When you're starting a blog, choosing a niche is probably the most
important task because if you choose a niche where there is little to no
commercial value, meaning very few people are buying products
in the niche such as chess, you can hardly find yourself making an
adequate amount of money from your blog. On the other hand, if you choose a highly competitive niche that requires
professional knowledge like niches related to the medical field,
but you are not a medical professional yourself, you will hardly see your
articles ranked on the search engines. Google made sure of that when they
introduced the Medic update back in 2018. So in this video, if you are interested in starting a blog,
let me walk you through the things you should look out for when
picking a profitable niche. Let's go. Hey, it's Jack from Rank Math, the one WordPress SEO plugin
that constantly strives to provide you with the fastest
and the most cutting-edge SEO tools. And on this channel, we provide you
with the most up to date SEO knowledge. So if you are new to our channel,
consider subscribing. Anyway, nitch or neesh? Let's ask Google. British pronunciation. Neesh Let's change it to American. Neesh
Huh? So no nitch? Well, Google may be wrong. Maybe both pronunciation are correct because it originated from a
French word that is pronounced as nitch. Anyway, in this video, I'm just going to pronounce it as
"neesh" because that's the way I know. Now, if you have ever started a blog, you will often hear people say
to "start a blog based on your passion". Well, here's my take on that. Passion is what keeps you going even when
things get tough, because when you are not making money from your blog,
even after you have put in a lot of effort, you wouldn't mind putting more
effort because you view it as a hobby. That's great.
But what if your time traveled to the future,
maybe five years ahead, and you look at the stats of the blog
and it's still not making money? Would that passion ever
wear out in between? I'm pretty sure it would, right? At least for most people. So starting a blog is
not just about passion. Passion can bring you forward, but it is the money that fuels the passion
and keeps it alive for a very long time. I hope this makes sense to you. But obviously, you don't want to enter
a niche where you absolutely hate. Otherwise, you'll find yourself
procrastinating a lot and eventually quit. So in my opinion, you should view your
blog more like a business than a passion. You need to have somewhat of an interest
in a niche, but profitability should be considered in your
decision making as well. You want to start something strong on your own and eventually be able to scale up
in a way that doesn't require much of your effort, and it all starts with
finding the right niche. There are two types of niches. There are broad niches
and there are micro niches. Broad niches are a subset of an industry and there are generally
four big industries. We have money, health,
leisure, and relationships. Within the money industry,
there are broad niches such as personal finance, money markets,
business, economics, etc. And in the health industry,
there are broad niches like biotechnology, health insurance, alternative
medicine, wellness, etc. When you're starting a blog as a beginner,
you should not target broad niches because they are usually highly
competitive and there are probably no spaces for small blogs
to join the competition. So for a start, we recommend
to target micro niches. For example.
The micro niches in the personal finance broad niche are
credit cards, loans, budgeting, etc. And you can drill even
further, such as loans. There are student loans, home loans, car loans, insurance
loans, and so many others. Pick one of the narrowed
down micro niches. You can expand your niches
as your site grows. The reason why you want to start a micro
niche blog is because it is easier for Google and other search engines
to understand what your site is about. And due to its narrowed focus, there is a
specific group of people you are helping. Hence, you can address very specific questions that big sites
don't usually talk about. So just keep that in mind as I walk you
through finding a profitable niche. And to find the right niche,
there are essentially two steps. Step one starts with brainstorming
all possible niches. Don't worry if you can't think of any, I'll share with you some
methods to overcome that. The next step is to validate
the niches you have come up with, because as you know, you don't want to get
into a niche that is not profitable. So without further ado, let me share with you the methods
to discover viable niches. Now, there is no lack of niche
recommendations on the internet. For example, just Google "profitable blog niches", and you will have
a ton of niche ideas. Go to YouTube and search for the same. I'm pretty sure you will
get a ton of suggestions. Wow, what great advice, man. [sarcastic claps] Never thought of that.
Chill, man. I'm not done.
Those niches that people are recommending are probably profitable, but they
might also be highly competitive. I'll share a few more methods in a while, but I just need to address
the competitiveness. Honestly, there is nothing wrong with competitiveness, but the question is,
can you stand out from the competition? I mean, if you start doing research on those niches, for example,
you are an expert in 3D printing and you search for,
what are the best 3D printers? And those results that appear are not good recommendation to your opinion,
and you know better? Great! Or if you search for a topic like "how
to use a 3D printer to print an iPhone case", for example,
and what comes out on a search isn't exactly helpful as well, from your point
of view, and you think you know better. Those gaps that you found are going
to help you stand out from the competition, but if you don't have any
additional value to add, you might just blend
in with the competition and you will find a hard time growing
your blog, and that's the truth. So if you found gaps in those competitive niches others are recommending,
great! Just start the blog. There's nothing else to consider but the question is, what if those
niches don't resonate with you? What should
you do? Well, the first thing you can do is
to ask yourself these questions. What are you good at? What are you knowledgeable about? It can be anything. Like for example, I know somebody who is a contractor and he knows
a lot about concrete. And, concrete is not exactly the niche
an average person would think of. And did you know that person
started a blog about concrete and is now making a couple
of thousands a month with it? Or another person I know who is
a professional singer, he started a blog about singing and is now
making a couple of thousands a month through affiliate sales
and private coaching clients. Those are the niches
not an average person would think about. So you could be an accountant, an IT developer, an artist,
an engineer, a lawyer, or whatever. Start by asking yourself,
what value can you provide to the world? It can be a small part of what you
know that might interest other people. So if some ideas have already sparked,
please jot them down. And don't think that just because you are
a homemaker, you can't provide any value. In fact, many niches started from homemakers. Baking, parenting,
gardening, you name it. Everyone in this world has the potential of providing value to other people,
and that's the basis of starting a blog. So if you don't think you can provide any
professional value to the world, the next thing you want to do is to start
taking notice of your everyday life. Maybe it is a hobby that you do during your free time, maybe it is knowledge
about some appliances like toaster ovens, and through experience, you know exactly
what to look out for when buying one. Or maybe you have been keeping track of your electricity bills and you have
many tricks to save a lot of money. Those are valuable information you can provide and there will be people
who need that information. Or maybe at some point in your life, you have done a ton of research
on a product, maybe buying a yacht. Through that research, you definitely
have some valuable information to share. So you see, even the most bizarre and the most forgotten knowledge
could be a potential niche. I hope this has jog your imagination,
and if any ideas pop up, please, jot them down. One important thing I want to highlight about brainstorming niches is that
oftentimes you will come across a niche that you might be interested in,
but you know absolutely nothing about it. When you come across those niches, you need to ask yourself this question,
how fast can you attain that knowledge? For example, if you are interested
in law, specifically criminal law, and you want to start a blog
with it, do you know lawyers spend years gaining that knowledge
and need years of experience on cases to be able to provide something
valuable to the world? The question is, can you, as an absolute beginner, starting a blog
and providing value right now? No! On the other hand, if you're interested in
barbecuing, but you have absolutely no knowledge about it, can you
gain knowledge about barbecuing fast? Yes! Start by researching, buying,
and experimenting with grills. In a couple of weeks or months, you will have adequate knowledge and
experience to start a blog in the niche. So these are the questions you want to ask
yourself if you have thought of potential niches that you have
absolutely no idea about. And if you still have trouble coming up
with niche ideas, the next thing you can do is to search for niches
based on products. You can go to sites like Amazon,
check out a couple of their product categories, and see if there is
anything that interests you. Better yet, you can visit your Amazon's browsing history to see
what you have browsed. Maybe those products can be a part of a
niche that you might be interested in. Alternatively, you can go to affiliate network sites like ShareaSale,
sign up for an affiliate account, and check out some of the products
that you can potentially promote. Through those products,
you may be able to think of a niche idea. And don't just think about physical products, digital
products can work as well. Leverage on sites like ClickBank or DigiStore24 that primarily
focuses on digital products. Visit their marketplaces. There are so many categories
here that may potentially be a niche. You see, there are a ton of companies who need affiliates
to promote their products. And through that, maybe you're interested
in promoting some of the products. Start a blog around
the niche of the product. And speaking about digital products,
online courses that you have attended could be a potential niche because
you have acquired that knowledge. You can also visit sites like Udemy
and check out what popular causes are there because when there are people
wanting to learn more about something related to a niche,
that niche might be profitable. And then hover to its categories,
and as you hover to some of the categories, you will see
some subcategories on the right. And as you hover to some of the subcategories,
they will tell you the popular topics in the subcategory that could
potentially be a niche as well. Now, if none of these methods work, another cool way to discover niches
is to look at sites that are on sale. Go to sites like Flippa or Empire Flippers and go
through their marketplace. Check out the niches that they are in
and their monthly revenue. Each of these sites on sale are
in niches that are profitable. Who knows? You may be listing your
sites here in the future. I'm literally throwing whatever ideas I
can think of to help you find niche ideas. And if you still can't think of any niche ideas, I would recommend
to check out magazines. Are there any magazines lying around or
do you know of any online magazines? Maybe you can walk into a bookshop
and browse some magazines? What niches are those magazines in? If you read online magazines, for example, Swimming.
Pool News It is an online magazine about pools, spas, hot tubs, etc. When there is.
An industry that supports a niche magazine, it means that the niche is profitable. So that's something you might want
to look at. Now, if you still can't find any niche
ideas, here's my last resort. Visit sites like Feedspot. This is the link. I've dropped this link in the description. Usually, when you Google keywords like "sites in the weight training niche", you
will probably see results from Feedspot. And some sites pay Feedspot to be listed as one of their
top sites in the category. And if you visit the link I've mentioned, scroll through it,
and you will realize there are tons of blog categories that are basically
niches that you can get started with. So I don't believe you can't think of any
niche ideas, but if you still can't think of any, I need to call
on blogging experts. Do any of you have any ideas to share? Please share them in the comments. Anyway, what you should do is to come up with about 10 to 15 niche ideas
before continuing with this video. So if you are serious about starting a blog, this is where
you need to hit the pause button. Alright, are you ready to put
those niche ideas for validation? Let's get started with it. Now, before we get started with niche validation, do yourself a favor
and put your niche ideas into a table. Here's how it's going to look like. There will be five columns and the number of rows will be determined
by the number of niche ideas you have. The second column is to determine if
there is search volume in your niche. The third column is to determine
if the niche is profitable. The fourth column is to check if
there is a chance for new sites to rank. And the last column is to put your
niche through a YMYL check. I'll walk you through
what that is in a while. These are the elements
of a profitable niche. And every time you put a niche idea through this test and they pass it,
you want to put a tick to it. Otherwise, put a cross. It's simple enough, right? You don't want to complicate things. At the end of it, you will probably figure out which is or are the best
niches to start a blog. So let's start with
the first test, which is the search volume test. In this test, we want to identify if there is search volume in your niche,
and instead of the long process of thinking about questions people usually
ask in the niche and putting those questions into a free tool like
Ahrefs Keyword Generator where it will show you the search volume,
I want to make things simpler for you. When you can identify sites that are content heavy with high
search volume and they are specific to a micro niche, you can almost guarantee
that there is search volume in the niche so you can put the check mark
onto the search volume column. Let me walk you through an example. Let's say that I bought a yacht a couple of years ago and I'm interested
in starting a blog about yacht. What I would do is simply do a Google
search on the best yacht blogs and you will see quite
a number of recommended blogs. You see, feedspot
is here as well. What you want to do next is to visit each
of these blogs that are recommended. For example, let's check
out the list from Feedspot. We have Yachting World,
let's visit the site and see if it is content heavy, meaning the site is mostly
content instead of selling actual products. So as we browse through the site,
click into several of the articles, we can confirm that this
is a content heavy site. Next is the site all about yachts,
and obviously it is. All the contents on the front page is all about yachts, and even the blog
categories are about yachts as well. Good.
Next, we want to see if the site has a lot of traffic, and by it, I mean at least
100,000 visits a month. To do that, you want to open
up a tool called SimilarWeb. I know, I know. Some experts will say this
is not an accurate tool. You shouldn't be
using this tool, whatever. All I need to know if there is
traffic to the site. I'm not using this tool
for keyword research. This is probably the tool to get the fastest results without
a need of an account. That's why I'm using it. Anyway, let's copy just the domain name, go to SimilarWeb,
paste it here and hit search. Alright, the total visits
to the sites are 200,000+. As we scroll further, we can see that the traffic for the past
three months has been almost consistent. Great, that's one site. If you scroll down further,
it will share with you some other sites that are in competition
with the site you are doing research on. You want to pick out those domains
that seem to be talking only about your micro niche such as Super Yacht World,
Sail Magazine, Yachts & Yachting, Sailing World. Take note of the monthly visits column. You see, there is another site
with at least 100,000 visits. To find more high traffic and relevant
sites, go back to your initial search and do the same process again. If you can find 5 to 10 sites that are content heavy with high search volume
and specific to your micro niche, that niche deserves a tick
in the search volume column. Simple, right? Of course, there are many methods to discover if a niche has search volume,
but you don't want to use too many tools and you don't want
to make things complicated. Let's talk about the next test. Now, we are looking to profit from a blog, so we need to know what the income
revenues large sites are earning from. There are a couple of ways
a blog can earn money. There is affiliate marketing, where you
recommend products to your site visitors and you make money when someone buys
a product through your recommendation. I will show you an example in a while. A blog can also make money from placing
ads, for example, placing Google ads on the blog,
you can sell physical or digital products, offer subscriptions, coaching
and consulting, and others. But these are the more prominent ones. So to know if a niche is profitable, there
should be many products you can promote. If you find a hard time looking for products in the niche,
it's a signal of low profitability. Let's walk through the same Yacht example. What is the first eye-catching thing you
see that doesn't belong to the blog? Ads.
When a site joins an ad network like Google AdSense,
it allows them to display ads on the site, and site owners will make money
whenever ads are displayed. So when Google gets paid from their advertisers, they will share 51% to 68%
of its revenue with its publishers, which are people like you
and me who own blogs. So that's one income stream for the site. If you want to go even further to see how much advertisers
are willing to pay to place ads, you can use a tool from Google
called Keyword Planner. What you want to do is to select "discover new keywords" and think about some keywords
that have buying intent in the niche. In our case, we have "buy yacht", "buy used
yacht", "cheap yacht", and do a search. If there are people who are willing to pay money on keywords with buying intent,
there is money to be made with ad revenue. Some niches don't even have these amounts, and that is an indicator of low
profitability in the niche. But for this case, there are advertisers willing to pay for most
of the keywords here. Next, we want to check if there is
affiliate marketing potential. If we hover to Yachts and gear,
let's take a look at gear reviews. If we click into any one of the reviews,
it talks about the product, probably sharing with you why you need
the product, and at the end of the article, there is
a link that says buy now from this place. Now, if you click on that link,
it will send you to Amazon. And when you buy this product, the site that recommended you this
product will make a commission. So that's how affiliate marketing works. As a blogger, you join an affiliate program like Amazon Associate,
and when you join their program, they will provide you with a unique
affiliate link that is tagged to you. For example, if you're interested in promoting this
product, you can get this unique affiliate link, place it on your site,
for example, like this. When somebody makes a purchase through
this link, you earn a commission. So this niche site is making
money with two revenue streams. Are there more? Let's see. Well, it sells a subscription
to their magazine. That's three. And it gives a clear indication
that the Yacht niche is profitable. So to put a check mark on the profitability column of the niche,
you want to make sure to visit some of the high traffic sites,
at least three of them, but better to be more,
and discover the two revenue streams I've mentioned, the ad
and the affiliate revenue. If most of the sites are monetizing
with these two common methods, it's a clear indication that the niche is
profitable. Alright, we have already discovered the search volume and the profitability
of the blogging niche. Now it's time to see if you have the potential to enter
the niche as a beginner. The first thing you might want to do is
to install a free Chrome extension called UberSuggest and
open up a browser with Google Trends because we are going to need
them to analyze topics. Next, I need you to start you to think of as many blog topics as possible that
are very specific to your micro niche. For example, in the Yacht niche,
there are topics like how to maintain a Yacht, Yacht maintenance checklist,
fishing in a Kayak, what to do in Yachts, are Yachts a good investment,
Luxury Yacht Brands, etc. Once you have come up with a list of keywords, what you want to do next is
to put those keywords into Google Trends. Now, the trick about Google Trends is
that whenever you see a graph with no data, doesn't matter if the graph is
trending upwards or downward, it means that there is a search volume,
maybe 200 searches per month or more. Graph with all the data signals that
the search volume is about 500 or more. Each of these data fields signals
about 100 searches per month. So if you see data in two cards, it
will mean about 200 searches per month. In our opinion, this is
the most accurate guage. So with that, run through
your list of keywords. For example, "luxury yacht brands". Let's change this to "Worldwide". You'll see there is a graph, there are data in every card. It signifies that there are over 500 searches per month,
which is a good keyword. Any keywords with 100 searches per
month will qualify for this check. And to know if there is a chance of ranking for this,
let's put this keyword on Google. And because the UberSuggests Chrome extension is active, it will show
some data on the search results. If I hit the "Show Volume" button, it shows that there are 10 searches
per month, which is inaccurate. You see, there is no tool that accurately
predicts the number of searches per month. But the Google trends method is the closest, so follow
the data from Google trends. What we need from UberSuggest
is the domain authority data. We want to determine if the top 10 results of the topic are not filled with sites
with more than 50 plus domain authority. If all the results are 50 plus domain authority and above,
it is hard to rank for that topic. You want to see a mix of low
and high authority sites. Like in this example,
we have low authority sites here. Low authority sites are sites
with below 40 domain authority. As you can see, there are quite a number of low domain authority
sites for this topic. So this qualifies as one topic that has
the potential for new sites to rank. Another example is if you see low authority sites with forum sites like
Quora or Reddit, that qualifies as well. And if you see high authority sites with government sites, that keyword
does not qualify for the check. So to put a check mark on the competition column, you want to be able to identify
at least 10 search queries with an adequate search volume and have
the potential for new sites to rank. If you can identify that,
let's go to the final round of check. YMYL stands for "Your Money Your Life", and it simply refers to pages that could
potentially impact a person's future happiness, health, financial
stability, or safety. And we generally, as bloggers, do not want to go into a niche where most
of the topics are classified as YMYL. I'll explain why in a while. The term YMYL has gone through many updates, and now Google has classified
YMYL topics as such. Clear YMYL topics are topics like evacuation routes for a tsunami,
or topics like what to do during a heart attack, or what to do when
someone is having a stroke. These topics clearly need
a professional to answer the question. You don't want to see unqualified people writing advice like drink
water or breathe, right? Possible YMYL topics are topics
that discuss weather forecasts, information about how often to replace
a toothbrush, or basically topics that may require a certain level
of expertise to answer the question. It could be questions like
how to reduce tax legally? You certainly do not want an answer
from an unqualified person. And then unlikely YMYL topics are simply topics that don't require
an expert to answer the question. If you want to understand more about what
YMYL topics are, you can check out point 2.3 of the search quality
evaluator guidelines. I've left the link in the description. So there is no such thing as a YMYL niche, but there are YMYL topics,
and you don't want to enter into a niche where most of the topics are YMYL related,
such as a medical advice blog. However, there are some niches where there
may be YMYL topics, such as barbecue. Doesn't seem like it
has YMYL topics, right? But topics like "how long
can you keep leftovers?" That could be considered YMYL because only people who do research
on food will know, and eating spoiled leftovers
could be dangerous for people, and that's why it could be
considered as a YMYL topic. So what you want to look at is to determine if most of the topics
in your niche are not YMYL. If the majority of the topics are considered YMYL, the niche doesn't
deserve a check mark on the column. And the reason why we do not recommend getting into such a niche is because
how do Google and other search engines determine if a piece of content
is credible enough? It is because it searches through the web
to determine the expertise of the writer. If the topic is health related, search engines want to know if the person
writing the article is being featured on some medical blogs,
appeared on medical podcast, appeared on medical interviews,
and many other factors. So even if you are an expert in the field,
but you have not built up your authority or "street cred" yet, it might take a lot
of time and hard work to rank your blog. So we would advise that you would avoid these kinds of niches,
especially as a beginner. So how did your niche ideas flair? Have any of the niches
passed all the checks? If yes, are you ready to start a blog? We recommend that you check out this video right here to know what blogging tools
you need and at what stage you need them. Anyway, we'll be covering quite a number of blogging topics on this channel
and everything that relates to SEO. So if you haven't subscribed to our
channel yet, you know what to do. And if this video is helpful, we really appreciate if you can
smash that thumbs up button. This is Jack from Rank Math.
Happy blogging!
