How To Choose A Blog Niche And Name

Today we will discuss how to choose a blog niche and name for the website you intend to develop and potentially sell to the highest bidder.

Navigating the digital landscape as a website investor or an experienced content creator requires more than just technical know-how; it demands strategic insight, especially when it comes to choosing a blog niche and name.

Whether you’re looking to develop and resell websites for profit or to enrich your portfolio with niche-specific sites, selecting the right niche and an appropriate name is foundational.

This article will walk you through the crucial steps of identifying a profitable and resonant niche, coupled with the art of picking a name that not only captures the essence of your content but also appeals to your target audience.

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How To Choose A Blog Niche And Name

Firstly we will determine your blog niche, then we can centre on your blog name.

Before diving into the specifics, it’s crucial to understand the significance of choosing the right blog niche.

A common misconception is that focusing on a few interconnected topics might limit your reader base.

While it’s true that a niche approach may attract a narrower audience, the key lies in cultivating a loyal following – a ‘fan club’ that eagerly consumes everything you publish and is more likely to invest in your products.

The goal isn’t just to accumulate pageviews; it’s about engaging a dedicated audience. A broader, less invested audience might bring in higher traffic, but this rarely translates into effective monetization.

Moreover, the essence of blogging is to connect and provide value to your readers. This becomes challenging when your content tries to appeal to everyone, ultimately resonating with no one.

A well-defined niche allows you to focus your efforts on helping a specific group, making your blogging both impactful and rewarding.

Write What You Know

Rule number one in successful niche sites: you must write about something you’re passionate about.

Your writing has to excite people. It must be able to tap into their emotions. You need to be able to be authoritative and convince your audience of what you know.

You can’t do any of those things if you have no interest in your topic.

For example, if I started a blog on sports it would be the dullest thing you ever read.

I could write what needed to be written, I would research so everything was accurate. But I wouldn’t be able to fake that excited, passionate, informal voice bloggers need.

It would just sound like a school essay and those are dull lets be honest.

You aren’t going to convince anybody to try your suggestions, follow your tutorials, buy your products or click on your affiliate links on your topic if you think its boring.

Plus, you will have to write a lot about your topic. You will get very very bored if you are not insanely interested in your topic after the first 100 blog posts.

But What About ‘Lifestyle Blogs’? They Write About Everything!

First off ‘lifestyle blogs’ are quite difficult to get off the ground because they can be too vague.

It’s very hard to build up a dedicated audience if your post topics vary too much.

Secondly, it may look like a ‘lifestyle blog’ has no niche to you, but you will often find that their niche is their target audience.

So, a blog may post everything from recipes, to fitness, to home DIY and you think well this blog has no niche. Look a bit closer.

Particularly read the about me page of who runs it. You will probably find that there is a slant put on every blog post.

For example, let’s say a blog owner may be into frugality and saving money. She may have articles called ’10 amazing meat-free recipes to save you money’, ‘The perfect places to go running outside for free’ and ‘How I renovated my bedroom in a weekend without buying anything new’.

They may not immediately seem to have anything to do with each other, but actually, they are all written from the frugality perspective.

This is how seemingly niche-less ‘lifestyle blogs’ can cultivate a target audience. They do have a niche it’s just a bit hidden.

Finding Your Blog Niche – One That Makes Money

I think all blog niches can make money. But it’s a whole lot easier with certain ones compared with others.

Note – I use the word easy in this section, not in the traditional sense of the word.

But as in easy compared with others. Nothing in blogging is ‘easy’ as such but there are ways and choices you can make that will make your blogging journey easier.

There are four key factors and associated questions that you can use to assess the ease of monetizing a blog niche:

1. Is it a relatively easy industry to get into?

For example, fashion is incredibly hard to be successful in and that goes for fashion blogging as well.

It’s an oversubscribed and exclusive industry. That doesn’t mean it can’t be done. It’s just a whole lot more work than others.

2. Has it got the WIIFM factor?

WIIFM stands for Whats In It For Me. For nearly every blog post you write your audience needs to immediately determine what’s in it for them to read your post.

In other words, how are you helping your audience?

For example, recipes make great blog posts because the audience knows exactly what’s in it for them to read that post.

A set of instructions on how to cook something new.

Perfect, you have helped your readers by showing them how to make a new dish.

3. Are there affiliate programs or brand sponsors available for it?

Whilst there are many different ways of monetizing a blog, one of the most secure and passive is through affiliated marketing.

Therefore you need to check whether there are any relevant affiliated programmes available within the blog niche.

4. Would it be possible to make a product within that niche?

You may have noticed that the blogs making the really big bucks are the ones selling their own products.

Ideally, things like ebooks and online courses once they have been created, are purely passive income.

So you need to determine if a product could be made for that niche and how passive that product would be to sell.

Your niche should meet all four key factors.

An example of a blog niche that is relatively easy to monetize is the ‘personal finance’ niche. I’m talking posts like ‘how to start a make money online’, ‘best ways to save money’, ‘best personal finance tools’, you get the picture.

So let’s go through the four key factors but focusing on the blogging niche:

1. It’s easy to enter the industry. Other finance bloggers are super friendly and always want to help. There are courses and tutorials on literally everything you want to know. Plus you don’t need loads of cash to get involved.

2. There are loads of possible WIIFM topics you can write about in the finance niche. The posts I touched on earlier all clearly help your audience as either tutorials, educational or reviews.

3. Yes there are lots of affiliate programs you could use in this area. Think credit card affiliate programs, investing tools, debt consolidation services…

4. You can easily make courses that help people save, earn and invest smarter.

Now, I will demonstrate a blog niche that doesn’t meet all four key factors and would therefore be harder to monetize: Fashion.

While some fashion bloggers are doing incredibly well it is a harder niche to monetise.

1. As I explained when I was introducing the four key factors, fashion and by extension, fashion blogging is difficult to enter.

Oversubscribed and exclusive. You have to be very very very good at not only your subject but also things like photography to excel in this niche.

2. Fashion blogs often tend to be more this is what I’m wearing, rather than helping your readers and providing WIIFM posts. There are ways you can help your fashion blog audience, e.g. ’10 ways to style glitter waistcoats’. (Are glitter waistcoats a thing… who knows). But they are less obvious perhaps than in other niches.

3. Affiliate-wise there are a lot of clothing brands that offer affiliate programs but the payouts tend to be a lot lower than with other programs associated with other niches.

4. Product creation in the fashion blog niche is of course possible but it’s a lot less obvious.

See how much more difficult it was to answer the four key factors questions for the fashion niche, than finance?

You should now have a pretty good idea of how to determine if you can easily make money with a blog niche.

Go through the four key factors and the associated questions with a few different niches and see what you find.

But you must remember, just because the blog niche is monetizable (even on the easy end of the monetizable spectrum) doesn’t mean you will make money.

There are a lot of other aspects that go into running a successful blog.

Choosing an easy-to-monetize blog niche is just a good foundation if you do want to make money with your blog.

In the next part, we will look at bringing all this info together.

An Exercise For Figuring Out Your Blog Niche

I have a little exercise for you to do. It’s super easy and quick I promise.

Plus by the end of it you will have your blog niche!

Grab two separate pieces of paper. On the first piece write a list of topics that you are passionate about. The crazier the better!

You want to aim for 10 ideally. But don’t bother writing any topics that you honestly couldn’t write around 4,000 words per week on for the next however many years of your life.

Pro-tip: If you can genuinely only come up with one topic on that list then that’s what your blog should be about.

No matter how hard or easy it is to monetize. If that’s the topic you adore then you will figure out a way to make it work.

Okay, grab your other piece of paper. Now write down 10 blogging niches that make money. Use the four key factor questions to help you determine if a niche is easy to monetize or not.

Need further help? Go back to the blogs that made you want to start your own blog. Are they making money? Good money? If so what is their niche? Write those down.

Now grab both your lists and put them alongside each other. Can you see any crossovers at all? Anything kinda related?

You might have some obvious ones like baking on list one, and food blogging niche on list two. In which case your blog niche could be baking recipes.

Don’t worry if there isn’t an obvious link anywhere. Try to create a link.

Just remember, the more individual and off-track your blog niche is, the less competition you will have and the easier it will be to build up your dedicated fan base.

Nothing is too crazy and you never know what’s about to be the next big thing.

Important Tips To Know When Choosing A Name For Your Website

AVOID USING YOUR OWN NAME:

Now you may have noticed that quite a lot of bloggers use their name or something generic that hasn’t anything to do with their blog niche.

I would recommend you don’t do this for three reasons.

Reason one is that your audience will have no idea what your blog is about at all until they have had a good look around or read your About Me page.

So whilst they may jump on your site to read an article they won’t necessarily stick around because it isn’t immediately obvious that the blog is about something they are interested in.

Reason two, names can be really hard to spell.

In my mind, you want to make it as easy as possible for your reader. People are busy so you need to make it clear what your blog is about in the shortest time possible.

So they can decide if they want to stick around or not.

And reason three for why I don’t recommend using your name in your domain name is because it will be much harder to sell your website when you want to sell it down the road!

TRY USING YOUR NICHE TO FIND YOUR BLOG NAME:

This is in my eyes the best way to do it. That way as soon as someone rocks up to read some of your awesome content they can see immediately if the blog might be something they are into.

For example, I might be researching different days out, I could click on two blog posts with very similar titles.

Something along the lines of ‘The best day out for you and your boyfriend without breaking the bank’.

Both articles could be about ways to go watch live sports events for little to no cost.

Let’s pretend that one is called www.Ilovefootball.com and the other is called www.livingfrugally.com.

Now I’m more likely to click away from the football one, as I’m not interested in sports. But the living frugally one I will stick around and take a look because it’s a topic I’m interested in.  

See how the blog name has enticed me to stay and I might even become a regular reader!

BLOG NAME ESSENTIALS:

Regardless of anything, there are a few things that your blog name should be.

• Easy to spell
• Short enough to remember
• Catchy
• Include your main keyword if you can

Now go ahead and brainstorm a few blog names for your niche. Try and come up with 3 to 5 that you really like.

How To Choose A Blog Niche And Name – Conclusion

In conclusion, the journey of selecting the perfect blog niche and name is both an art and a science.

It requires a deep understanding of market trends, audience needs, and branding principles.

For website investors and experienced bloggers, these decisions are pivotal in shaping the success and profitability of your digital assets.

Remember, the niche you choose sets the course for your content and audience engagement, while the name of your blog is your first impression in the digital world – make it count.

By following the insights and strategies discussed in “How To Choose A Blog Niche And Name,” you’re not making a careless choice; you’re laying the foundation for a strong, engaging, and profitable online presence.

Embrace this process with creativity and strategic thought, and watch as your digital portfolio flourishes.

If you have got your blog niche and name sorted now then comment them below.