people aren’t as talented (or magnetic) as these select few, however, and most people have come to the conclusion that it’s best to blog about something in particular – a topic – a niche. Why? That’s a simple question to answer. As far as blogging goes, it seems easier to create a following if the person who visits your blog has something concrete to actually follow. If you blog about model trains for a while and create an audience doing so, but soon begin discussing family vacations to Puerto Rico, you’re going to lose those people you’ve gained. They’re going to wonder what happened to the trains. So yes, while those abundantly interesting folks who can create blogs about themselves certainly do exist, most of us need topics that are more narrow upon which to focus – at least in the beginning. And that’s why I’m writing today’s post. To help you find your blogging niche.
What Is a Blogging Niche?
In the online and blogging world, a niche is a sliver of the internet that solves a problem. If a person is bored, they might wander through an entertainment blog. If a person is looking for advice on how to split firewood, they’ll visit a lumberjack blog. If they’re looking for health advice or are interested in learning how to cook, they’ll…well, you get the idea. A blogging niche is a focused topic that you, the blogger, have an interest in and are an authority on. It’s something you can quickly be known as. “Hey, aren’t you the person who writes on…such and such?”
Why Create a Niche Blog?
There are quite a few reasons you might want to create and begin writing on a niche blog. I personally enjoy learning and the more I write on, say, this very blog about blogging, the more I learn about my chosen topic. I know of people who have millions of followers of their politics blogs. And science blogs. And blogs about motorcycling. Niche blogs are current and trustworthy and again, solve a problem. And really, that’s what you want – to become trustworthy so your audience, while perhaps smaller than you might have initially wanted, remains committed and devoted to the posts you choose to write.
The Process of Finding Your Niche
Now that we know what a niche is in regards to blogging and why you might want to settle on one for yourself, I’ll discuss a few methods for finding the one that suits you best. After that, I’ll discuss how to find success once you’ve discovered what you’re looking for.
Find Familiarity & Adoration
I have a friend who simply adores Ghostbusters movies. When I say this, I mean he really adores them. He regularly expresses his fanaticism of each one and encourages me to watch all of them. He’s dressed as Ghostbusters characters nearly every year he’s been dressing up for Halloween. It’s no joke. This guy is a die-hard fan of the franchise.
Each time my friend and I discuss this particular group of movies, I tell him that he really should launch a blog about them. As he speaks to me, I can feel his passion just oozing through. There’s no one on earth who knows more about these movies than he does and if my friend ever had the inclination to write about something, I’d tell him once again that it should be about Ghostbusters.
Let’s say my friend took my advice and launched a Ghostbusters blog. What do you think would happen? I’ll tell you below. If my friend were to begin blogging about the love of his life, he would:
- Invest a huge amount of effort into his blog, which would translate into a committed expertise for his readers.
- He’d never let his blog die a slow death, like so many other bloggers have. He’d be far too attached to it to let anything like that happen.
- Since he can’t stop talking about the movies in person, I doubt he’d ever run out of ideas for posts. He’d keep writing and writing and writing.
- Because of my friend’s enthusiasm (and honestly, craziness), he’d attract other Ghostbusters fans to his website. And they’d all geek out together. Probably forever.
What’s the moral of this story? If you adore something, you’re more likely to stick with it and make it a part of your life. If you begin blogging about something you really don’t have any attachment to, you’ll give it up in no time flat. Trust me, I’ve witnessed a thousand bloggers become ex-bloggers. I’ve even seen bloggers who thought they’d become bloggers never write their first post. Give your future readers something to love and write about something you love. They’ll love you for it.
What’s Your Passion?
Now that we know you should write about your unbridled passion, how exactly should you go about finding that passion? If you love only one thing, obviously, go with that. For instance, let’s say you’ve been building a 50 foot wide by 50 foot wide train set in your basement for the past 20 years. I think it’s safe to say that you’ll be blogging about trains. But what about the rest of us? What about those folks who have many interests? Or what about those who think they have no interests at all?
After I graduated high school and was far too immature to attend college, I was lost with little idea of what I should do with the rest of my life. My mother witnessed my dismay and sent me off to take an occupational personality test, or otherwise known as a what in the world do I like to do test. The results of the test helped give me direction. They helped me figure out who I was. So that’s what I’d like to do for you here. If you answer the following questions, I think you’ll gain a clearer picture of your interests and passions.
- Do you have any hobbies? If so, what are they?
- When not working, where do you find yourself most often? What are you doing?
- Do you often get pulled away from an activity because you’ve been spending too much time doing it? What is that activity?
- Are you or have you ever taken any classes in a school setting? Which was your favorite one?
- What do you enjoy reading about the most?
- If you could take any class in the world right now, what would it be?
- If you won the lottery tomorrow and never had to work again, how would you pass the time? What would you do?
Years ago, I worked in the tree care industry. I was a climber for a large east coast tree company. I spent years training to become a proficient climber and I’m confident that I could give you 10 blog post titles about tree climbing right now in fewer than 10 minutes. Can you do the same about something you once enjoyed or currently enjoy doing?
I currently write about blogging. I write about my own knowledge of the activity as well as what I learn about it. I love blogging and I’m certain that I could offer 10 blog post titles right now that have to do with how people could be better bloggers. Can you teach people something that you enjoy doing and that you’re good at?
My point is this: after listing a few favorite activities, test yourself by writing 10 blog post titles about one of them. If you can do that with no problem, run with it. If you lose steam before you finish, you might want to move on to a different activity. Keep going until you settle on one.
After choosing your niche, write 10 complete blog posts. Don’t actually set up a blog – just write 10 posts. If you finish the tenth post with enthusiasm and the gusto to continue writing, you might just be a blogger who has found his or her niche. Go ahead and set that blog up and get to work. If you can’t make it through the 10 posts and if you decide you hate writing, it’s a good thing you found that out sooner rather than later.
By the way, if you do finish writing those posts, by all means, use them for your blog once it’s set up and ready to go.
What Are Bloggers Not Blogging About?
For the love of everything that’s holy, please don’t ever be the type of person who says, “I’d like to start blogging about hotrods, but someone is already doing that.” If Mr. Ford told his friend that he’d like to start building cars, but Mr. Chevy already built one, so he doesn’t want to do that anymore, no Fords would have ever been built. It’s called competition. Learn to love competition and learn to get better because of it. The more competition, the more blogs and the more opportunities for learning. That being said, the more competition, the more difficult it is to penetrate a market.
If you decide to blog about one specific slice of an industry, you won’t experience a fraction of the difficulty you would have if you plowed straight in to the industry as a whole. So keep that in mind. Find a niche in your niche, if the competition is fierce.
I currently train and teach Brazilian Jiu-jitsu. When I first began training back in 2008, there were a few bloggers who posted about different high-level techniques. To them, it was fun to write about all the fancy stuff a blackbelt could or would do on the mats. The thing was, I didn’t see many bloggers posting about what a beginner white belt should do. So that’s what I began posting about myself – what I learned and what I was practicing at the moment. Let’s just say that because of the lack of competition and low barriers to entry, my blog succeeded early on. So keep that in mind too – if you can find a topic or niche that not many people are currently blogging about, all the better.
Whatever you choose to write about, remember these points:
- Someone out there needs to actually care about your topic. Don’t make your niche so narrow that there’s simply no interest in your blog.
- Nothing is carved in stone. You can always alter course here or there and widen or narrow your niche, based on what you see happening with your readership. The best bloggers on the planet have made adjustments along the way.
Settling On an Idea
One of the issues new bloggers face is lack of focus. There are many reasons for this, but I’ll tell you what I have experienced and why.
For a few years, I blogged about photography and the post-processing of my photographs in applications such as Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom. It was a big field with a seemingly never-ending pool of blog topics from which to choose. I chose this, what I thought was a, niche because it’s what I did on a daily basis. I took tons of pictures and edited them. And then I’d post those pictures to my blog to accompany a story I had written about some adventure I had taken.
Through the years, I found that my audience, while appreciative of most of my posts, was somewhat distracted by the ones they didn’t want or need to read. For instance, some of my audience loved learning about photography, but didn’t use Adobe products. And some folks were interested in learning certain aspects of Photoshop, but didn’t really take many photographs. Let’s just say that my general audience thought there was a lack of focus on my part, and honestly, there was. I had bitten off to chew on far too much of the enormous world of digital creation.
What I ultimately ended up doing was limiting my posts to photography. And beyond that, I limited myself to photography with certain types of cameras. After taking this fairly drastic action, I found that my audience actually grew. I had no idea there were so many people out there who were interested in Canon mirrorless cameras. Just goes to show what a little research on this highly profitable market would have done for me much sooner than it did.
My point with this section is to let you know that, as I stated in the previous section, you may need to make adjustments on the fly as you continue to blog. As you grow and learn, you’ll come to understand what people are interested in and what has the potential of making the most money.
How to Win at Blogging
You simply need to be better than everyone else. That’s it.
I wonder if there are any other blogs about blogging in the universe. There probably are. I wonder if any of them contain more posts than my blog contains. They probably do. They’ve probably been around longer too. If this is the case, how can I compete against blogs like this? I’ll tell you how I can – by writing better than those other authors write, by offering better ideas, by sharing my posts with the world more effectively than my competition does, and by offering a better product. I just need to be better.
What if my competition is full of a bunch of third graders who don’t know their spelling or grammar? Well, I already won on that front. I might have gone to college to learn how to write as a professional. What if my competition doesn’t offer good ideas and doesn’t know how to market their blogs? I can beat them there too. I might be a creative genius and I might have worked in a public relations firm. I just need to stay on top of my game and continue learning about how to write and how to market websites. As time passes, I’ll find my search engine rankings getting better and my audience growing. And one day, I’ll find myself a raving success. If I stick with it, of course, which I should because I picked the best niche in the world.
What Others Are Saying…
At the end of my posts, I like to share what others out there on the internet are saying about the topic I wrote about. And when it comes to offering advice on how to find the perfect blogging niche, there’s no shortage of commentary. I’ll fill you in on some of it below.
In the above sections, I gave advice based on two goals I think every blogger or potential blogger should have; ultimate happiness and longevity. If you’re not happy, you won’t stick with blogging. If you don’t choose a suitable niche, you won’t be happy, which will, again, lead you to quit blogging. So if you think about it, it really doesn’t matter how profitable your niche might be if you aren’t even blogging after your third post. But nevertheless, I’ll tell you what others think, just so these ideas are as well rounded as possible.
Chris Haines from ahrefs wrote a post called, “Finding Your Blog Niche Idea” and in the post, he created a graph that combined three aspects of a good blog niche. They are high traffic potential, low keyword difficulty, and a topic you are interested in. I can’t argue with that. Slightly more technical than what I shared above, but still good stuff.
Sydney Go from Semrush wrote a blog post called “89 Compelling Blog Niche Ideas in 2024 (& How to Choose One)” where she, instead of discussing how to land an appropriate niche, gave actual niche ideas. Some of Sydney’s suggestions are blogs in the areas of food, beauty and fashion, makeup tutorials, product reviews, entrepreneurship, freelancing, homeschooling, movie and TV reviews, investing, renewable energy, and the list goes on and on.
Finally, I read through a Reddit thread where a user asked how to find a good niche for blogging. The user had never blogged before and wanted to start off on the right foot. Answers included ideas such as deciding on what the person’s goals were for writing and then writing about what interests him. The first person who answered doesn’t like the idea of the niche at all. He thought the user should spread his wings and fly. Basically write about everything going on in the questioner’s life. Other folks said to simply pick an enjoyable topic and run with it. Topics can always be changed and adjusted later on, if need be. Most people answered telling the questioner to settle on something he enjoys while others said to settle on what has the potential to make the most money. I guess it depends on who the future blogger is and what his or her personality is like. A person who’s laid back and who wants to enjoy life or someone who wants to compete to make the most money possible.
Do you have your own ideas for choosing the right niche for blogging? If so, please share below. If you have any questions, please ask them down below too. I’d love to read what you have to say and help out any way I can. Thanks for reading!
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