So, you’re thinking about starting a niche blog and you are not sure which niche to go into.

Well, I have some thoughts on this after starting several, seeing some fail and some take off. Let’s chat about all things niche selection.

Ground Rules: This isn’t for the old-school blogger, this is for those of you starting this year and feel a bit lost.

There are so many factors to consider when trying to select a niche. For example factors like:

How much competition is there?

How much volume is there for the niche seed keyword?

Is the niche monetizable and worth your hard work?

Do you even like this topic and can you write about it often?

I get it, factors like this really start to muddy the waters and make the choice a bit tough. So, lets look at each of those factors and see where it takes us.

Competition

Here is the bottom line. If you are selecting a niche that is too competitive, you may write the BEST content but the big players will keep your great content pushed down a few pages in Google, and ultimately you will not rank or get the traffic needed.

How do I know, glad you asked!

in my first niche selection, I chose “Camping” because I genuinely do it very often and live in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.

I have first-hand knowledge, I own the gear, this will be great, right?

Nope, I was buried in the SERPs.

So, the next time around, I went with a micro-niche. I didn’t do my due diligence and quickly found there was not enough seed keyword volume to even get enough traffic for it to matter…Even if I held all the snippets!

Sure, you could get a few thousand visitors a month and do your best to convert on affiliate articles, BUT, it will be super tough.

Seed Keyword Volume

As stated above, if you don’t have enough volume of the seed keyword and start a blog based on that, you are starting in a bad position.

As a rule, the niche I am considering needs to have an estimated minimum of 100,000 search volume.

How do you find search volume estimations? There are several free chrome extensions that will do this, something simple like Keywords Everywhere, Ubersuggest, and SEO Minion are perfect for this.

Conversely, if the search volume is 2 million, chances are that niche is hammered in competition and you will have an almost impossible journey to the top……notice I didn’t say it was completely possible? never say never, friends.

Monetization

This is huge and often overlooked. I think we all start thinking that any niche if done well will just earn a great income.

Now, don’t get me wrong, if you do make a blog the right way, it will bring traffic and it will bring money, I guarantee it.

However, if your niche is in low-dollar items or in a niche where advertisers spend very little money, your monetization could quite literally mean the difference between making enough money for a tank of gas each month or having 10k a month.

Monetization matters.

For example, many people get started in camping like I did, it has expensive items like rooftop tents and vehicle coolers, etc with great affiliate programs.

BUT, it’s so saturated that you won’t ever get the traffic needed for conversions and revenue.

On the other hand, say you chose the niche of gaming news (I have no idea if that’s a good one, go check!) and as it turns out your demographic is mostly 12-17-year-olds.

When this happens you will get good traffic, but have very little ad revenue because advertisers know kids aren’t spending nearly as much as adults.

So, you need to balance search volume with competition and monetization. See, it’s getting a bit more confusing.

Your Personal Interest

This is another big part, you need to like (or at least be interested) in the selected niche.

If you do your research and find a niche that meets all the requirements above but you have ZERO interest in it, you will find yourself dreading the idea of going to your laptop each morning and writing about this boring topic.

In the beginning, you can just force yourself to do it and your enthusiasm and optimism will carry you through your first 10-20 articles….

BUT….

That will change and before you know it at month 3 you have zero traffic, you have zero interest and you start having zero motivation.

That’s another recipe for disaster.

So, definitely start with something you love if you can.

So, How Do You Pick One?

Lookie lookie, I made this long post about finding a magic topic and didn’t give any info about how to actually find this magic niche.

First things first, start just being observant in your everyday life.

Driving down the road? Look at your car’s accessories (bed covers, bike racks, roof racks, rims, etc) as each of those is high priced and most people use them.

Walking through your house or apartment? Look around you, look up, maybe your ceiling fans have a huge gap in the industry you can fill (I hope you love ceiling fans), how about flooring, or electrical, etc.

Going out to dinner? What new trending topics are people talking about and what items are they excited about?

Playing sports with friends this weekend? What sport? What accessories? Baseball bats, Cleats, etc.

The point is, the ideas are literally all around you, you just need to put down your device and start looking around at what people are using, then do the search volume and competition check for each one.

My most recent successful blog was around the grilling niche.

I was grilling up a steak and thought ‘hmm, I wonder how saturated grilling is”….and I found it was very saturated.

BUT, there was a gap with a 300k per month search volume that NO ONE HAD TACKLED YET within the grilling category.

10 months later that grilling site is doing 50k PV’s a month and I’m seeing other copycats pop up.

Final Word

That’s it, fellow bloggers! The ideas are all around you. Just remember, when you are out and about, look around, the idea might just be in front of your face right now! (Not now, Don’t do a phone or laptop blog, I’m sure it’s full).

Once you have that niche selected, don’t waste time on a theme design, in fact, do this instead. Read up on the only 3 Themes a New Blogger Should Consider.

Hopefully, this was helpful, we will see you at the top!