Are you looking to create your own blog with the goal of making money with it? Wondering what type of blogs and what niches are the most profitable?
Then you have come to the right place!
The truth is, most people outside the digital marketing sphere don’t even know blogging can even be a sustainable and scalable source of income. And to be honest, I don’t mind since that just means less competition and more opportunities for me us.
While you can make money with almost any topic, some niches are undoubtedly more profitable than others so it is key to choose the right one that alings with you goals from the beginning.
Besides, is not only the right niche that matters but having the right strategy on how you are going to monetize it and convert your readers into loyal fans and buyers
Once you finish reading this guide you will know exactly how to choose and validate your blog topic, as well as the best ways you can use to monetize it from day 1.
Blog Niche: What is it and why is it important?
In the blogging world, your blog’s niche is basically the topic you decide to focus on.
It can be broad as in ‘Travel’, ‘Fitness’ or ‘Relationships’ or be more specific as in ‘Travel with Kids’, ‘Fitness for Moms’ or ‘Breakup Advice’.
When you are first starting out, it is best that you ‘niche down’ by choosing a more specific topic. This will help you build your authority and start building a community of loyal readers.
When someone finds your blog and see that you cover a topic that they are interest on but also 10 more than they don’t really care about, it is unlikely that they will subscribe or come back.
On the other hand, if they see that all your articles are on topics related to the reason they found you on the first place, they’ll definitely want to stay updated and know more from you.
Additionally, niching down will also help you ranked faster by Google which is one of the main traffic sources for bloggers. In order for you to start ranking for certain search terms (keywords) one of the key factors is for them to see you as an expert in that field.
If you choose a too broad niche there’ll be literally thousands of topics for you to cover and you will have written 200 posts and yet haven’t even covered 10% of it.
Besides, if you choose a smaller niche, once you have managed to position yourself and are getting some consistent traffic, you can expand and cover other related topics without issues.
How do blogs make money?
In order for you to pick the best niche for your blog, it is important that you understand all the possible ways in which you can monetize it
. This will make it way easier when you are trying to narrow down and pick your blog’s topic.
Here are some of the main ways in which bloggers make money:
- Ad Placement: Adding ads in your blog is one of the easiest monetization methods to implement. You just need to apply to Google Ad Network (or other) and after you are approved you can start earning from every impression and click.
- Affiliate Marketing: another way you can make money is by promoting affiliate products. You can do this by creating reviews, tutorials, etc. where you include links for certain products or services. If your visitors click on those links and end up buying something from that company, you receive a commission.
In this blog, for example, I include affiliate offers for hosting, software, and other tools that help bloggers and entrepreneurs.
If you want to learn more about this monetization method make sure to check my article Affiliate Marketing for Bloggers for a detailed guide.
- Selling your own products: creating and selling your own products is a great way to make money from your blog since all the profits go straight to your pockets. From pdf guides to ebooks or online courses, there is no limit to what you can offer when you know your audience and their needs.
- Freelance writing: While this is not money made directly fro your blog, s lot of bloggers use writing gigs as a way to support their blogging journey at the beginning. Once you have some blog posts, you already have a portfolio that qualifies you as a writer and an expert in your field. Plus, the more you write the better you get at it so it’s a double win.
- Partnerships: Once your blog starts growing along with your authority, you will be able to make money through brand partnerships. This means they will pay you to create content, post it on your blog, share it on your social media channels, etc.
While it can take some time to reach these type of deals, well-stablished bloggers can make 5 to 6 figures solely on brand partnerships.
- Coaching / Consulting: Similarly to partnership, once you have gain a reputation in your field, you can offer your services as a private coach or consultant. This is another example of how blogging can serve as a platform to grow your authority and give you access to opportunities you wouldn’t have had before.
Recommended: How much do bloggers really make?
Blogging niches: Types of blogs to make money
Before getting started I want to mention that this is by no means a complete list since there are literally thousands of niches, sub-niches and approaches you can choose to make money blogging.
So, think of this a guide of broad blogging topics that you can use to get inspired and start finding your money-making blog niche.
1. Personal Finance
We live in a capitalist world where most adults don’t truly know how to make money, save money or stay of out debt. This is why the personal finance niche is one of the most profitable (and also most competitive).
But don’t let this discourage you since there is a huge audience and interest in this topic. If you can niche down or find a unique approach to it, you can definitely make some good money with it.
Personal Finance Stablished Blogs:
- SmartPassiveIncome makes $160,000/ month
- Making Sense of Cents $1,500,000/ year
- NerdWallet currently worth $500 million
Monetization methods:
Since people in this niche are looking for financial help, they won’t be able or interested in buying a high-ticket course or digital product.
If I were to start a blog in this category, I would focus on affiliate marketing including debt settlement, loans, and credit card offers. There are many great offers that pay between $30-$50 per lead so people won’t even need to buy anything so you can get a commission.
Also, once you start getting some consistent traffic, you can make a decent income from simply placing ads in your blog since there is a lot of demand from advertiser to reach these audiences.
Niche ideas:
- Personal Finance for College Students
- Personal Finance for Single Moms
- Personal Finance for Retired People
- Personal Finance for Entrepreneurs
- Personal Finance for Digital Nomads
2. Health & Fitness
People will always look for ways to feel and look better which is why this category is also very popular and profitable. It is also very competitive but don’t let that discourage you since there is always a unattended audience or new approach you can take.
When it comes to health & fitness the topics include different types of exercise, bodybuilding, weight loss, and specific diets.
Health & Fitness Stablished Blogs
- Healthline (Undisclosed but more than $100,000 based on visits)
- Avocadu $30,000/month
- EasyLivingToday $40,000/month
Monetization Methods
There is no limit to the methods you can use to make money in this niche. Contrary to the personal finance niche, there is no obvious limitation so you can promote high ticket affiliate offers or even create your own products and courses.
People are always willing to invest when it comes to their feeling and looking good so if you can gain their trust and put a good offer in front of them, they’ll be happy to purchase it.
Niche ideas:
- Weight Loss & Gain for women, men, pregnancy, post partum, etc.
- Weight loss and diets. (Be careful not to choose a trending topic since it might be gone as fast as it appeared).
- Food & Supplements. e.g. veganism, detox, low carb, gluten-free, diabetic.
- Workout types e.g. CrossFit, functional, seniors, yoga.
- Fitness Gadgets
- Fitness Equipment
3. Food
One requisite to make a niche profitable is to have an audience that is passionate about it and that is definitely the case with food and cooking.
The great thing about this niche is that there are a lot of sub-niches you can get into and differentiating yourself is easier since your unique recipes will do that for you.
Stablished Food Blogs
- Pinch of Yum $100,000+/month
- Sally’s Baking Addiction $50,000/month
- MidwestFoodieBlog $10,000/month
Monetization Methods
In the beginning, most food bloggers make a majority of their income from ad placement. Since most people who come to a recipe site are not looking to buy anything, affiliate revenue is less common.
Sponsored posts and partnerships are also a great way to make money as a food blogger once you have gained some traffic and reputation.
Additionally, launching your own digital product with recipes is a great way to turh the casual visitor into a paying customer.
Niche ideas:
- Recipe blogs
- Food or drink tasting blogs
- Cookbook review blogs
- Healthy eating blogs
- Cuisine-specific
- Location-specific
- Sustainable cuisine
4. Travel
*2020 Update: COVID has hit the travel industry, including bloggers, pretty hard but it doesn’t mean this is no longer a profitable niche in the long term. Building a blog and getting some traction takes some time so you can still get started in this niche until and gain some time until travel returns to normal level*
Travel is a trillionaire industry so you can imagine that there are a lot of opportunities to make money with a blog in this niche. People are traveling more than ever and with the expansion of remote work, that will continue to increase.
This niche is as big as the world itself since you can focus on specific countries or regions, types of travellers based on demographics, interests, etc.
Stablished Travel Blogs
- NomadicMatt $70,000+/month
- The Blonde Abroad $1M in 7 years
- OneStep4ward $1M in 3 years
Monetization Methods
As a travel blogger, you have many options to make money. From affiliate offers like insurance, plane tickets, and accomodation to sponsored content for hotels and travel operators.
Additionally, travel bloggers also make some money creating their own travel guides or photography presets to make pictures ‘insta-worthy’.
Niche ideas:
- Travel for solo women
- Travel fashion
- Budget Traveling
- Luxury travel
- Adventure travel
- Travel for families
- Travel for foodies
- Experiential travel
- Region-specific
- Location-specific
5. Fashion and Beauty
Fashion and beauty blogs emerged in the 2000s and are here to stay. While the first bloggers that appeared in that time have achieved now celebrity status, there is still room for you to start today and still be successful.
When it comes to this niche, yourself and your style are part of the content so it’ll be easy to find your own approach and audience.
Since the industry is very visual, it is common for bloggers to use another platform such as Instagram or Youtube to grow their following and direct traffic to their blogs.
Stablished Fashion and Beauty Blogs
- WeWoreWhat – Net worth $4 Million
- Rumi Neely – Net worth $1 Million
- The Blonde Salada $8M/ year
Monetization Methods
Fashion and beauty bloggers main income sources are sponsorships and brand partership. Depending on the engagement, bloggers charge $1-$2 per 100K followers for a blog post and social media post.
But don’t worry, even if you are just starting out you can promote affiliate products for fashion and beauty brands and then move towards sponsorship as your blog grows.
Some bloggers in this niche have even launched their own products with or without a brand behind them which can defitnely be a great source of income if you have built a loyal following.
Niche ideas:
Your niche in this case will be focused on your own style but you can also choose to target specific audiences such as fashion for moms, fashion for plus-size women, etc.
6. Technology
Technology products are not cheap and new models are constantly being launched so consumers are used to buying and replacing their gadgets fast.
This makes it a good niche to make money but it also means you would need to create content more frequently that in oher industries and your articles will have a shorter expiration date.
If you have no problem with that, then this is a profitable niche to consider.
Stablished Technology Blogs
- WireCutter – Made $150 Million in 5 years
- TechCrunch: $2.5M per month
- Gizmodo: $325,000 per month
Monetization Methods
The main revenie source for blogs in this niche is affiliate income from people buying the porducts theyy review or recommend.
While these numbers might seem unreachable, it’s important to consider than most of these blogs have been around for more than ten years.
While you might not make a million in your first year, you can definitely hit 6 figure in your second year if you follow the right strategies.
Niche ideas:
- Processor
- Cameras
- Speakers
- Smartphones
- Audio & Video
- Smartwatches
- Car Accessories
- Security
- 3d Printing
7. Sports & Hobbies
Wherever there is a passionate audience, there is a profitable niche and so is the case when it comes to sports and hobbies.
When people are very interested in an activity and want to get better at it, they are willing to invest in themselves whether that is in equipments or in courses.
Stablished Sports & Hobbies Blogs
- SucculentsAndSunshine – $200K per year
- TheSkiGirl: 6 figures per month
Monetization Methods
From promoting affiliate products to creating your own digital offers and courses, Sports and hobbies blogs have many opprotunites for monetization.
Creating a membership is also a good idea since people like to connect with others who shared similar interests and it gives you the opportunity to create a passive recurring income.
Niche ideas:
- Golfing
- Skiing
- Tennis
- Fishing
- Paddle boarding
- Sailing
- Photography
- Djing
- Gardening
- Crafting
How to choose a profitable blogging niche?
Now that we have reviewed some examples and ideas of profitable niches, let’s go over how you can choose and validate your own to make sure you can make money with it.
1. Start with your experiences
It is a good idea to start this process by making a list of all the topics you have experience in, including your studies, current job, hobbies, the way you spend your time, your family, the place where you live, etc.
Do not filter yourself yet, at this point we are just trying to make gather all your possibilities. You can also go around your house or town and write down topics that spark your interest.
Note: You don’t need to be an expert in this topics —unless you are talkinh about health or laws which Google takes very seriously. But in most case when people go online they are not looking for advanced knowledge. They are looking for someone who has done the research for them as has organized the information so they consume it easily.
2. What are you truly interested in?
Then, go over your list and mark only the topics you are truly interested in and would want to explore further.
Not everything you have experienced with is something you want to pursue. You might not even be too interested in your current profession or day job and it wouldn’t make sense to change a job you don’t like for blogging about something you don’t like.
Think that you are going to be writing, reading, and breathing this topic for years so try to leave only the topics you see yourself enjoying for a long time.
For example, I love traveling but when I started my first blog (not this one) I realized if I made it about travel then it would become my job and it would not longer be a hobby. Every trip I would take I would have been more concerned about gathering data and creating content than on enjoying it so I decided to skip it.
At this point, you can also add a topic you have no experience with but have always wanted to explore. Creating a blog includes a lot of research so this could be a great opportunity for you to learn something while you share it with your readers.
3. Get specific
At this point, you probably have a list of broad topics so is time to narrow down your focus and make them more specific niches.
For example if you have ‘Fitness’ in your niche, make it more specific by adding who would be your target audience, what type of exercises would you cover, etc.
Or if you want to talk about entrepreneurship, is it about freelancing? starting a business? social media? etc.
4. How will you help?
Now that you have those more specific topics, let’s find out if there is a problem or need you can help solve.
Figuring out if there is an audience you can help and how is an essential step to validating your niche’s profitability.
To continue with the previous example, let’ say you are thinking about freelancing.
A person from this niche would research topics like how to get clients, how to create a portfolio, how to send invoices, etc.
They would also have problems like not having a day job and being too tired to work in their projects, clients refusing to pay, not having a health insurance, etc.
Try doing this for the niches in your list and see they also have some problems and needs you can help with.
Hint: Problems and need don’t need to be super serious, they can also be something like “they need to know what are the best running shoes for beginners”.
Additionally, you might let your imagination run in the background with some ways you could monetize this type of blog.
5. Volume & Trend
Another important factor to validate your blog’s profitability is making sure there is enough and steady interest in that niche.
Here are some ways in which you can do that:
Go to Ubersuggest and do a search for some of the narrow down niches you wrote down. This is going to help you evaluate if there is a high volume of people looking for information about this topic.
For example if we talk about the weight loss niche, it is expected that it will have a huge search volume.
But that is just for comparison, now we want to look at the specific niches you are consider. For examples in the weight loss industry, one sub-niche could the ‘weight loss juicing’ so we’d go ahead and search for that keyword to see the search volume.
Try a few variations and related topics in each niche to get a more accurate idea on whether your niche is valuable
See how many searches are done per month in very specific keywords. If you find a few that still have a good search volume, you’ve hit the jackpot.
6. Check for competition
No matter how good you are at coming up with niche ideas, if there is money on it, there’ll be someone else who has thought of that first.
Which is why finding competitiors in your niche is a good sign!
You don’t want to reinvent the wheel here so going into a niche with zero competitors is not a good idea. It can only mean that there is no audience for that topic or the niche is not selling well online. Both enough reasons to not pursue it.
A simple Google search about your niche idea will help you find out some of the main competitors.
If you have done a good job of narrowing down your niche you shouldn’t find huge corporate blogs as your competition either since that’d mean it is a very competitive niche and you’ll have a hard time getting some piece of that audience.
By following these steps you will be able to find a validate a profitable niche that you are also passionate about. For more ways of finding your niche and what mistakes to avoid, make sure to check out my article on How To Start a Money Making Blog
Other factors that influence a blog’s profitability
While choosing the right niche is undoubtedly the first step to making sure you are on the right track to creating a profitable blog, there are other factors that you should consider to guarantee your success as a professional blogger.
1. Choose a professional platform
If you want to make a full-time income and more blogging, you should approach it as professionally as you would do with any other job or business.
This includes choosing a platform that allows you full control of your content and monetization.
While there are some free blogging platforms like Blogger, you can not place ads and are restricted in many other ways.
My recommendation and what I tell all new bloggers is to go with a self-hosted WordPress blog using a reliable hosting provider.
I have been using Bluehost for more than 6 years and I am very happy with the quality and customer support.
Check out Bluehost plans from just $2.95 per month
2. Create a Traffic Strategy
Your blog can be amazing but if you don’t have a way to get visitors in, you will be making around zero dollars.
The Holy Grail of internet traffic is organic traffic that happens as a result of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This means that you optimize your content by using the right keywords and other strategies in order to get ranked in Google’s top results.
If you managed to do this succesfully, you can get passive organic traffic while you sleep, cool huh?
However, SEO can take a while to work and it’s not the only traffic strategy you can use. There are bloggers whose main traffic source is Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest or another social media.
These are less passive methods but also work faster so you might want to consider a combination of SEO for the long term and Social Media for the short and mid-term.
If you want to learn more about SEO and how to do rank for your desired keywords check out this article later.
3. Provide Value
I have mentioned this before but I’ll say it again, if you want to make money blogging you must see it as a business where your content is your product and your visitors are your target audience.
You wouldn’t expect to be successful in a business with a mediocre product. In the same way, bloggers who are making big figures are those who have gone above and beyond to help their audience and provide content that they wouldn’t find elsewhere.
Aim to provide great value through unique and thoughtful content that helps your audience and they will become avid readers and customers.
4. Have a Monetization Strategy in Mind
Last but not least, you don’t need to have a course ready to launch or a list of affiliate programs you will use before starting dut do have an idea of how you plan to make monetize your blog before investing all your time and effort into it.
Start considering it since the beginning and keep an eye open to see what your competitors are doing.
Finally, do not limit yourself to one strategy only, bloggers that earn the highest profits are those who have diversified income streams.
Blogging Niches That Make Money | FAQ
How Long Does it Take to Make Money Blogging?
It depends on how much time you are putting it as well as your traffic and monetization strategies.
As a general rule you should see your first year of blogging as the builiding phase where you will not make much money for the first 6 to 8 months.
If you have produced some good content and are getting traffic from either SEO or other sources, you can expect your income to start growing in month 10-12 and continue to increase over time.
In other words, if you are able to commit during the first months, you will see long term rewards.
Check out this article to find out how much bloggers of different niches and experience levels are making.
Are blogs still profitable?
The short answer is yes, there might be some more competition than 10 or 20 years ago but there are also more people online and more niches to cover.
It is not hard to make money blogging If you put in the work and follow the recommended strategies.
It is not a get-rich-quick scheme but it can replace your current income and more.
Why do blogs fail?
While each case is different here are some reason why blogs can fail:
- They choose a niche that is either too saturated or where there is no money to be made.
- They don’t know how to get traffic
- Their content sucks
- They have good content and traffic but don’t know how to monetize it.
- They give up too soon because they failed to get rich after 4 months.
Where do I start?
Are you ready to create your own profitable blog but don’t knwo where to begin? I have some articles that will guide you step by step into create your own money-making blog.
Starting your blog for beginners: Read this to learn everything from getting your hosting to choosing your blog’s domain and creating your first post.
Make Money Blogging: Read this to learn all the monetization and traffic strategies you need to guarantee your blogging success
Affiliate Marketing for Bloggers: Read this to learn all about Affiliate Marketing, how to find the best programs, get approved, and create affiliate content that converts.
Pinterest for Bloggers: Read this to learn everything about this untapped traffic source and how to use it to explode your traffic during your first months as a blogger.
Takeaway
As you can see, there are many types of blogs and niches to make money as well as as many possibilities for monetization.
If you want to get started with yout own money making blog, the best advise I can give you is to start now. Every successful blogger will tell you that making money blogging will take time, so the sooner you start the sooner you can start seeing results.
Treat your blog like a real business and it can change your life as it did for me.
