The moment you start pondering about which niche to blog in, you’re forced to consider many other questions. Questions such as which niches are best for monetization, which niches are not too crowded and how to stand out among other blogs in your chosen niche. These considerations and more – do they convey the reality of niche blogging or are they niche myths?
1. Your Niche Must Be Popular
People look for niches that are already popular with customers. Nothing wrong with that, but there’s no need that your niche should be popular, stylish or smart with the potential to move your business upmarket. Even things that you might think are everyday and ordinary, if leveraged properly, provide the opportunity for a successful niche.
2. Your Niche Has To Be Targeted
People want variety. Even customers of a target niche need advice, products and services that fit in with their other situations. Making your niche too targeted is not necessarily a win-win idea. Allowing for a little flexibility to expand into related or associated niches will help you garner a larger audience.
3. You Must Choose A Niche
Every business opportunity creates its own demand pockets. You can successfully differentiate your business across a wide market without particularly choosing a niche. As long as you don’t clutter your business with multiple and different markets, you can make do well without choosing a target niche.
4. It’s All Too Crowded – No More Profitable Niche Markets
With changing technology and incoming and outgoing trends, everything is in constant motion. There’s no such thing as an over-saturation in any niche market. As markets evolve, new niches present themselves, and players expand, drop out and diversify. Competition is not set in stone, as you can see, so saturation is a myth.
5. There Are Only So Many Profitable Niches
Don’t become a frog in the well. As things evolve and grow, new niches wait to be discovered. Sometimes micro-niches grow around established markets, leading to sudden and new demand in areas you never thought of. Keep searching for newer keywords and brainstorm to identify newer niches into which you can expand and offer greater value.
6. You Must Blog In A Niche You Know Well
You can learn as you go. You don’t have to know everything right at the outset. Think of it as entering university and learning more about your subjects each day. You become more of an authority as time passes. Ask any established niche blogger and they’ll tell you that they learn something out of every post, because of the research.
7. Niche Marketing Concerns Are For Affiliate Marketers
Niche marketing came before affiliate marketing even began. In fact, if you’re a niche marketer, you don’t even have to think about affiliate marketing, unless you’re interested in taking it up. There are so many ways to monetize your niche blog – you can retail, sell information, provide a service and so on.
8. You Need To Be An SME To Build Credibility
In order to build trust and credibility in you as a blogger, what you primarily need is passion for your market. Your intent, honesty, straightforwardness and positive approach will ensure the right impression on customers. If you’re looking at a niche where you can consider yourself as an SME given what you know, your choices will be limited.
9. Your Niche Must Be Small
It’s not easy to find a niche that’s both small and profitable, not unless you throw yourself into research for days. If you’re thinking that a small niche will have lesser competition online, you may be right, but don’t be guided only by that fact. Larger markets are advantageous as well even with the competition, because of the demand and the profitability. Plus, you don’t have to do as much research.
10. It’s The Market That Counts, Not Your Passion For It
Without passion it will be hard to sustain your enthusiasm for the daily task of blogging. Your passion counts. At the least, your niche should be an area for which you feel something. So it’s best to also check with your personal interests when you’re freezing your niche.
11. You Can Only Start With A New Market
All markets are in a state of constant movement, with changing customer numbers, needs and wants. So it’s wrong to think that you’ll find niche marketing opportunities only in markets that are new. Every day a niche market loses players and markets decline and marketers that hold on win. You don’t need to play only in a new market.
12. Your Niche Shouldn’t Be Too Narrow
There’s no reason you cannot succeed in a narrow, highly targeted niche, as long as there’s demand in that market. If you start off in a narrow niche thinking that if it fails all is lost, there’s news for you. Even within a narrow niche, micro-niches form and there’s demand for products and services for special needs groups.
