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Best Blogging Niches: Profitable Ideas & How To Choose (2021)

Deciding your blog niche is one of the most important yet most challenging steps of your blogging journey.

A lot of aspiring bloggers waste months hesitating if the niche they have in mind will work when they could be creating their first articles and setting themselves up for success.

If you have been wanting to start a blog for a while, you mind still be doubting your niche or might have even changed your mind a few times.

No matter what’s your case, in this article I’ll help you leave the doubts behind, choose your niche and start take your first steps towards making money blogging.

Let’s get started!

Blogging niches: Most profitable ideas and how to choose

What is a blogging niche?

A blogging niche is the topic or category that a blog focuses on.

It serves as an umbrella category for every blog post and represents the market and audience that your blog targets.

Blogging niches can be broad or specific. For example, this blog belongs to the broad niche of Making Money Online and focuses on the sub-niches of Affiliate Marketing and Blogging.

The goal is to find a blogging niche that is neither too small nor too broad. If the niche of your blog is too broad, it’ll be hard to become an authority and compete with established blogs. And if it is too small, there might not be enough people interested in it for it to be profitable.

I’ll explain more about why a blogging niche is important and how to find the right one below.

Why do you need a blog niche?

There are many reasons why you should establish your blogging niche but the most important is that you need a blog niche to be successful at blogging.

I am talking about blogging with the goal of making money, turning it into your full-time job, or even making it profitable part-time hustle.

Unless you want to blog as a hobby and don’t care about anyone finding it or reading it, here are some of the main reasons for having a blogging niche:

1. Helps you build a loyalty and credibility

Building up a loyal audience is key to being successful at blogging.

Readers usually explore blogs looking for other information that might be valuable for them but if your subjects are all over the place, they won’t want to stick around or come back to read more of your content.

Plus, anyone can write lightly about different topics. Focusing on one niche allows you to create high-quality content that demonstrates your knowledge and makes you stand out from your competitors.

2. It helps build trust with your readers

Building trust with your readers is key to making them become regular readers and trust your recommendations for any products or services.

You do this by providing the valuable information that they are looking for and helping them solve their problems which shows that you are an expert on the topic.

BUT you can’t be an expert in everything.

Imagine landing in this blog to read about blogging niches and seeing other recommended posts for dancing techniques and cooking tips. You wouldn’t see me as an authority for any of the topics or trust anything that I said.

If you still have doubts, here are some examples of successful blogs:

Tuts+
Niche: Coding
Income: $175,000 per month

Smashing Magazine
Niche: Web development
$215,000 per month

Smartpassiveincome
Niche: Entrepreneurship & Online Business
Income: $900,000 per month

CopyBlogger
Niche: social media, blogging and search engine optimization.
Income: $1,000,000 per month

MakingSenseOfCents.com
Niche: Frugal lifestyle, savings
Income: $1,000,000+ per month

PinchofYum.com
Niche: Food Photography, Cooking
Income: $2000,000+ per month

These blogs have been around for more than 5 years, but they are a clear example of what is possible when you have a clear focus that allows you to establish yourself as an authority in your niche, whatever that might be.

3. It helps your blog grow and get traffic

One of the main ways in which you can get visitors to your blogs is through search engines like Google.

If you blog about 3 different topics, Google won’t know what your site is about so it’ll be hard to rank on search results.

When someone performs a search on Google, it will show the best result possible for their query and one of the criteria for ranking in the tops results is being seen as a reputable source in Google’s eyes.

If you are just starting out and your blog has 30 posts on one topic, you are more to start be seen as an authoritative source than if you gave 10 posts for 3 different topics.

Focusing on one category will help you to build authority as an expert and improve your chances of getting organic traffic from Google.

4. It is easier to monetize

If you have an established niche, your audience will naturally be people that are interested in those topics and share similar needs and problems.

This will make it easier to monetize your blog via affiliate offers, ads, sponsored content or by creating your own products since you know what your audience needs.

On the contrary, if you were to blog about many different topics, you would struggle to find products to promote and place ads on your site that works for all of them.

In a similar way, you can build your email list and promote related products that you know will be relevant to everyone who came to your blog and subscribed.

5. More page views = more money

When visitors come to your blog, you want them to visit more than just one page and stay as long as possible but if your blog covers many areas, it will be harder to encourage first-time visitors to engage with articles that are not relevant to their interests.

Good retention rates are not only a sign to Google that your people like your content but it also allows you to make more money.

For example, if you place ads on your site, you’ll make more money if a user visits 2 or 3 pages than if they visit only 1.

In the same way, the more articles they read, the more chances there are of them clicking on an affiliate link or buying a product you are promoting.

6. It is easier to create content

Having no niche is like having no strategy. You can technically write about anything but having no parameters or goals just makes it is more challenging.

But, if you have a clear niche, you’ll never have any issues coming up with ideas for your blog posts.

When you start researching and writing your first blog posts, you’ll discover more topics that require their own article.

While online content is scattered, all the articles in your blog will eventually connect to each other and provide a complete solution to your audience’s needs and doubts.

How to choose a blogging niche?

Hopefully, by now, you are aware of the importance of choosing a blogging niche if you want to be a successful blogger.

But with that comes the question…How do I choose a blogging niche?

As a new blogger, this is one of the most important decisions you will make and it can also be one of the most challenging.

The following steps will help you define a blogging niche that you can stick with and of course, make money from.

1. What are some topics that you like/ are interested in?

Blogging is a long-term commitment so choosing a topic that you like is the first step to help you succeed.

You will probably be creating content for your blog for months before getting visitors and profits. This is where picking a topic you are interested in will help you stay motivated and stick with it.

Some people go as far as saying your blogging niche needs to be something that you are “passionate about” but I think that narrows down the options too much. One can have an interest in several topics but not be passionate about all of them.

Since this is the first step in your decision process, I recommend listing as many possible topics as you can think of. Don’t filter yourself too much since we have other criteria that will help you narrow down your options.

2. What topics you are knowledgeable about?

People want to read blog posts from experts or people with experience in the topic. Someone who knows what they are talking about and who they can trust to solve their doubts.

Think of other topics that you can talk about comfortably or are an expert in? Perhaps you don’t like playing piano now but you took classes for years as a child. Or maybe you move abroad and know all about the possibilities someone has if they are interested in doing the same.

This step will help you expand your list of potential niches before we explore their potential to make money.

Note: If there is a topic that you are really interested in learning about but haven’t explored, it’d be worth considering it. It might be a little bit more challenging but you can learn about it as you do your research and create your blog’s content.

3. Is this an evergreen niche?

As I mentioned before, a blog is a long-term business so the worst that can happen is that you put a lot of time and effort into a dying industry or a trend that won’t be around for long.

You can use Google Trends to see how the interest in a topic has evolved over time and get an idea of what will happen in the future.

In the example below, we can see that, while the searches for the topic of ‘Starting a blog’ have a downward trend, the interest persists over time.

It is important to remember that this information is relative and we’ll get a more accurate idea when we check the search volume in the next step. But it is still useful to see if the topic has potential.

You can also include a second niche and see how they compared. For example in the image below you can see how the topic “start youtube” is growing in interest when compared to the one of “starting a blog”.

If you were trying to choose between these two blogging niches, this could help you get an idea of which one will have more demand in the future.

Something that you don’t want to see in a potential niche is a graphic like the one below. This was clearly just a trend that has now died completely and it would have never been a good idea to start a blog on that topic.

You might also find that some niches are seasonal like those that depend on weather conditions.

You can still be successful and profitable in these topics but you just need to keep in mind that your income will fluctuate a lot during the year.

4. Is there enough people interested in it?

In the previous step, you learned about the niche popularity and trend but we still need to take another step to validate there is enough interest in a topic to make it profitable.

To get an accurate idea of how many people are interested in this topic, you can do what is known as ‘keyword research. This means finding out exactly how many people are searching for terms or phrases (“keywords”) in your niche every month.

But don’t worry, this is easier than it sounds like.

Start by listing a few terms and phrases related to your niche of interest. For example, if I was considering the bodybuilding niche, my list would be something like this:

Bodybuilding
Bodybuilding food
Bodybuilding diet
Bodybuilding meal plan

Then you can use a free tool like KWFInder to plug in those keywords and it will show how many searches there are made for each one every month. It’ll also give you suggested keywords which can be helpful to learn about other aspects of the niche you hadn’t considered.

While there is not a set number, you want the main search term to have at least a few thousand searches per month. Otherwise, the niche might be too small and you’ll have a hard time monetizing it.

5. Can it be monetized?

Last but not least, your goal is to make money so you want to assess how profitable is the niche and what monetization strategies you could implement.

For a niche to be truly profitable, it must have something to sell. Blogs can make money in different ways but they all involve promoting, advertising, or selling products.

Here are some strategies you can use to find out how monetizable a niche is:

Go to other blogs on the same topic and see what they are doing.
- Do they have banners on their site? That means they have at least 10,000 visits/month since most ad networks have it as a requirement.
- Are they doing product reviews or recommendations? those are probably affiliate programs that earn them commissions
- Are they selling their own info products? that’s 100% profits

Check out affiliate networks like Clickbank, ShareASale, or CJ Affilates to see what affiliate programs are available in your niche. You can learn about their commissions and how well (or bad) they are selling.

Do a quick google search for “niche + affiliate programs”“. A profitable niche will have lots of related products you can promote.

Consider the idea of creating your own info product in this niche. This method requires the most upfront work, but it can really pay off and become a great source of passive income once you are getting consistent traffic.

Some of the most successful bloggers use several monetization strategies so if you want to be one of them, you ant a niche that offers lots of ways to earn money.

Note: There can be some exceptions in case you have a niche in mind that doesn’t have a big audience but you have a clear idea of how you’ll monetize it.

For example, a have a friend who has a small blog in the architecture niche and he makes $10K+/month from affiliate commissions on a software he teaches how to use.

6. Broad niche vs. sub-niche

Blog niches can be broad as in travel, fashion, fitness, etc, or be more specific as in travel for solo women, fashion for new moms, and fitness for entrepreneurs.

When you are first starting out as a blogger, you want to choose a niche that is not too broad so you can position yourself as an expert and don’t need to compete with already established blogs in the industry.

Once you have created a solid base of content in your niche, you can consider expanding start covering another area of your category. This is why it is important to keep your blog’s name and domain a bit “broad’ considering that you might expand your topic eventually.

For example, I started this blog writing about affiliate marketing in social media which belongs to the broad topic of Making Money Online. Once I had covered most topics, I moved to blogging and content creation which is another area of the same big niche.

Best Blogging Niches To Make Money

Hopefully, at this point, you have a clear idea of your blogging niche but if you are feeling indecisive and could use some inspiration, the niches below are great ones to try as long as you are interested and knowledgeable in them.

1. Personal Finance

Our society revolves around money yet we get very little education about it so everyone struggles with debt, budgeting, or saving at some point in their lives.

This is why teaching people about money and helping them become financially educated is one of the most profitable topics for bloggers. Also, this niche is completely evergreen and will never lose demand.

Blogs in this niche make most of their income through affiliate marketing and financial products like credit cards, debt relief offers, insurance, etc. But they can also be monetized through ads and by creating your own products like planners, online courses, or e-books.

Here are some of the different angles and sub-niches you can focus on.

Frugality: money-saving tips, budgeting, anti-consumerism.
Investing: market tips, best index funds, cryptocurrencies.
Debt: reducing debt, paying off student loans, mortgages.
Retiring early: how to be financially independent, FIRE movement.

Another good way to niche-down in this category is to focus on a specific demographic like Money Under 30, written by a man who dug himself out of more than $80,000 in debt in just three years and now teaches others how to do the same.

2. Travel

Travel is a multi-billion dollar business and while travel bloggers and the whole industry has been hit terribly with covid, they will see a huge comeback in the post-pandemic era.

This niche also offers many sub-categories you could focus on as well as different monetization methods.

Affiliate marketing is one of the biggest ways in which travel blogs make money including affiliate links to hotels, flights, insurance, travel-related items, and so on. You can also monetize through ads and create simple travel guides or other digital products.

Nomadic Matt is one of the most popular travel bloggers and only two years after launching his blog he was making $50,000 to $60,000 a year just from e-books he had written.

Here are some sub-niches you could focus your travel blog on:

Specific countries or continents: things to do, restaurants to visit, ways to get around…
A particular type of traveler: families, solo female travelers, digital nomads…
Travel deals: for flights, hotels, packages…
Luxury travel
Budget travel
Foodies travelers
Sports travelers
Being a working nomad

If you love to travel, then this a profitable niche worth considering and there’s never been a better time to get on it than today.

3. Technology

The technology niche is also a highly profitable one. While the competition is high, it also presents lots of opportunities and audiences you can tap into and build a loyal following.

This is another niche where affiliate income is one of the biggest parts of the revenue including that from manufacturers, software companies, and retailers like Amazon.

With so many products being launched every single day, you’ll never run out of ideas for articles like product reviews and comparison, latest gadgets, and tips and tricks on how to use them.

Technology fans are always looking for the next big thing and this type of content has a high buying intent that will result in purchases and commissions.

Here are some of the topics you could focus on:

Specific equipment: 3d printers, phones, cameras, fitness trackers, drones, etc.
Games: specific games, games for specific consoles.
software: software for designers, architects, accountants, etc.
Gadgets: new product reviews and comparisons.
App development
Web development

One of the most popular and successful tech blogs is Wirecutter, which was founded in 2011 and purchased by The New York Times Company in 2016 for about $30 million. If you’re looking for inspiration on how to do product reviews that no one can compete with, this is one of the best tech blogs to have on your radar.

4. Health & Fitness

The health and fitness niches is HUGE, highly profitable and also very competitive but it will never lose demand because people will always want to feel and look better.

Even with the competition, you can be successful by narrowing your niche down and establishing your expertise in a specific area. The more specific your Health niche is, the easier it’ll be to build your authority and sell/recommend products.

The easiest way to monetize your blog in this niche is through is ads and affiliate marketing. You can also sell ebooks, printables, and simple digital products that help your readers achieve their well-being goals.

Here are some sub-niches you can consider within health & fitness:

Beauty and Anti-aging: anti-aging tips, skincare, lifestyle
Weight loss/diet: focus on one type of diet, healthy eating, etc.
Exercise: running, bodybuilding, cycling, Crossfit, yoga, etc.
Personal growth: Motivation, mindset, self-care, habits.
Demographic: fitness for working moms, health tips for travelers, etc.

One great example of a blog in this niche is Avocadu.com which was founded in 2015 and went from bringing in a few hundred bucks a month to eventually making $18,996.97 in October and the $100k per month mark in 2020.

5. Making Money Online

Suprinsgly or not, one of the best niches to make money blogging is teaching others how to make money, also knw as the MMO (Making Money Online).

While this niche is pretty competitive, people will always be interested in it (thank you capitalism). So, if you can offer a different angle or a fresh approach, you will be able to get readers to your blog who will also be inetrested in the products you promote or create.

There are many sub-niches that you can focus on in this topic and the more specific you choose it, the easier it’ll be to grow your audience in this competitive category.

Here are some potential sub-categories you could consider:

Entrepreneurs and Small business (Sales funnels, lead generation, branding, email marketing)
Freelancing (Specific industries, how to get clients, etc.)
Affiliate marketing (niche sites, paid ads, affiliate programs)
SEO & SEM (For businesses, for bloggers, link building)
Content Creation (Blogging, Youtube, Influencers)
Advertising (Google, Facebook, Native ads, etc)
Flipping (Domains, Social media profiles, Websites, Business, etc)
Creative writing (articles, guest posts, e-books, kindle, etc)
Creating digital products (e-books, video tutorials, courses, etc)
E-commerce/Dropshipping
Amazon FBA

One great example of a blog that has managed to establish itself as an authority in this niche is Matthew Woodward. He is a marketing digital & SEO expert and has been publishing detailed tutorials and case studies since 2012. His last income report was in May 2017 where he made $28,000 so we can assume he is doing way more nowadays.

Pro Tip: One important factor to consider is that this is a niche where you want to have some previous experience and success with the methods that you are teaching. Readers will be able to notice if you don’t know what you are talking about and you won’t be able to grow your authority.

6. Sports & Hobbies

The niches of sports and hobbies are great to make money because you can find really passionate audiences who are happy to invest in their interests and are always looking to improve their skills.

The options are also limited because there are hundreds of sports and hobbies and each one of those has several niches. For instance, snowboarding training is one niche, snowboarding equipment is another, snowboarding travelers is another, and so on.

These type of niches can make significant revenue through affiliate marketing since there are many products you can recommend to help your readers solve their problem or improve their craft.

You can also monetize a blog in this niche by creating an info product whether it is an ebook or a course. If you can build trust with your audience, they’ll be happy to learn from you.

A good point to consider is that you must always assume that the person coming to your blog is a beginner and to cater your article to their level. This will not only bring more readers but it’ll be helpful in the if you want to create a digital product and can then offer the advanced information for those willing to pay.

Here are some sub-niches you can choose in this category:

Focus on a specific audience: age groups, beginners, coaches, etc.
Events: training for a marathon, traveling for a hobby.
Best tools/ equipment.
Learning a new sport/ hobby
Becoming a professional / making money from a hobby.

One great example of a blog in the sports niche is TheSkiGirl which focuses on skiing tips and gear reviews. The blog is currently averaging six figures per month and on its way to hitting seven figures in the next six months mostly through affiliate links.

If there’s one sport or hobby you are really passionate about, then this is your chance to make money with it while sharing your knowledge and enthusiasm with the world.

7. Food & Cooking

Food blogging is one of the best blog niches because you will never run out of topics and you can grow pretty fast using social media and Pinterest since the topics work very well and have a great virality factor.

There’ also lots of different sub-niches you can focus on and contrary to other topics, you don’t need to do much research. With a food blog, you get to explore your creativity and share your own recipes which also means your blog will inherently be unique and those enjoy your style will become loyal readers.

Food blogs tend to make most of their income from ad revenue since the buying intention is quite low when people are looking for recipes. You can also monetize it by creating recipes books or by doing sponsored content once you are getting significant traffic.

Here are some of the topics you could focus on in this niche:

Types of cuisine: Mediterranean, Chinese, Indian, etc.
Types of diet: Vegan, keto, gluten-free, healthy eating, etc.
Specific needs: on a budget, busy people, families, etc.
Location-specific: Countries, regions, nomads, van-lifers.

The Clean Eating couple is a good example of a food blog that has managed to grow significantly in only 3 years. As its name suggests, they focus on “clean eating recipes” and making healthy food taste delicious.

According to their last income report, they made $280,000 in 2020 just before their blog hit the 3-years mark in January 20201.

If you enjoy creating recipes and trying new things, you should definitely consider a blog in the food niche.

These are some of the most profitable niches you can start a blog in but if you follow the steps detailed in the previous section, you can also choose and validate your blog niche idea outside of this topic while ensuring your chances of success.

Blogging Niches FAQ

Is there such a thing as a saturated niche?

The short answer is no.

What people think they mean when they say a niche is saturated is that there is too much competition making it too hard to get a piece of the market as a newbie. What I think they mean is that they are scared of putting in the work required to amke any niche work and are actually looking for a get-righ-quick thing.

For example, some niches that are rumored to be saturated are making money online and fitness, yet new bloggers and content creators are finding a place and building an audience in those niches everyday.

Saying a niche is saturated would be like saying there can’t be a new pop singer or pizza place because there are already too many.

Niches and audiences are not static, they are always evolving and there always be a new angle you can use to differentiate yourself from the competition. Which is why you want to choose a niche that’s specific enough so you can become an authority.

It’ll be easier to grow a blog in the fitness niche if you choose to focus on “weight loss for working moms” than if you try to cover all fitness areas.

Regardless of how popular a niche is or how many established competitors it has, there’s always a new angle you can choose. It is better to go for a competitive niche that you are actullay interested in than one that seems ‘easier but you couldn’t care less about and will end up abandoning.

Can your blog about yourself or do you need a niche?

This is a controversial topic so you’ll find different opinions. Mine is that…it depends.

See, the reason why most sucesful bloggers recommend having a niche is because that way is easier to establish your authority among yourself and Google. This is improtant because Google is one of the main ways in whcih blogs get visits so if Google doesn’t know what your blogs is about (aka what you are an expert in) it will be really hard to get traffic (at least from search engines).

Additoionally, niche blogs always have an exit startegy where you can sell your blog if you want to focus on other projects or need a big sum of money. However, if your blog is about yoruself nobody else will be able to create contnet that makes sense so it’d be really hard to sell.

Now, there are succesful bloggers with no niche or who ‘blog about themsleves and many topics’. But those bloggers have usually grown a presence as an influencer on social media and use it as. a way to get visitors. It can be done but it is a different startegy that involves become an influencer.

If you want to learn more about this method, check out this article on How To Use Instagram To Grow a Successful Microblog.

Takeaway: Blogging Niche Ideas To Make Money

Choosing your blogging niche is not a decision to be made lightly. You want to find a topic that you enjoy so you can commit to it for years to come and you want it to be profitable so your time and effort are worth it.

While there are some topics that are more popular than others like the ones I shared in this article, the truth is, you can make money in almost any niche. As long as there is enoguh readers and products to share, your blog can be profitable.

I am often asked if you need to blog about blogging to make money and the answer is of course not! The only reason why people think bloggers who write about blogging or about making money online are the most successful is that they are the only ones sharing their income reports.

Bloggers in other niches rarely share their income since their audience is not interested in it but that doesn’t mean you can’t make a lot of money outside of the MMO topics as you have seen in the examples above.

How can I start a profitable blog today?

So you have chosen your blog niche? it’s time to secure your domain name and get hosting!

Tip: If you get your hosting with Bluehost you can get your domain for free for the first year and install WordPress automatically.

Once you are set up, you can start writing your first article and building your foundation for success. This can be an overwhelming process so I recommend following my step-by-step guide to starting a successful blog today!

Here are a couple of helpful, related articles for you:

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