Hello TheMoneyTools family. Welcome back to my blog. Are you thinking about starting a new blog or re-evaluating which blog direction you should follow? The easiest way is just to pick one and change it later. YES, you can do that, but you don’t want to waste time, right? Here are eleven questions designed to help you pick the right niche for your blog, along with five niches with examples that are best for beginners to make money.
1. Why do you want to start an online business versus everything else?
An online business can produce revenue around the clock, even while you sleep. Running a business online offers several advantages, including time savings, control over working hours and conditions, independence, and flexibility. Having an online presence increases the reach of your business to potential customers. There is a cost reduction due to lower overheads compared to having a brick-and-mortar store.
Or you can do both: having a physical location and opening an online store.
YOUR ANSWER:_______________________
2. Why do you want to blog?
Most people will say that they want to blog to make money. So do I. However, if money is only your motivation, you will give up sooner or later. Here are a few reasons why you should start blogging:
- Share your passion: my passion is learning and meeting new people
- Tell your story: I want to share my life as a pharmacist/pharmacy director
- Create new connections with others
- Want to improve your writing skill
- Teach yourself new knowledge about topics that you don’t already know
- Validate expertise
- Create income (is a plus)
YOUR ANSWER:______________
3. Are you ready to commit?
It takes quite a long time to build an audience and even longer to make money. It also depends on how much time and effort you decide to put into it. Having a full-time 40hours/week job is a challenge for a lot of people because they will be tired after an 8 to 10hours work day.
“If you are serious, consider putting in an additional 15 hours/wk on top of that.”
Me, I work 50 hours/wk as a pharmacy director. I take that as a challenge and motivation. I try to squeeze in a few hours before work and after work.
If you think that all bloggers just type on their laptop all day and money start to roll in, it is far from the truth. Bloggers also needs to do: email marketing, affiliate marketing, creating groups on social media, responding to comments and emails, sending out newsletters, and so much more.
YOUR ANSWER: HELL YES / NO
4. What are your passions?
Blogging is writing about your interest, experience, or something you have knowledge about. If you decide to do the opposite, it won’t go well.
You can say that making money is my passion and motivation, and that might work. But you will burn out pretty quickly. Can you write about something that you absolutely hate multiple times a week, hundreds to a thousand times a year?
My passion is to teach and lead. I have a great sense of compassion and lots of patience.
YOUR ANSWER:______________
5. What skills do you have? Do you know enough about your niche
To identify your skill and decide what skills to develop, here are some advice:
- Think about what you do at your current job. Or jobs you had in the past.
- Reflect back on your educational background
- Your interests and the strongest interest that you are willing to spend money to learn it
- Talk to your friends, co-workers, and family members, … because sometimes they see something that you don’t
- Reach out and learn something new to see how well you adapt to it.
- Travel more
- Be social and interact with more people. Everyone will always have something to offer.
YOUR ANSWER:______________
6. Will you still love it years from now?
People often start strong in anything they do. For instance, you can start posting 3 blogs weekly with multiple social media accounts. Then pretty soon, it will be one post a month and barely posting anything on IG or Tiktok. Next, there will be a year gap between posts. I am sure you see this pattern repeated from time to time in some of your daily activities.
The relationship between you and blogging is just like a marriage. And if you are married, you know what I mean. Nothing will be smooth sailing all the time. But the key is to find out what is wrong and work on it. Don’t just give up at the first sign of struggle. That is how you maintain a strong relationship.
YOUR ANSWER:______________
7. Does your authentic voice match the subject matter
It makes no sense to me when I see many people talk about Cryptocurrency, and they barely have an investment account on Robinhood. It even makes me angry that these people are out here to scam others. Or, if you are caucasian and you talk about the struggle that African-Americans encounter on a daily.
The key here is to stay true to yourself. If you don’t know, don’t pretend because the internet will find out.
YOUR ANSWER:______________
8. Is there a large enough market for the niche?
We want to know how many others are looking for this type of content. Are there other people who want to read about this topic? If you have made it this far, it’s time to do some research..the actual part of looking at data.
The first method I want to show you is Google Trend.
- Are people actually searching for a niche?
- Has the interest increased or decreased over time
All you have to do is to head over to Google Trend and type in the search term that you think people will search about your niche. You can even use the “Add Comparision” to see the difference in the search term. Here is an example:
The second method is Keyword research. Google Trend is good, but it doesn’t tell you precisely how many people are searching for the terms in your niches right now. Here are the top 3 tools that I recommend for keyword research:
YOUR ANSWER:______________
9. Can the niche be monetized? Can I make money from this niche?
It isn’t easy to create an income stream from blogging. The key is: As long as you have an audience, there will be money to be made. It takes passion, research, knowledge, and a lot of hours. Here are the ten most popular ways that bloggers often use to make money once they have built an audience:
- Advertisement through Google Adsense
- Join and affiliate marketing program
- Do a review on a sponsored product
- Offer services
- Create an online course about your niche
- Sell digital products
- Sell online products
- Start a membership with exclusive contents
- Create a Youtube channel and monetize
YOUR ANSWER:______________
10. Are there multiple sub-niches? Have you chosen an appropriately sized niche
You probably heard of this saying: if you try to talk to everyone, you will end up with no one. For instance, personal finance is a very big area. Within that, there are credit cards, home buying, mortgage, car purchase, and grocery shopping, … It will be harder for your blog to rank on google search if you select a large topic because you have too many things to cover.
Instead, it is wiser to narrow it down and pick a smaller topic that you are specifically interested in.
YOUR ANSWER:______________
11. Is there a lot of competition?
If there are no competitions, there could be two possible outcomes. It is either you have found a gold mine, or no one is interested in your niche. To find your competition, a simple way to do a google search.
For instance, I had the idea of opening a property management company. I typed “property management company” and found out there are a bunch of similar businesses already existing in my area. If I wanted to move forward, the next step would be:
- Look at what they are offering and see if I can top it or make it better
- Look at their reviews and see how I can fix their problem
- Talk to the business owner and get some advice
Having many competitions isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It could mean that the business is profitable and there are resources to learn from.
YOUR ANSWER:______________
If you are still struggling, here are the top 5 niches idea along with examples that make money easily
1. Health and Fitness
When does it start: 2006
Main topics covered: health, fitness, primal lifestyle, keto, recipes
Built with: WordPress
Server provider: CloudFlare
The main source of income: products, ads
Annual Revenue: $10 M – $15 M
2. Personal Finance / Investment
When does it start: 2011
Main topics covered: Money, lifestyle blog
Built with: WordPress
Server provider: CloudFlare
The main source of income: Blog Courses, affiliate marketing, sponsor post , Ads
Annual Revenue: 1.5 M
3. Fashion
When does it start: 2009
Main topics covered: plus-size fashion, beauty, personal style
Built with: WordPress
Server provider: CloudFlare
The main source of income: influencers, ads, affiliate marketing, physical products
Annual Revenue: N/A
4. Lifestyle
When does it start: 2009
Main topics covered: who you are, how you live, relationship,..
Built with: WordPress
Server provider: Google Cloud
The main source of income: Products, Amazon Shop, Promo codes, and affiliate marketing.
Annual Revenue: $4.4 M
5. Business and Marketing
When does it start: 2012
Main topics covered: Blog growth, how to create an online course, how to sell products
Built with: WordPress
Server Provider: CloudFlare
The main source of income: online courses, online products, ads
Annual Revenue: <$5 M
A final thought on selecting the best niche for your blog
Even if you have made up your mind and picked the perfect niche, there isn’t to say that you might change your mind later. And it is entirely ok to do that. Blogging is all about exploring and experiencing different ways. The best and the most popular one might not be a good fit for a particular individual. It takes time to perfect the blog. My most important advice is to stick with the business even though you might find it difficult sometimes to carry on, especially regarding technical difficulties.
If you are interested in learning how to start your own blog with WordPress,
[…] HOW TO PICK THE BEST BLOG NICHES: 11 QUESTIONS TO HELP YOU MAKE THE RIGHT DECISION + 5 NICHES IDEAS … […]