I started a blog because I had a real passion for interior design, obsessed even. I read all the magazines, absorbed all the home decor content on social media and watched all the interior lead programmes like Grand Designs and Changing Rooms.
The thought of how to find profitable niches didn’t even cross my mind, I knew I wanted to talk Home.
So yes, most people start a blog because they have a real interest in what they’re talking about and want to share it with others. However, how long can you keep writing a blog as a hobby? It is so time-consuming, but eventually, you want to be paid for your hard work, right?
If you’re starting a business or looking to monetize your passions, understanding what a niche is and how to find a profitable one is crucial.
What is a niche?
A niche is a specific area of interest or focus within a larger market or industry. It’s essentially a subset of a larger market that has unique needs and preferences.
For example, the larger market of health and wellness can be broken down into micro niches such as yoga, meditation, and healthy eating.
Why is it important to find a profitable niche?
Mainly, because you want to be paid for your hard work. A passion for your hobby is great, but over time you want to see a return on your efforts. You’re not going to keep running 3 to 4 times a week if you don’t see yourself getting fitter or losing weight, are you? (OK, some of you might…) It is the money that keeps fuelling your passion and growing your blog.
Finding a profitable niche is important for several reasons:
- Differentiation: By focusing on a specific niche, you differentiate yourself from your competition. This helps you stand out in a crowded market and makes it easier for customers to find you.
- Targeted marketing: When you focus on a specific niche, you can tailor your marketing efforts to that audience. This allows you to create targeted messaging and campaigns that resonate with your customers.
- Increased revenue: By focusing on a profitable niche, you can increase your revenue potential. When you target a specific audience with specific needs, they are often willing to pay a premium for products or services that meet those needs.
- Passion and expertise: When you focus on a niche that aligns with your passions and expertise, you are more likely to enjoy your work and be successful at it. Finding a profitable niche can lead to long-term success and satisfaction in your business.
- Finding keywords: One of the best ways to grow your blog is to tap into what people are searching for on Google. By having a niche, you are able to find keywords relevant to your business and grow your blog.
It is important to note that although finding a profitable niche is important if you want to make good money from your blog, you must also have an interest in it! You are going to be writing about this niche a lot, so if you have no interest in running, don’t write about running (also helps that you know what you’re talking about!)
Niche break down
Blog niches can be broken down into two niches –
Broad niches
They are mainly for large organisations and can be broken down into categories –
- Money
- Health
- Leisure
- Relationships
As a beginner blogger, you should try not to cover a broad niche as they will be highly competitive and it will take a long time to grow your blog.
Micro Niches
Micro niches are categories within categories of broad niches. The more you target one specific area of a niche, the more chance you have of growing and being seen on Google.
For example, take Money as a broad niche. This can be broken down into –
- Loans
- Credit Cards
- Budgeting
- Mortgages
If you take mortgages, this can be broken down into further categories –
- Mortgages for first-time buyers
- Interest only mortgages
- Mortgages for home abroad
- Buy-to-let mortgages
These are micro niches and the further you go down and be more specific on your blog, the better chance you have of Google understanding what your website is about and start sending people to your site. Once your site is established, you can then start covering more topics.
The best bit about micro niches is that you will be able to target keywords more effectively as the big sites will tend to cover the higher searched-for items.
As a beginner blogger, with no domain authority or social media presence, there is absolutely no point trying to go for keywords with high volumes as they tend to be extremely difficult to rank for!
How to find profitable niches
There are so many factors when it comes to finding a profitable niche, including your interests, target audience, demographics and competition. Here is my step-by-step guide on how to find profitable niches.
Step 1: Define Your Interests and Expertise
The first step in finding a profitable niche is to define your interests and expertise. This involves brainstorming your skills, passions, and knowledge to identify areas of focus that you’re passionate about and can excel in.
- If you are passionate about your niche, you are more likely to enjoy your work and put in the effort needed to succeed. This also means you can scale up your blog and offer products or services at a later date
- Your unique perspective on a niche can help set you apart from your competition. If you have personal experience, readers are more likely to resonate with you than with a large, faceless corporation
- If you are already involved in your niche, you have a marketing advantage. You are more likely to have connections in the related communities and networks which can help build relationships in the future
- Having a website in a niche that aligns with your interests and expertise will help towards long-term success. You are less likely to give up and continue to innovate and provide value to your readers.
The best way to brainstorm for your potential niche is to write down all your hobbies, interests and your professional expertise in either the workplace, education or certificates you may have acquired. Once you have a good list, you need to start researching your target audience.
Step 2: Visit websites that sell online businesses
If you are still struggling to come up with a profitable niche idea, one of the best ways to find one is to see what blogs and websites are currently up for sale and what their revenue is!
Websites like Flippa.com or empireflippers.com are brilliant examples. Go to one of these websites and scroll through the many websites that are available for sale. You can see how much these blogs are earning per month and how much they are selling for! It is a wealth of ideas for profitable niches.
You can filter all the results to see how much particular niches are earning, where they are monetising (affiliate, display advertising etc) and whether their revenue has gone up or down in the last year.
If you need any motivation for starting a niche blog, this is it. Some of the profits and amount the websites are selling for are eye-watering. Look for several niches or listings that you are interested in and check out their revenue.
Step 3: Research your niche and its profitability
This involves understanding your target audience’s needs, preferences, and reasons for their searches to identify gaps in the market that you can fill with your niche and is a critical component of finding a profitable niche for your business.
You need to tap into what people are searching for, what the trends are and how you can answer people’s search queries.
To do this you need to –
- Identify your ideal customer – this starts with demographic information such as age, gender, income, and location. Additionally, consider their interests, values, and behaviours. By creating a clear picture of your ideal customer, you can begin to understand their needs and whether your niche is a viable business.
- Conduct Market Research – This can include surveys, focus groups, and online research. By understanding the needs and preferences of your target audience in your niche, you can develop products or services that meet their needs and stand out in the market. Great places to find information on what people in your niche are asking are Quora, Reddit and Google itself. You can then decide whether there are enough people searching for your niche.
- Are there enough searches? – By knowing what resonates with your target audience, you can start researching and coming up with blog titles that directly relate to their needs and concerns. Type in a specific question, such as “What plants should I buy for a dark room” into Quora and see what other questions related to this search come up. This can help you determine what people are asking and whether you can niche down even more!
Another great way to see if people are searching for your niche is to use Google trends.
Open up Google Trends and type in a search query related to your niche such as –
“Plant a vegetable garden“
The results show that there is interest over time, interest by region, and related topics and queries. As a rule of thumb, if all sections of Google Trends are populated (Interest Over Time, Interest by Region, Related Topics and Related Queries), there are over 500 search queries a month.
So, “plant a vegetable garden” is a good topic for your blog and there are plenty of searches for a vegetable garden niche!
Step 3: Analyse the Competition
After identifying potentially profitable niches and researching your target audience, the next step is to analyse the competition. This involves identifying existing businesses and products in your niche and analysing their strengths, weaknesses, and unique selling points.
This can help you identify gaps in the market that you can fill with your own niche and is one of the most important steps in finding a profitable niche.
Niche Search Volume
The first step is to research your competitors. Say you want to start a blog on Gardening. Open Google and type in best gardening blogs.
Google will give you results from websites such as blogspot.com. Open these results and check out the websites. You want to see if they are content-heavy or product heavy first. If any of the top websites are content-heavy, you know there is a search demand for your topic.
Next, you need to check out their monthly traffic. I use similarweb.com a lot to check out traffic on other websites. This isn’t always accurate, but it is a good way to see if there is traffic without having to go down the paid keyword research and competitive analysis route.
Domain Authority
An important step in determining whether your micro niche blog will ever have any chance of ranking on Google is by determining the domain authority of websites in your niche.
To do this, create a free account with moz.com You need to download the MozBar extension for your web browser. Once this is installed, you will be able to see the domain authority of each site.
Open Google and type in your niche in the search bar. Under each website in the results, there will be a link analysis from Moz.
Most websites on page 1 of Google will have very high DA scores, but don’t be discouraged.
If you start entering long tail keywords (such as “vegetable patch for my garden”) you will start to see websites appearing with a lower DA. This means that you have more chance of appearing on page 1 with a micro niche blog.
Step 4: Determine profit potential
Once you have identified potential micro niches and analysed the competition, the next step is to determine the profit potential of each niche. This involves analysing the revenue streams, pricing strategies, and customer acquisition costs for each niche.
How does a blog in your niche make any money?
- Affiliate marketing
- Selling products
- Selling subscriptions
- Ad placements
- Coaching and consulting
- Offering services
The best way to see if your niche is profitable is to go to other blogs in the niche and see how they are making money. Check for things like ads on their blog, are they offering services or products?
Display Advertising
Ads are easy to see, they will have blocks of ads throughout their blog and video pop-ups. However, display advertising works better on some sites than others.
If you have a personal blog such as gardening or travel, display ads work really well.
If you are a service or business blog selling your services, then display ads can be a distraction from what you are trying to sell.
You need to think carefully about how you are going to make money from your blog and display advertising is one of the best ways to turn your interests into a profitable niche.
Affiliates
Affiliates are best found in blog product reviews, travel and informational blogs. Head to a blog on a competitor’s website and find some reviews. You will see links to other products (Amazon being one of the main ones) which means they will get a small commission every time you purchase things from this link.
The more you promote and add affiliates, the more commission you will make!
Selling products or services
It should be evident from the start whether a website has products or services to sell. There will be a lot of information on the homepage and areas throughout the site dedicated to courses, products or consulting. There will also be a lot of links, mentions in the menu bars and on the page itself and even pop-ups to get you to sign up or direct you to their services.
Selling courses or consulting services is a hugely lucrative business with the global e-learning market projected to reach $336.98 billion by 2026
If you’re looking for a profitable niche, finding one that can potentially sell courses and services is definitely the way to go!
Google Keyword Planner
Another good way to see if your niche and specifically, the keywords in your niche are profitable is by checking in Google Keyword Planner.
I wrote about how to use Google Keyword Planner for SEO if you need guidance on how to use this invaluable FREE tool!
Open up Google Keyword Planner and type in some keywords relative to your niche and do a search. Once you have the results, go to the “Top of page bid (high range)” and arrange it with the highest bid first. This is how much advertisers are willing to pay for these keywords and it can show you what is valuable.
If you can find more than one profitable source on a website, this is a good niche to be in! You don’t want to put all your potential earnings in one basket, so make sure you have at least 2 income sources within your niche.
The most important thing to take away from this blog is that it takes a long time to build up authority and trust. Once you have authority in your niche, you can then start monetising it and the sky’s the limit!
However, you may often question yourself if all the hard work and effort is worth it, I constantly do! So you really need to be writing and talking about something that you are interested in, starting off with a micro niche and building it up.
Or you will easily quit.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q. How do I research popular niches?
A. Use tools like Google Trends, social media platforms, and keyword research tools to see what topics are popular and in demand. You can also analyze your competitors’ websites and social media accounts to see what topics they are covering and how they are engaging with their audience.
Q. How do I know if a niche is profitable?
A. Look for micro niches that have a high demand and low competition. You can also use tools like Google Keyword Planner and Amazon to see if there is a market for your niche and what keywords people are using to search for it.
Q. Can I make money in a niche that is already popular and competitive?
A. Yes, you can make money in a popular and competitive niche by finding a unique angle or perspective to differentiate yourself from the competition, although it will take longer to grow and rank on Google. You could focus on a specific micro niche within the broader niche to attract a more targeted audience.
Q. How do I stand out in a crowded niche?
A. To stand out in a crowded niche, focus on providing high-quality content that is unique, valuable, and engaging and try to find an angle other bloggers haven’t covered. You can also use social media, email marketing, and other strategies to promote your blog and build a loyal following.
Q. Can I combine multiple micro niches to make my blog more unique?
A. Yes, you can combine multiple niches to create a unique blog that appeals to a broader audience. However, make sure that the niches are related and complement each other to avoid confusing or alienating your audience.
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