One of the most exciting things you’ll do when starting a new blog is picking your niche. You may have a good idea of what you already want to do, or you may still be doing research. Whether you’re starting a food blog, a life style blog, or a true niche site, this guide will help you figure out exactly what you want to work on.
Here’s five tips I’ve come up with when it comes to picking your first topic or niche for that new blog you plan on starting.
1. Keep it interesting
Unless you have a huge budget to start, you’re going to be doing a lot of the work yourself, which means you’re going to be writing a lot of content.
You don’t have to be an expert in whatever niche your area you pick, but it should be something you’re interested in.
Is this a hard and fast rule? Absolutely not. But if you’re interested in the topic, it will make the hours and hours of keyword research and content writing a lot more fun.
2. Your intent for the site
What is your intent with this site? Is this a site you’re going to hold on for the long haul or is it something you’re going to sell once it starts making a profit? It is important to know this upfront because as you develop your content, your website and your brand, you need to decide how much of yourself you want to put into it.
If this is a site you plan on selling later, you might not want to use pictures of yourself, for example. On the other hand, if you plan on hanging on to it, perhaps that’s not a big deal to you.
This is something to consider upfront because it’s easier to start with the right mindset than have to go back in a couple of years and change everything.
3. The competition
One you have a topic (or a few topics in mind), don’t forget to start looking at the competition for your niche.
If you see a lot of very strong competition, you may want to think twice about if this is a path you really want to go down.
You can also look at your competitors and judge the quality of the content and what you think is and is not working for them.
Just because it’s a competitive topic doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea, but it might take you longer to see traction than if you picked an area that was not as competitive.
If this is your first time starting a site, you may want to pick a less competitive topic so you will see results faster. This can help keep you moving, and prevent you from getting very frustrated at the beginning, plus it can help you start generating revenue faster.
4. Products in the niche
What kind of products do you plan on promoting or selling or reviewing as part of this website?
Remember Google has said that in the future they’re going to put a high emphasis on original pictures and video, which means being able to purchase products that you’re reviewing. They also want to see links to multiple sites for purchase (not just Amazon).
Being able to create your own content about products will be a huge differentiator.
This doesn’t mean you have to own each and every single thing you decide to review, of course.
If you can find some lower priced items in your area to start with and begin to generate this original content that will go a long way in helping you gain traction.
Remember, it’s the beginning that that is the hardest. Once you start making a little bit of money, things become easier because you can reinvest some of it into the growth of your site, such as buying these products to review
5. Know your budget
We just touched on it, but your budget is something really important to think about going into this. How much money do you want to spend on this website?
I have a whole blog post dedicated to the costs of getting started and the good news is you can make it very, very economical.
You can also scale up as your site starts making money and begin to invest in additional areas such as different types of WordPress plugins to make your life easier or even outsourcing things like content creation or social media management.
Tips for picking your niche
These are just a few things to think about when you’re picking your first niche or you’re picking the topic for your first blog.
Of course these are not hard and fast rules, but my suggestions from doing it a couple of times.
There’s a balance between doing your research and qualifying the topic areas you want to write about and being paralyzed forever and not actually making any progress. Make sure you do your research but set a time period on it.
Don’t open endedly say I’m going to do research for a niche site before I choose, decide if you want to give yourself a few weeks or even a month and set a deadline.
You may want to even examine multiple niches at the same time. Remember you can always save your other niche for later and use the profits from your first website to bootstrap your second website, I hope you found these tips helpful for picking your first niche and welcome to the exciting world of niche websites.
