There are some topics that might be near and dear to your heart, but there simply isn’t a big enough audience to make it profitable for you. And there are other topics that have big audiences, but the audiences are unwilling or unable to spend money – which means these also aren’t good choices around which to start a blog.
So what you’re looking for is a hungry niche. This means there are people in the niche who’re ALREADY spending money. And it also means there are other bloggers and marketers in the niche who’re creating products and advertising their offers. Point is, you find evidence of people spending money (either buying products and/or buying advertising), and you’ll have found yourself a profitable niche.
Now, this is actually a two-step process:
1. Brainstorm Niches
If you already have a niche in mind, great – then all you have to do is move on to Step 1.2 to make sure that niche is profitable. Otherwise, you need to start by brainstorming possible niches. Here are three ways to do it:
- 1. Think about your own problems, interests, hobbies, etc. What books do you read? What are your favorite topics of conversation? What do you like to do in your spare time?
- 2. Now think about the problems, interest and hobbies of your friends, family and coworkers
- 3. Pay attention to the news. What topics are coming up a lot?
Example: Did you just read about bride fat-loss boot camps? Or backpacking through Italy? Or building solar panels?
2. Discover Which of These Niches are Profitable
Now that you have a big list of niches, your next step is to see if they’re profitable. Again, you’re looking for evidence that the niche is already spending money to solve their problems. Specifically:
- Are there a lot of books on your topic in the amazon.com marketplace?
- Are there physical books and magazines on your topic? (Hint: Check https://us.readly.com. There seems to be different country sites but for a blog I would check the USA site.
Tip: If you find books and magazines in the niche, that means that people are already paying for information on your prospective topic. That’s a good sign that there’s a hungry market.
- When you run a search in Google for your topic, are there a lot of blogs and other websites? And do they have advertising on these sites?
- When you flip through niche-relevant magazines, do you see plenty of ads (evidence that people are spending money in the niche)?
If you follow the tips above, you should be able to first brainstorm a big list of niches, and then narrow this list down to only those niches which are profitable.
Pick one and move to the next step…