Jentrepreneur

One of the first (and often most difficult) aspects of launching a new blog or content site is choosing the perfect niche. Here are some steps you can take to help you find a niche that you’ll stay interested in writing about, and that will also have income potential:

1. Make a list of general topics that interest you, that you know enough to write about.

2. Choose your favorite 5 - 10 topics from the first general list, and break them down further. General niches already have a lot of competition in most cases. For example, if a general niche on your list were cats, you might narrow it down to a certain breed, or taking care of cats, or natural health for cats, or training cats, etc.

3. Again, choose a few that you’re most interested in from this deeper niche list. Then ask yourself, “do I know enough about this, and am I interested enough in it, that I’ll be able to write 3 - 10 posts per week for a full year?” Remove any that you think are too limited to allow for regular posting over the long haul to keep the site or blog fresh.

4. From this smaller list, choose only your top 3 or so picks. Come up with 3 - 5 search phrases that you would want to target (keeping in mind that general, one-word search terms will be more difficult to rank for - so “cats” wouldn’t be in this list based on our previous example).

5. Go to the Adwords Sandbox from Google. Type in one of the keyword phrases you listed earlier. As an example, I typed in “cats natural health.” Use the “keyword search volume” tool, which will give you an idea of both search frequency and advertiser competition (ideally, you’ll want high search volume, high advertiser competition, and low keyword competition in search engines). Do this with several of the search phrases you listed to gauge potential profitability and the competitive environment. You’ll see using my example that “cats natural health” has no real search volume or advertiser competition… not good (so I’d need to alter my niche or find other keywords within it). The tool suggests other related keyword phrases. In this case, I can see that “natural cat health” has some search volume and decent advertiser competition.

6. Now that you’ve figured out which of your potential niches will likely bring natural search traffic and relevant advertisers to monetize the site or blog, you’ll need to see whether the niche is oversaturated, or if it’s wide open to new sites. Again, using my previous example, we found out that “natural cat health” was a better term for searches and advertisers than “cats natural health.” Now, go to Google and search for “natural cat health,” and you’ll see that the exact search term is only returning around 1500 results. That’s low, meaning you have the potential to rank well, drive natural search traffic, and monetize it with relevant ads.

7. If more than one of your original niche ideas looks as though it would keep you passionate and motivated, rank well in search engines for multiple keyword phrases, and attract relevant advertisers, it really comes down to personal preference. If you’re left with one result, then you’ve found your “perfect niche” for your blog or content site! And if none of your potential niches seem viable at this point, go back to that original general niche list and whittle down some new options.

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