If you want to make serious money blogging, then your best bet isn’t a niche where others are already successful (making money, celebrity, cars, politics), unless you can find a sub-niche of that subject that isn’t covered well. I for one would be pretty screwed if Shylock Blogging would be my main online venture. But as it is, for the moment is just a side project that I enjoy.
Depending on how much time you plan to dedicate to that blog, you can go for something that’s a bit harder to rank for, or you can find a smaller niche. A blog for gymnastics enthusiasts might be harder to take over a certain limit, but it should be easier to become an authority there then if you did a soccer or tennis blog. If you’re going to invest all your efforts in this one blog, then make sure that the niche you pick leaves you enough room to grow even one year from now.
If you look in the blogging niche, the highest authority, ProBlogger.net has 33,000 subscribers and growing at a slower rate. If you look at TechCrunch, the authority when it comes to technology and start-ups, they got 609,000 subscribers. If you look at Gizmodo, you find out that they had 12 million page views in the last 7 days.
Look around you and ask yourself. Out of all the people that are using the Internet, how many of them would really be interested in blogging tips, and how many would rather read technology, gadgets, celebrity or automotive articles? I can tell you this much, it’s easier to find a sub-niche for yourself in the celebrity niche then finding one in blogging tips, and the potential is much bigger.
But, the absolute best would be to find yourself a niche that isn’t filled or covered properly, be aggressive in your promotion, write quality content, and dominate it. TechCrunch took over technology because there was demand and the supply wasn’t there in this area. You don’t need to have the knowledge of the industry and the connections that Mike Arrington had (though it helps). All you need is the ability to write good content, the working power and the patience to stick with it until you make it big.
What are people passionate about? Sports, money, travel, cars, finding a good job, relationships, whatever you can write about and has a low competition so you can become an authority, can be a good choice.
Conclusion
Your best bet is a big topic covered badly. Second best would be a sub-niche of a popular topic that isn’t covered properly. Worst would be to target a topic with lots of competition. Since it’s something that you’re going to focus on for at least 1-2 years, make sure you take the time to pick a good niche.
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Very good pointers here. Of course most of them can be found all over the net but sometimes it’s hard to find them. By hard I mean time consuming. It’s nice that you took the time and sum it up for the beginners.
By looking at the post I now realized that I picked a pretty hard niche for me to blog on my own site. Maybe if you had posted this 2 months ago I might have chosen something else. Errr … I think I’ll blame you for this
. NOT.
Keep up the good work Alex.