5 Reasons your Niche Blogging is not working and how to fix it.
Do you wish to start a blog soon and have problems finding your niche? You’re not alone. It’s common for potential bloggers and business owners to struggle with finding a practical topic that’s enjoyable and profitable.
However, simply picking a random or popular niche isn’t the best option, especially for a new blog. For example, if you choose one too famous and competitive, your blog won’t grow and will get beaten down by more successful websites.
On the other hand, picking a smaller niche that’s too low in demand results in your blog making little to no societal and financial impacts.
Fortunately, this article will give you the necessary information to find and validate a profitable niche in blogging, ensuring your website generates traffic and turns into a successful income stream. We detail for you the 5 reasons why your niche blogging is not working and how to fix it.
What is a blog niche?
Niche blogging is a term used to identify the carefully selected topic that your blog content tackles primarily. Essentially, it’s the equivalent of picking a profession or skills to master and develop a reputation.
Without this essential element in the planning phase of your blog, your website may experience little to no success despite your efforts. For example, if you choose to write about sports today and the next day opts for mobile gaming or cooking recipes, you may be on the path to failure.
While some bloggers can write on a vast number of topics they find attractive, it’s not a recommended mindset for a beginner. Instead, pick a vocation and focus your efforts on building your reputation if you desire long-term success.
Ways to find your sweet spot
Currently, most blogs and experts produce content on the most popular niches, and these include:
- Health
- Beauty & Fashion
- Technology
- Fitness
- Making Money Online
- Dating & Relationships
- Self-Help
- Finance
While these listed options are excellent topics to explore, they are broad and highly competitive, making them a tedious entry point into the blogging industry. As a new blogger, you need to find a specialized topic that’s both profitable and non-competitive.
This section presents some steps to consider when finding a profitable audience for a new blog. Let’s get started.
1. Start with your interests
Blogging primarily provides information to the public via a website. Therefore, it’s best to pick a space in fields of interest. In other words, assess your hobbies and passion for finding out what excites you as you’re less likely to run out of article ideas.
It’s important to note that passion can also be about frustrations as some factors may annoy you and your potential audience. For example, you can start a blog on realistic ways to learn a language because most blogs over-complicate the issue.
Either option is bound to guide you in picking a niche with many article ideas, readers, and monetization options.
2. Common problems you solve for people
Think about your current social circle. Is there a recurring problem you tackle for them? These could include computers help, food, relationships, logic/philosophy, fashion, etc.
Avoid hastily assuming your friend and family don’t ask you for assistance; instead, spend a few minutes thinking and coming up with at least three topics. Then, ensure to write them down.
If you still can’t recollect what help you regularly fix for people, go through your conversations. Hopefully, a pattern will emerge. They could be as random as shopping advice, book recommendations, opinions on specific concepts, and more.
Write down what you remember or discover, irrespective of how useless and unprofitable it may seem.
3. What you spend most of your time doing
This method may be tricky as people overestimate and underestimate how much time they spend on some tasks. To avoid this problem, you can install a time-tracking app for accuracy on your smartphone and computer.
Also, use a time journal to document everything you do for the next four days. Keeping this diary may be tedious and require more effort; however, the action is worthwhile if you desire a successful blog.
Here is an example:
- 7:00 AM: light exercise to awaken your body
- 7:15 AM: eat breakfast, study French
- 7:35 AM: start working
- 7:40 AM: open YouTube and watch a few tech reviews for fun
- 7:55 AM: return to work
After tracking your activities for four whole days, you should have sufficient data to know where you spend the most time reading, unexpected places that take your time, and activities that dominate your day.
Ultimately, the answers to these questions will provide clues to an area of specialty.
4. Consider monetization ideas
Choosing money as your primary objective in blogging isn’t the best option as a beginner; it may dampen your motivation when you don’t see results. Nevertheless, you still need a financial reward for your effort.
Without monetary compensation for writing well-researched content, your blog will become a chore as time progresses, resulting in a slow death. Therefore, consider the financial implications while thinking about the best topic worth exploring according to your skills.
Some financially rewarding niches include:
- Cookbooks
- Meal plans
- Tech reviews
- Coaching sessions
- Video course
An excellent way to gauge the economic potential of your sweet spot is to fathom potential products and services that you can offer to your readers. If you can’t imagine an item your reader might purchase from your website, then your industry isn’t valuable.
5. Pick a smaller niche
As mentioned earlier, it’s best to avoid starting with broad and competitive topics when beginning your blogging career, as it’s a crowded segment with little room for juvenile growth.
For this reason, we recommend opting for smaller niches that aren’t too competitive and have sufficient space for you to create a reputation.
For example, if you are an enthusiastic rock climber and wish to start a blog in that sector, choosing “rock climbing” as your domain is too broad. So instead, opt for something more specific like “rock climbing for beginners,” “rock climbing tools and gadgets,” etc.
Such niches have lower competition and allow you to become an authority in the alpinism community.
Alternatively, the right coaching can be a huge help to find a profitable blogging niche.
How to validate your niche blogging idea
The information presented above is sufficient to provide you with worthwhile niche ideas, and the next step is to make sure those options are viable for producing a successful blog. For this reason, this section will present simple ways to validate your niche potential.
Let’s begin.
1. Check the niche market size
Even if you have a seemingly impressive niche idea, it will waste resources if it fails to attract readers to that massive and profitable audience. This factor makes assessing the market size for what you wish to offer necessary.
You can perform this assessment by checking the most popular keywords people search with your desired niche. For example, if you want a photography blog, consider exploring the top keywords with thousands of searches.
Here’s how to find these top keywords and check their search volumes:
- Visit Google.com, and type the keyword(s) that are the most relevant to your desired niche. For example, “mountain climbing tips.”
- Scroll down to the bottom of the page and locate the “Searches related to ‘mountain climbing tips” section, containing multiple keywords suggestions. These suggestions can help give concrete ideas of what people search for regarding alpinism related searches.
- Repeat that process with keywords of other ideas on your previously written list of suggestions.
- Upon compiling the relevant keywords, use free keyword search volume tools like WordTracker or SearchVolume.io to check for the frequency of inquiries. This action will help you understand whether you have a large audience for your potential blog.
2. Review your competitors
It’s not uncommon for a niche to have fierce competition, as this indicates its prosperity, both financially and traffic-wise. However, with the correct approach and preparation, you can emerge as a force in the industry.
Nevertheless, here’s how to explore your competition:
- Visit Google and search ‘(your niche) blogs’ and another one for ‘best (your niche) blogs.’ You should receive a variety of platforms in return, which should discourage but motivate you.
- Afterward, visit Facebook and search for your niche on the platform. You’re bound to find a few pages, with some having a few thousand fans.
- Next, visit Twitter and search for your niche there as well. Again, you may find a few active accounts and references referring to your profession.
- Offline magazines and journals also count as competitors. Therefore, Google ‘(your niche) journal or magazine.’
The information gotten from this research should help you understand whether your niche has a following that’s worth your time and effort.
3. Assess your niche’s monetization potential
As previously mentioned, blogs are meant to spread information to your readers and make you money in return. Therefore, this factor should be part of your research when choosing your niche.
Here’s an effective way to deduce whether your blog niche will make money:
- Check if your competition sells information, products, or services on their blog. If they do, you can make money.
- Do businesses use bloggers in your niche to advertise products or services? If so, you can make money.
- Do your competitors present affiliate offers on their blogs in your niche? You can find this information on Amazon Affiliateand Clickbank.com.
These tips are excellent in helping you deduce whether you can profit by producing content in your blog’s niche.
Conclusion
Blogging is tricky and takes time to produce results; therefore, we recommend thinking carefully about the process and preparing your mind before starting. Stay committed long-term and be consistent.
With a blog that presents accurate information on your interests to readers who are willing to be financially involved with your offering, your blog can become a successful venture.
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