In this blog, I’ll show you exactly how to pick a profitable blog niche that has the potential to grow and scale with step-by-step instructions:

• What makes a blog niche and audience profitable
• How to find out how profitable a niche is
• How to find the right balance between passion and profitability

Many people will tell you that passion is essential to blogging success.

That bloggers who fail, fail because they aren’t passionate enough about their chosen topic.

But the truth is when you start a blog business, one of the biggest reasons you could fail is that you haven’t picked the right niche.

It could be that you’re just not knowledgeable enough about that topic.

That there aren’t enough monetization options for that niche, or that you’re not leveraging the right monetization tactics.

And that you’re not targeting the right audience: an audience with the spending power beyond low-ticket items that cost $20 up to a few hundred of $.

What you need to succeed is a profitable niche and audience.

Suppose you’re only targeting regular people with average incomes. In that case, selling enough products to make a decent profit will be tough, not to mention scaling your blog business.

Your success as a blogger always starts with your niche.

Here are the steps involved in choosing the right niche for your blog:

Step 1: What do YOU know?

What are your skills? What are you most knowledgeable about? What topics are you passionate about?

As I mentioned earlier, passion alone is not a ticket to success; quite the contrary.

But it’s a great starting point for today’s challenge, depending on what you’re passionate about.

For example, you might LOVE watching movies and TV shows, but the chances of building a profitable business out of this passion are pretty low.

But there are other things you might be enjoying that could turn into a profitable business.

Plus, it would be best if you liked the topic to some extent; the goal is to live and breathe this topic for years to come.

So the first thing I want you to do is to take a pen and paper and make an exhaustive list of:

• All of the things you love doing
• Anything you’re passionate about – any topic you can think of!
• All of your skills: what do you know how to do? What are your skills? Don’t overlook any; write down any skills you can think of (writing, taking photos, editing videos, graphic design, and even things like being great with people and with giving advice, or being great with money – write down everything you can do, whether it’s practical or not)
• All of your past jobs and your responsibilities there (for example, maybe you were an exemplary manager or you were the king or queen of HR)
• All of your hobbies: who knows, one of them could be a very profitable niche.

Literally, write down everything you can think of – you’re not choosing anything yet, just keeping your options open and expanding your horizons.

Step 2: Start scrapping your list

Now that you’ve got your list ready, it’s time to start removing some of them – and making you’re shortlist of niches/topics.

At the end of this exercise, you should be left with five topics to focus on.

And later on, I’ll show you how to properly research each to find the ideal niche for your blog.

Here are some tips to help you cut down your list:

• Separate your list into two columns: Passions and Skills
• Pick any overlapping elements from the two columns: these niches will be worth looking into
• Scrap anything that you don’t know enough about (but don’t delete them completely – those skills could be helpful when coming up with your blog monetization plan)

Once you’ve got the five niches ready, it’s time to start your research; now, you’ll find out whether your niche is profitable enough.

Step 3: Find out how profitable each niche is

What kinds of products and services can you create?

Is there a big enough audience?

How much are they willing to spend on these products and services?

These are all critical questions you need to answer because if your niche isn’t profitable – and scalable – your blog business will fail.

Here’s what to do:

• Research and make a list of all the most popular blogs in this niche
• Identify and make a list of each of these blogs’ products and services, along with their pricing (hint: google the blog’s name + “income report” to see if they’ve published any reports in their past detailing all their income sources and how much they made from each one)
• Separate the lists for each blog into two categories: low-ticket items (products and services that cost under $100) and high-ticket items (products and services over $100)
• Look up your niche on Google: what ads appear? If there are ads for the types of products you might talk about in your blog, that’s a great sign, as it shows potential for affiliate marketing opportunities and for creating and selling various products
• What recurring income streams are possible? Selling products is a great way to make money, but it’s unpredictable. You also need to be able to have some recurring income streams that you can rely on every month (for example, recurring consulting/coaching clients, recurring freelancer clients and so on)

Ideally, you need to pick a niche that allows you to sell both low-ticket and high-ticket items.

If you can only sell low-ticket items, then it will involve A LOT of work to make enough money to make a profit since you have to sell huge volumes.

On the other hand, if you can only sell high-ticket items, it can be difficult to sell enough and get recurring clients.

Step 4: Research niche keywords

Along with the profitability of your niche, another essential factor is the search volume for that niche.

If there aren’t enough people searching for the topics you’re writing about (and selling), then you should try a different niche or change your approach – it’s that simple.

To find out how many people are searching for these topics, start by listing keywords you believe people will use to search for these terms.

Put yourself in their shoes: what google searches would you make?

Then, you need to research those tools, so you’ll need an SEO tool to help.

If you’re serious about this business, then you should invest in a powerful SEO tool – I use and recommend SEMrush – because you’re going to need it a lot on your journey.

Free tools are great for some basic research, but their results are just not that accurate.

Plus, a good SEO tool will help you along the way with your keyword optimization, your backlinking strategy and even your work for your clients.

Here’s what to do:

• Create the list of keywords that people would use to search for a blog like yours; basically, put yourself in their shoes: what google searches would you make? Focus on long-tail keywords; for example, don’t search for “graphic design”; search for “how to become a graphic designer” and “graphic design courses.”
• Look up each keyword in your list and write down the search volume: ideally, at least you want to go for keywords with thousands of searches every month.
• Get keyword suggestions: see what other related keywords there are that people search for and what their search volume is like

By the end of this exercise, you should have a list of at least 15-20 keywords, amounting to a total of minimum of 200,000 searches a month (and even more!)

Step 5: Research competitors and niche potential

How “evergreen” is your niche? Will it still be around five years down the line, ten years, or 15…?

Take the time to think about this as realistically as possible because while some niches might be popular now, they could also die out in the future (or the products/services you’re selling could die out).

Also, at this stage, you should go back to your potential competitors – other bloggers in this niche – to see how many competitors you’d have and how big they are.

This is because it’s probably not the best niche to go for if you can’t find a lot of competition. At this point, people have tried almost anything and everything online in the hopes of making money.

So if no one is succeeding in the niche you’re interested in, then there probably isn’t enough demand to sustain this business model.

It’s like the “restaurant rule”: if there are three busy restaurants on a street, then people are coming there to eat – so that means there’s room for your “restaurant”, too.

To sum up

Here are the most important lessons and tips to get out of this email:

• Make a list of all your skills, passions, hobbies, past jobs and roles
• Start scrapping your list until you’re left with five niches
• Find out how profitable each of these five niches is
• Research relevant keywords to discover
• Create a list of 15-20 keywords to target that generates a combined total of 200,000+ searches every month
• Research competitors and make a list of all low-ticket and high-ticket items sold