Don’t start a niche site… here’s what to do instead...

so you're ready to start a blog and are wondering what is the best niche well this is definitely the most common question i get by a landslide however there are a ton of problems with how traditional niche site advice has been given over the years start with a passion base it on an seo report choose the niche that's most lucrative it simply doesn't work that way that's why in this video we'll go through exactly how to choose your specific niche and how this new formula will in turn increase your odds of success and make you more money in the long run but before we get started i want to invite you to watch my free master class on how to start a profitable blogging business covers exactly what blogging is today in the 2020s how i make over 300 000 a month with my blog thousands of students have gone through it so make sure to click the link in the description below sign up for that and let's get into the topic for today so first when we think about choosing your specific niche we have to talk about the old way of choosing your niche and the problem with traditional niche site advice so the old way of choosing your niche is basically based on seo reports competitive metrics and passions so you know you look at an seo report or use ahrefs and you see oh this is a good opportunity based on this seo report or this niche is new and it's based on tools and search data and potential money to be made and things like that competitive metrics or something you're passionate about you know start with a passion in mind write about it for years and that's the niche that you're going to choose because you have to stay consistent that simply isn't really the case anymore and it's really missing the key principles here the actual real world business principles that are going to make the blog succeed from a monetary standpoint so a tiny niche site you know there's a lot of things that are missing from just a business standpoint and a human psychology standpoint so first of all we have to discuss what if you choose the wrong niche so what if you choose that small niche site and then it simply doesn't work or you can never really get google to trust that specific niche and you know it never works out you never get traffic well then what happens you pretty much quit and that's what happens with niche sites a lot you're also putting all of your eggs in one basket so that you know as much as a niche uh niches change and evolve over time so niches never stay the same new products are added to niches new you know technology is in the niche niches go away search volume changes so putting all of your eggs in one basket is tough to build a sustainable business you also have the inability to pivot so pivoting is a crucial component of running an online business the ability to adapt and quickly change what you're doing is really important and when you're pigeonholed in one small niche you can't pivot and adapt the odds of quitting a niche site are also really high when it's not attached to your identity so if you just create something on the side and you build this website and no one really knows about it and it's just like this small micro niche site well it's really easy to quit that you haven't really invested in it you haven't tried it because the thing is you're gonna have to do this thing for six months a year two years to start making a good amount of money from it so the odds of quitting are so much higher because you know the self-limiting beliefs and the things that we're we're seeing with this website it's not quite working out it's just much easier to quit that niche site when it's not attached to your identity you also limit the number of partnerships you can make so when you're in one tiny niche site well who's going to work with you companies in that niche so you can't really go outside of that if my site was just emailmarketingguy.com i could work with some email marketing software but i couldn't work with all the other software companies that want to work with me so you really limit the amount of partnerships you can make in a large business sense when you choose a small niche site you also lower your revenue ceiling so you know you can tap out your potential niche think about this we'll talk about this later but how many articles you need how much revenue you want to make with your blog but having a smallness site you lower your revenue ceiling you ca you cap it out at a certain amount and you limit the amount of opportunities that come naturally through this thing because we need to just give ourselves the freedom to pivot and adapt and change content and do these things and test and tweak based on like thinking like a scientist not trying to force something and then the odds of choosing the perfect niche at the beginning so if you're just starting out and you're a brand new blogger you know the first choice is choosing this niche so it's kind of difficult because we're all beginners when we first choose our niche we're not you know seo experts now there's some experts that say that can do this formula so if you have five years ten years of seo experience and you wanna buy and flip niche sites and stuff that's cool this doesn't necessarily apply to you but if you're a beginner and you have some experience but you haven't built one successful blog yet to build make it profitable then it's really hard to choose to some specific niche at the beginning and make it work because you just don't have that necessarily that advanced knowledge that you'll build by doing the thing so over time it gets easier but you need to give yourself this freedom so the odds of choosing the perfect niche at the beginning if you're a beginner are very low so in order to combat that we need to just give ourselves the freedom and flexibility to adapt and really it ultimately it comes down to a real business lives outside of an seo report so you know when you think about the online business world we can't base things just on numbers in a report that think that we're going to be successful there's human psychology there's partnerships there's ways that you're going to do link building and you know trades and build affiliate marketing relationships and all of that is going to be dictated by this first initial choice which is your domain name and your niche so if that's not the best way to choose your niche what is the best way well it has to be personalized to you this can't just be something we randomly choose the niche has to be personalized and work in your life specifically and that's why i created what's called the authority flywheel so this is an exercise that i go through with students in my course blog growth engine to really uncover and untap the specific niche that will work best for you and that's based on four key components that's based on you your expertise the market and leverage so we're going to go through each one of these pretty quickly just to show you that a niche has to be selected based on these four key principles first is you so you are only you and you is your identity your experience the message you want to share with the world so you have a unique identity unique perspective on life you know you have a flow of experiences in your past that have gotten you to this point today so you have to think about what has that done who are you and what message do you want to share with the world and you are a living breathing thing much like a blog so in a creator economy your business your blog is also a living breathing thing it needs to adapt and evolve over time i'm not the same person i was when i was 18. thank god i'm not the same person i was when i was 25 you know so i have evolved over time my flow of experience has changed so we have to think about that the first kind of pillar is just thinking about you ultimately if your face was on the homepage of a website what would it say what would you be teaching what would you be telling your blog readers so that comes down to you and your unique identity so after you we want to move next over to your expertise so your expertise is any area you have experience in so you know and ultimately you have more experience than you think a lot of students have gone through and said i don't have i don't have expertise in this area or that area ultimately you have to know that the internet is full of beginners so when people search google for things and are looking for blogs they're pretty much at the beginning stage of learning and on their journey they're not searching for like super advanced stuff google doesn't isn't full of first page results of super advanced math formulas and crazy stuff it's mainly just for beginners looking for simple sources of information so you know you have experience in different areas and you have personal and professional experience so this can work here too so maybe you're in a career maybe you have hobbies that you're really smart at and you can make money on both of these things work you have to be vulnerable on your journey and share where you are no matter where you are so if you're just starting a blog and you want to teach people to blog like i did i don't recommend it it's very competitive and difficult but you need to know you know teach people exactly where you are don't come across as someone that you're not so your experience level even if it's one step ahead of a new beginner that's still expertise to that beginner so we have to start thinking about what areas of expertise do we have in our personal and professional life and that's the second rung quickly on this authority flywheel then we have the market so this is really important so let's say you know you've written down some things about you and your expertise and you're brainstorming this stuff then we move to the market and the market is how do you and only you extract value from the marketplace so based on your experience and your identity what can you potentially make money with first we have to go where the fish are so that means what are people actually searching for online so we can't just write about everything with a blog we have to actually write about things that people care about and search for from an informational standpoint point and from a transactional product standpoint so then we have to determine your pain tolerance so every niche has different competitive levels so if you're gonna try to go into the finance niche just know that to do that you're gonna have to spend a few years building links building partnerships writing tons of articles and all of that whereas maybe you could go into a more ecommerce focused niche like camping or outdoors or like home decor and you wouldn't need as many links so your pain tolerance is lower maybe your revenue ceiling is a little bit lower but you're not going to have to go insane and try to you know build a million links so you have to determine your pain tolerance and what your ultimate goals are then we have to talk about what are the products in your niche so think start writing about thinking about the affiliate marketing opportunities in your niche so if you want to write about kitchen stuff what kind of kitchen gadgets exist what kind of products are on amazon that you could write about and review looking at keyword tools and trying to see like you know the best food processors the best kitchen faucets the best microwaves different like products in your niche that exist that are new and emerging and start to kind of brainstorm what affiliate opportunities are arising they have to determine basically the overall competitive of your niche and the revenue ceiling of your niche so the competitiveness you can use a tool like hrefs and you can type in like something like in the keyword expo explorer like best plus your niche so best camping and then you'll see all the different keywords and terms that come in that niche and all the competitive metrics so you can kind of get a high level overview of how competitive the niche is and then you want to kind of plan start thinking all right what are these articles going to be so you know in my course we cover exactly how to do that exactly what to write the templates and everything but this is kind of a high level overview of trying to figure out the market potential of your niche because ultimately if you want to make money as a business this is what is important not a passion that you're something you're passionate about so when i'm choosing my niche i'm passionate about a lot of things i'm passionate about running i'm passionate about science and the universe and astronomy i'm passionate about like i like fantasy football with my friends i'm passionate about lots of things but if i have to write about them for years writing about that is way different than actually doing the thing so you have to really realize that money drives passion more than passion drives money this is a game this is a way to make money online as a game and if you're in the game and you like the game you'll be successful if you don't like the game and you hate the idea of trying to make money online then you're probably not going to make it you have to be you know once you start trickling in money and you see your website working then the passion comes and you're like oh wow this passion is coming because i see that this result of this niche is actually going to allow me the time freedom that i need to quit my job to make more money to do all of these things and that excitement is what drives you not necessarily writing about something you enjoy doing as a hobby it doesn't make sense so finally back to the last part of the authority flywheel is your leverage leverage is basically anywhere you are that you can get some hidden advantage from so we all have different starting lines when starting an online business some of us have zero you know seo experience zero digital marketing experience some of us have some some of us have a lot some of us have a lot of connections some of us have you know maybe personal friends or something that could help us get into an industry you know imagine you're in the film industry who do you know that can get you in this is kind of the same thing in blogging like who do you know in some industry that might be able to get you some links or some opportunities for guest posts or you know early affiliate things for example when i was in my career i was a middle manager at a company in austin in the tech industry and i kind of just used that little middle manager title in some of my outreach and it helped so what little points of leverage even a little thing can push you forward in a niche so that's just the last thing to think about and here's the most common question i get definitely by far says adam what knit should i choose and i get this question on youtube in the blog comments and all over the place and it's like tell me my niche what's the best niche should i go into finance that's like do you have any experience in finance ultimately that's like asking a total stranger what business business should i start i can't give you that you have to go through this exercise you have to understand you your identity your expertise you know the market and any leverage that you have and i can't tell you that you shouldn't just go into any niche based on seo reports metrics and things that you think can make money another one i get is this i have no experience no leverage multiple hobbies all over the place and i live in my mom's basement too so let's talk about the power of self-limiting beliefs because when you actually put this stuff down on paper and you see this is my experience this is the affiliate opportunities these are all the different things that i could make money on you start to see that there's opportunity everywhere not just in some niche about making money online or finance or crypto or something that you think will make money what if you have a pet what if you have a cat or a dog and you're like i love my dog well think about all the things that you could write about in the pet niche there's tons of opportunities low hanging fruit and opportunities there or maybe you enjoy home decorating and interior design and you're a stay-at-home mom and you're like i love coming up with ideas and design inspiration for living rooms and kitchens and i go on wayfair all the time and i do this stuff well then create a home a home blog and just write about living room ideas modular sofa designs you could make a ton of affiliate revenues you know for ranking for something like best modular sectional which isn't that competitive which could make a ton of money funneling traffic writing about ideas writing about these things so you don't have to be an expert but you you know have something you have to understand this stuff the more that you learn the more success you'll find so first let's discuss what makes a good niche really there's tons of different niches out there any you know anything from travel home outdoor all of these things but ultimately it comes down to kind of three key factors so number one is finance so finance is high reward high competition finance is something that can make a lot of money and we see sites like credit card and nerd wallet all these financial sites make a ton of money because they can make money on percentages of huge things what i mean by that is if somebody signs up for like an ira or a retirement plan or a business loan or something worth hundreds of thousands of dollars the blog can make a percentage of that so they could make something like 10 percent of 500 000 and make a 50 000 affiliate commission on one sale so it's high risk high competition that's why it's so competitive tons of big sites are entering the space and are already in the space but it's you know when i think of finance i think of percentages of really high value things so that's what that thing when i think about that niche next we have software so software is great for the recurring nature of the affiliate programs that's why it's competitive as well because people buy things every month you can make affiliate commissions like 30 of that monthly payment and it builds stability that's why i don't worry so much about traffic fluctuations and all of these things because there's stability built into that so that's why that one is also competitive then we have all physical products so this is things like i said camping kitchen living room outdoor patio recreational things think of amazon so everything on amazon has people searching for these products on google every product category that exists is searched for on google and blogs are expected to be there as a source of information comparing these products with physical products it's a volume game because affiliate commissions come in as a one-time payment so think of like a basketball hoop if you write an article on the best basketball hoops and you make a ten percent commission on a one thousand dollar basketball hoop that's a one hundred dollar one-time commission it's not fifty thousand dollars and it's not recurring it's one time so physical products less less competitive which i think a lot more people should be entering these spaces because you don't need as many links you don't need to build that authority you just write articles on products the revenue ceiling is a little bit lower but you make up for it with volume so you can write a lot of articles over time 100 200 articles over the course of a few years and then you're making a lot of money as each article is its own mini business so when i think about niches i think about these three main categories not like 100 categories so that's kind of how i think about that then we have what i'm calling you know ymyl google eat and the competition so ymyl is your money your life google eat is expertise authoritativeness and trust and the competition so know that when you're choosing a niche you have to look at the niche landscape from a competitive standpoint we also look at it from like an authority standpoint so if you one of the hardest ones for example is entering the health niche so if you want to compete with webmd and healthline that's going to be the hardest one because google like when it becomes something that's related to life and money that's where you know it's the most competitive and you need the most authority because google's not just going to rank a random blogger about how to you know wash your hands to avoid covid or something like that like that would be really risky so that's where healthline and webmd and these articles written by health experts and then you know trusted and verified by this guy that's where all of those things come in and that's why finance is is competitive too and you need a lot of authority because you're recommending things like credit cards or business loans like that can change somebody's life the site needs more authority so that's something to be aware of so things that are higher you know intensity and risk for the reader are going to be more you're going to need more authority and links for so that's just something to keep in mind so then when we think about creating a niche site we think about the path to 100 articles so instead of creating like a tiny site and one tiny area think about having 100 articles eventually on that blog would the comp would the niche be completely tapped out would you be completely done with content at that point or would you still have room to grow that's why we you know we'll go over exactly kind of how to do this but kind of think about it that way so we don't want to write 20 articles and then be like that's the whole niche that's the site i'm going to make money with that no that's not how blogging works we need 100 articles 200 articles eventually over time we keep building it and building in the background of our life it's making money passively we have writers we do all of these things but we need hundreds of articles eventually so your niche needs to be big enough for that ultimately we talked about surveying the niche landscape so that's just using keyword research tools like ahrefs or something else to see how competitive in a broad sense the niche is even just go to google and just search some specific products in the niche to see you know what kind of sites are ranking and how authoritative they are and then we also have we want to have multiple sub niches and areas to pivot into so inside of a niche inside of a broad niche what kind of different things can we write about if it's home we could do all kinds of things from living room to kitchen to gardening to all of these things so there's a lot of different sub niches and product categories to look into the key though here what i really like the most is a niche with a lot of new and emerging product categories so what i mean by that is there's new technology coming into the niche and new things to write about because timing is a crucial component of ranking and timing is something that you don't find in that seo report timing comes from niche authority and understanding the niche yourself that's why we're doing this niche exercise first because if you understand the niche you have a head start on understanding what products are entering the space you write the articles first you have a better chance of ranking and that comes down to how many emerging product categories are coming out are there new technology new gadgets new features in that niche that you can write about like software has a ton of new categories coming in gadgets and technology has a ton of new categories and products coming in like peloton peloton alternatives all these new mirror devices in the home for fitness some niches don't change as much so maybe something like golf golf has a lot of new new golf clubs every year but that's seasonal so you have to kind of think about your niche like how much is it changing how much is it evolving and ones that are evolving faster are easier to rank for so think about that as well so here's the new way i like of choosing your niche you start broad you start with a broad domain name in one broad niche so we don't want to do multiple niches where it's like i'm going to do gardening and software i'm going to do travel and i'm also going to do living room furniture like those are two way too different but if you start with one broad niche then you don't have to perfect this perfect sub niche maybe you have ideas for the sub niche and you can start with some content in that area but we don't want to pigeonhole ourselves with our domain name so our domain name should be broad enough to encompass the niche so that we can eventually get it to 500 plus articles without pigeonholing ourselves and we can adapt and test multiple sub niches so that's how you do it and then you pivot into what's working so your expertise authoritativeness and trust can overlap multiple topic areas so if we're talking about travel and you want to start a travel blog then we can talk about travel credit cards travel insurance we can talk about the best meals in italy we can talk about travel backpacks and luggage and all the physical products and we're not just pigeonholed into only travel credit cards or something like that so think about the multiple sub niches we can test and tweak this this content strategy but we need to start broad enough to be able to actually give ourselves the freedom to understand and figure this thing out so let's look at some examples here so in the travel niche the niche site example we would do is to look at the seo report look at the competitive analysis and then create a domain name called travelcreditcards.com great domain name that'd be cool but what if you know you want to talk about other things like travel backpacks and meals in italy and how to travel solo you know through europe or any number of travel articles maybe a little bit weirder if travel credit cards was writing about it it would seem too corporatey and kind of strange and probably be harder to rank harder to get link opportunities and all of that but look at someone like nomadicmatt great domain name ranks for everything under the sun when it comes to travel insurance credit cards how to travel the world all of these different things and that's just a broader example another one is home so you could create a website like smarthomedevices.com great domain name again could be work could work could you know work out well but what if you want to talk about something that isn't a smart home device what if you want to talk about something that's a home device that you find a good opportunity and a good keyword but it's not really it doesn't really make sense then that domain pigeon holds you but then look at a site like tom's guide writes about every piece of technology and software under the sun and ranks for hundreds of thousands if not millions of keywords with that simple domain name let's talk about software so i could have started my blog at ecommerceguy.com that's the world that i came from but then wouldn't it be weird when i started talking about like virtual conference platforms and uh how to start a blog and make money online and passive income and all these other things that have nothing to do with e-commerce yes it would have been so i would have pigeonholed myself into this niche thing and the domain does not need to be your niche my domain name is just my name so you know you need to give yourself the maximum freedom to pivot so then it comes down to the ultimate question and i get it a lot should you use your own name or not use your name i get it it's like adam you know what if you want to sell your blog you know use your name it's really hard to what about all these things and i get all these questions about me selling my blog from people and like i want to sell my blog before they even have made one dollar yet so we need to take a step back realize that we want to build a passive income driven business for our lives and really it's up to you like you could use tom's guide which is kind of a corporate view of it with a name but not really the full name or you could use just like i did with my full name ultimately it doesn't matter all that much what does matter is the content and link building strategy and the monetization strategy that matters more than anything i like the full name just because it keeps it simple it makes outreach easier link building all that stuff and gives you the ultimate freedom to pivot but if you don't like the idea of having your face on the website and you want to be more of a ghost niche site that's fine too you can do that but still keep it broad enough so that you can test one large niche and then find your actual niche sub niche topics over time the truth is niches evolve just like your identity and your experience niches change search volume changes things come and go product wise outside of the niche and so does your identity the things that you care about so that's why passions don't work that's why tiny niche sites don't work putting all your eggs in one basket doesn't necessarily work but tailoring a blog specifically to you and what you're interested in what you can provide to the market and changes and adapts with your life is the ultimate key and the truth is you are the niche think of what i've done with my blog i started with my name i wrote about all kinds of software make money online i saw what was working i pivoted the content i did that i moved to youtube i create these videos there's no you know i can pivot into anything we're pivoting into finance content all other areas and it's because i started broad and thought like a scientist and i'm doing this you know in a different way so it's not about a tiny niche site it's about creating a real sustainable brand to rank and compete in the 2020s so if you're interested if that was helpful to you if you want to learn more about what i did with my blog how i make over 300 000 a month some of the strategies make sure to watch my free blogging master class so click the link in the description below thousands of students have gone through it and let me know what do you think about the authority flywheel because the more authority that you build with your uh unique experience identity market and leverage it is a snowball effect a flywheel is something that continues to grow and continues to grow one increase to one input improves all outputs so this is a thing that just scales your authority online and to build real authority you need to be known for something so i hope that video was helpful please like the video check out my channel for all kinds of other videos on blogging and business advice and i will see you in the next video

Channel: Adam Enfroy

Views: 63,547

Keywords: affiliate marketing, blog niche, niche, blogging niche, how to choose your niche, how to choose a niche for your blog, adam enfroy, blogging, make money blogging, blog niche ideas, blog niche ideas 2023

Id: kuY2nWj_EhA

Length: 25min 33sec (1533 seconds)

Published: Mon May 09 2022