Choosing a blog niche is an important step in your blogging journey. Generally, blogs with a specific focus or niche grow faster than niche-less blogs because you can put all your effort into talking about just a specific topic instead of everything all at once. Here’s how to choose a blog niche.
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How to Choose a Blog Niche | Blog Niche Ideas
The reason so many people say you need to niche down with your business or blog is that it helps you become “known” for something and then your blog ends up growing a lot faster. It’s also easier to do your marketing, come up with blog post ideas, sell a product your audience will love, and find an audience that is hungry for a specific topic and devours all of your content (instead of having one post about underwater basket weaving and then they’re disappointed that the rest of your posts are about something else).
Finding Your Sweet Spot
Ok, so what about actually finding a blog niche for your main blog? You need to figure out your “sweet spot,” as Marie Forleo calls it, where your passions and talents intersect with what the world needs.
“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” – Frederick Buechner
You’re looking for three things here for your main blog: what you’re passionate about, what you’re good at, and what people will give you money for. If you can find something that fits all three of these, that is indeed your sweet spot.
Here are some examples. Maybe your passions are photography, baking, drawing, reading, and cuddling with kittens. Now list what things are your actual talents and things you’re good at. They can be new things, but hopefully there is some overlap. So maybe you’re really good at math, chemistry, baking, and cuddling with kittens. The topics in both categories are baking and cuddling with kittens.
How to Decide
Now, the deciding factor. Which of these actually has the potential to make money? Well, unless you work for a cat cafe or make cat videos for Youtube all day, it’s going to be pretty hard to get paid to cuddle with kittens (but if you find a way, please let me know! :)). However, if you’re passionate about AND good at baking, you could start a food blog! Heck, just niching it down to baking is actually a lot more specific than talking about all food and will make it easier to grow your blog. Food blogs are definitely popular and if you use a monetization strategy like advertising, sponsored posts with food companies, and writing dessert recipe ebooks, you could definitely monetize this passion for baking. If someone else has already monetized your idea, that just means that it’s possible for you too.
You Can Get More Specific Later
If this is your first time starting a blog, then it’s likely you might start with a somewhat general blog niche (like fashion, food, travel, etc) and over time you’ll find your groove and niche down even farther into a specific audience (dessert recipes for kids, backpacking for millennials) based on what kinds of posts and topics you like writing about the best. Sometimes you can’t think your way into the answers – you have to take action. So feel free to pick a slightly more general niche in the beginning to give yourself the wiggle room to pivot a little if needed.
What do you do if you have too many ideas?
What about your other passions? Personally, I’ve always been pretty resistant to finding a niche. ? I’ve started so, so many different blogs and businesses over the years simply because I didn’t want to be forced to stick to just one topic forever – I had a TON of different ideas and I wanted to use all of them. They call that being a “multi-passionate entrepreneur.”
If you’re multi-passionate about lots of different topics too, then here’s something I did that finally fixed my problem of starting new businesses on tons of different topics: I currently have two main businesses, a web design and marketing business and a personal development business, and I also started a third blog as a general catch-all lifestyle blog for any other topics I wanted to write about, from recipes to decluttering to wedding dresses and more. I can’t say I’ve ever heard this advice before because there’s a huge emphasis on picking ONE niche and sticking with it forever and ever, but I’ve found it extremely helpful to let myself have one blog just for the purposes of using all my random and unrelated ideas.
Starting a catch-all blog is totally optional, but it can be a helpful way to keep your main business more focused and not get off on tangents all the time. Think of it as a side business or a hobby blog. ? You don’t even have to update that one consistently, just whenever you have an idea you want to do something with. The purpose of your catch-all blog isn’t to make money but to give a home to all your random ideas so your main business can stay focused and purposeful. Doing this completely solved my shiny object syndrome.
Choosing a business idea at the start of your journey as an entrepreneur can be either very exciting or very frustrating – or usually, a little of both. It doesn’t have to be so hard though. Here’s what they don’t tell you about choosing a business idea.
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What They Don’t Tell You About Choosing a Business Idea
The truth is, your business idea doesn’t have to be unique or original.
I know, I know, that sounds like the opposite of what Silicon Valley and startups are preaching about coming up with a revolutionary idea that will change the world. And if that’s what you want, go for it.
But if you’re not quite trying to disrupt the entire universe and you’d be content with having a profitable lifestyle business, then it’s actually BETTER if your business idea has been done before, and successfully.
If someone already has a similar business out there and is doing well, that usually means it can work for you too. Think about starting a food blog, for example.
There are millions of food blogs out there. Does that mean you can’t start your own because it’s already been done before? No way! It means that it’s a proven idea that – if you can give your own unique view on things – will be much more likely to work for you than, say, a blog about the mating patterns of 18th century manatees.
When you’re starting a blog or a lifestyle business (as opposed to a high growth tech startup), what makes you stand out and gives you a competitive advantage is YOUR unique view on the world. As a one-person shop, your branding is your own personality. Your idea can have already been done before, but if you blog about things with a funny personality or teach things in a simpler way than other people or whatever it is that makes you, YOU, your blog will still find a happy place in the blogosphere. ?
Have you figured out your blog niche or are you still searching?