How Do You Choose A Niche Blog Topic?

How To: Choose A Niche Blog Topic!

Having a niche blog, just means having a regular blog that specialises in a particular area of interest.

So, you may have a blog that specialises in dog training, juicing, meditation, or weight lifting for women.

Specialising in something in particular and, (eventually) becoming a go-to-person in your field, can help you stand out above all the broader blogs out there.

Related posts:

• What is a Niche Website?
• Choosing a Niche, passion vs Profit.

Important Things To Consider From The Start:

• Is there a market for your topic area?  You need to choose an area where people are looking to either solve a problem, or buy something related to your niche.
• There are no sure things when it comes to starting a niche blog.  But you can certainly make a good, educated guess.

If there are already businesses thriving in that space, awesome.

 You want to have competition, it shows there is definitely a market there.  

Research your ideas, see what others are doing and see if you can improve on what is already out there.

• Strongly consider joining a community of like-minded people, going through the same thing.

Don’t underestimate the importance of this.  

You can learn from other peoples mistakes, you can relate to what they’re going to and you can get help and support when you need it.

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As I go through this post, I thought it’d be useful to suggest a few mini exercises that you can do, that can help you choose your niche.

I’ve set you the first two mini exercises below…

Mini Exercise 1:  Write down every potential niche idea you can imagine as even a vague possibility for you – you can gradually narrow this down.  But initially, just everything you can come up with.  Try and write down at least 30 different possibilities.

Mini Exercise 2:  On another sheet write down what you feel motivates you, vs what bores you.  For example, maybe money motivates you is reading self help books, going out for a run, or creating recipes.  Write down what gets you excited.

Writing down what motivated you, vs what really bores you, can unearth some of the things you might be prepared to write about day in and day out.

The very idea of having your own thriving business and making money online, may be enough to motivate you.

But for many, that excitement dwindles when times get tough.

So, for me: reading about self-development, going for a run, or listening to my favourite podcasts, helps to motivate me.

Whereas, completing dull tasks like data entry, repetitive tasks and working on topics I have zero interest in – switch me off.

For me, I work best when I’m doing something that I feel passionately about, or have a high level of interest in.

Do You Need To Be An Expert In Your Niche?

You absolutely do not have to be an expert in your niche to get started.

Too many people go into writing a blog, feeling like they have to act as though they’re already an authority, but I find it refreshing when people are honest about their level of expertise.

I am not an expert, I started creating blogs/websites around two years ago now and I’m learning every day.

But what I do consider myself to be, is someone who is sharing the knowledge that I have gained, with people coming up behind me.

When I started blogging, some of the people I found inspirational were people that were just a few steps ahead of me.

It was motivating to see people progress just ahead of me and see what was possible and also just learn from their knowledge & experience.

If you even have some level of knowledge in an area and are willing to develop that knowledge as you go, you’re going to have a tonne of knowledge to pass on and gradually, you will become an expert in your field.

Another thing you can do, (that I also do fairly often) is talk about, discuss and link out to content/people that could offer something extra to my readers.

So, you can act as a go-between if you like, between your readers and experts in your niche, discussing and linking to great content, that you would like to share with your readers.

This can also benefit you, if you’d like to build relationships with some of the experts in your niche.

Mini Exercise 3: You’ve written down a list of things you’re interested in.  But what about things you’re actually good at?

Write down a list of things that you either have some expertise in, or that you would like to become an expert in over time.

The Reality Of Your Niche, Vs The Dream.

So, after doing the mini exercises, let’s imagine that you think you’d like to start a blog all about juicing …

I’ve done a 7 day juice fast recently and have incorporated this into my life, so it’s at the forefront of my mind recently.

But what about the reality about having a juicing blog?  Would you be motivated to write about juicing day in and day out?

Write reviews for juicers, recipes, do videos on YouTube, photograph your juice every day… and that’s just for starters.

Say your blog gets big, you become an authority in the juicing niche.  You may have a juice program you’re selling online and suddenly you’re invited to conferences all over the world.

You may be asked to speak in front of large audiences, maybe you’ll be expected to do demonstrations and so on.

This may all sound amazing to you – but it won’t suit everyone.

For me personally:  I wouldn’t mind talking a little bit about juicing, but I wouldn’t want it to be the entire focus of my day, let alone my life for years to come.

My point here is, you need to really put yourself in the shoes of a successful blogger in that niche.

What will be expected of you?  What will your day be like?  What products will you have, or promote?

The niche you choose may be something you’re in for many years to come, so you need to want to be a part of it.

If some variety is what you’re after, then you may want to allow for a niche that has some flexibility to expand over time, or just slightly broader.

For example, if you were writing about food – lets say, you wanted to start a gluten free blog.

That’s still got a lot more scope within that niche, because there’s unlimited recipes you can do, there’s lifestyle issues you can discuss and much more.

Mini Exercise 4:  Eventually, you want your niche blog to bring you in some sort of income.  Before you commit to a topic, you want to think about what sort of things you’d sell within your chosen niche.

Eventually, you may want to create a course, (for example) – what might that course be about?

Alternatively, you may be thinking about selling products as an affiliate.  

In this case, you’ll want to seek out what sort of affiliate products you can promote.

You can discover affiliate programs by doing a simple search – go into google and put in the search bar:  “topic + affiliate program.”   You could also check out Amazon, where you can promote any of their products.

• Related Post:  How to make your first affiliate sale.

Wrapping It Up…. 

If you take action on this post and complete these exercises, you should now have a decent idea about what direction you’d like to go in.

To narrow these down ideas down further, you want to consider what fits most with you, your personality and how this topic would fit into the lifestyle that you’re aspiring to achieve.

It’s also vital that you’re going into an area where you’ll be able to make money in one way or another, whether that’s through the sales of your own products, or affiliate products.

Research the ideas that resonate with you the most and see what is already out there.

Just because there is a high level of competition, this doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea…

But narrowing your niche down within an already competitive niche, can help you stand out.

Lastly, if you can find a niche that’s relatively new and growing quickly, you will have an advantage, because there will be far less people with expertise that you’ll be competing with.

If you’re going into a long established niche, there will be a significant amount of people already years ahead in that area.

That being said, people come and go in niches all the time, so there will always be new people entering established niches and excelling within that area over time.

I hope you found this post helpful, how are you finding choosing your niche?

For further reading, this post is really useful in explaining how to choose a niche.

Leave me a comment below.

All the best,