How to Choose A Profitable Blog Niche: Step by Step
“Help! I have too many ideas and can't choose a profitable blog niche!”
You and every other ADHD person I've met, amiright?
If you're new here, my name is Sadie and I have ADHD and am autistic. So when I say I understand the millllllion gazillion ideas dilemma, I really understand.
But I also understand that to become a six figure blogger, you've gotta focus and discipline yourself. It took me many years to figure out how to do this, but once I did, everything was soooo much easier – and now I am going to teach you how to do the same!
I hope that by sharing my process, it'll be much easier for you to choose a niche as well. Here are the exact steps I take to choose a blog niche. If you're in my Facebook group, you already know this process, but let's dive in anyway, just in case you missed a step or are feeling stuck.
Hint: The “most profitable” blog niche is one you enjoy writing blog posts for every day and will stick with for at least a few years. 😉
Brain Dump
Brain dump ALL of your ideas out on a piece of paper. Writing everything down helps with the flow, but if you only have a phone, use your Notes app and get it done. Either way, I want you to have a list of every single idea you have for niches you are considering.
Don't judge yourself, don't think about if it can be profitable, just write them all down.
Elimination Round 1
Go through your list of ideas, one by one, and ask: how much do I know about this topic?
The sweet spot is when you know a little bit, but want to know a LOT more. You want to become an expert. The topic, and the thought of helping people with it, lights a fire inside you.
You're going to read books and blogs, listen to podcasts, watch YouTube videos, and go all in on this topic… so it needs to be something you're excited to learn more about. For me, those topics are blogging and tarot.
Elimination Round 2
By this time, your list should be a liiittttle smallerr. While you can blog about what you're an expert on already, unless it's your super duper tip top passion, you may want to go another route.
The next question you're going to ask yourself is: are there other blogs on this topic?
To be honest, not much is unique anymore. You can choose a popular niche and put a unique spin on it – because you have experiences that others don't have – but very rarely does someone create a whole new niche. It's usually a spin-off of an already profitable, popular niche idea.
If your blog niche idea doesn't exist at all, that's a warning sign to dig a little deeper to make sure it's something there's an audience for. I mean really, there's probably an audience for just about anything, but you want to see proof of concept to make sure this topic is something you can talk about and make money with.
Take a look at Google Trends to see if your topic idea is flatlined, trending upward, or trending downward (aka dying). I talk about this more in depth in my free blogging course, so be sure to check it out if you haven't yet.
Are there any monetized blogs on this topic? This is also an important question to ask!
h/t to Nina from She Knows SEO for writing a whole post about this!
TL;DR version: put this into the search bar on Google:
“intext:Mediavine Programmatic Advertising (Ver 1.1) [niche here]”
Replace [niche here] with your niche, obviously.
Don't go super narrow; instead of “solo female traveling tips” I'd put in “travel” or even “solo female travel” to see if anything comes up, but don't think “oh that's not a good niche” if you go narrow and don't find anything.
Why does this work? Because Mediavine requires publishers to put this on their blog! So, that means any blog you find with this code is a Mediavine blogger, which means they're monetized. Cha-ching!
How many ideas do you have left? You may have narrowed it down enough to where you can choose your blog niche now. If so, congrats! If not, let's go onto the next round of eliminations.
Elimination Round 3
If you still have more than 2 ideas on your brain dump list, the last question you need to ask yourself is this: which topic(s) could I talk about, write about, learn about, and teach about, every day for a year – without getting paid?
This is where your true passion lies: ignoring the fact that you'll be monetizing the idea, and instead focus on building a business based on what really is on your heart to serve to the world.
If you still have 2 ideas and truly can't choose between the two, flip a coin.
Yep. I said what I said.
I've flipped a coin for lots of major life decisions. Why not a blog niche? 😉
Next Steps
Once you decide on your blog niche, it's time for another brain dump: all of the blog post ideas you can think of that will fit in this niche.
I have some blog post ideas if you're in the mindfulness niche. And if you leave a comment with your niche below, I can make a post for you with lots of ideas, too! 🙂
If you haven't yet, take my free Blogging Foundations course. This course will help you get your blog set up the right way from the beginning, which is so important.
