How to Choose a Profitable Blog Niche & Target Audience

Some bloggers and marketers out there are adamantly against niching. Others think it’s a recipe for disaster to not have a niche.

In this post, we’ll discover some ways for you to thoughtfully choose an interesting yet profitable blog niche and then we’ll determine who your target audience is.

What’s a Niche Anyway?

A niche is just a fine-tuned topic you choose for your blog that is targeted at a small subset of people.

By the way, is it “neesh” or “nitch?” Well, according to dictionary.com, it’s “nitch.” You’re welcome 🙂

According to the now-defunct businessdictionary.com, a niche is:

“Concentrating all marketing efforts on a small but specific and well-defined segment of the population. Niches do not ‘exist’ but are ‘created’ by identifying needs, wants, and requirements that are being addressed poorly or not at all by other [companies or bloggers], and developing and delivering goods or services to satisfy them. As a strategy, niche marketing is aimed at being a big fish in a small pond instead of being a small fish in a big pond…”

Niche marketing is aimed at being a big fish in a small pond instead of being a small fish in a big pond

So, the idea of having a niche is that if you target your blog towards a smaller market, you’ll be more likely to solve their problems well as opposed to just giving out one-size-fits-all solutions and advice that don’t really help anyone.

Now there are successful bloggers who have a niche and there are successful bloggers that don’t. Likewise, there are failed bloggers who had a niche and failed bloggers who didn’t. So what does this mean for you?

It means there is no one answer, but I can help you figure it out for you. Let me start with two stories.

Get to Know Your Audience by Experimenting with Different Topics

Some successful bloggers say that not having a niche at the beginning is what helped their blogs take off. When Abby Lawson of JustaGirlandHerBlog.com started out, she wrote on several different topics like home decor, family life, DIY projects, and organizing.

After a while, she began to write about the experience she was having growing her blog and saw that it began to resonate well with her audience also. Over the last few years, she’s been able to successfully find a balance between the topics of organizing, decorating and blogging. It’s not exactly super niched down, but it works for her and her highly profitable blog!

Abby now says “Even if it means that it took me a little longer to grow my site, I’m glad I went through that learning experience and tried a bunch of different things in the beginning.”

Now for our second story…

Start Small and Expand

When I started DYOB, it was specifically aimed at helping women bloggers find free and cheap resources to decorate their blogs with. I offered inspiration, tutorials and lessons to help these women improve the look of their blogs. I knocked my blog out of the park from the start because my blog was very focused on one thing.

However over time, as I learned more about the blogging game and fielded thousands of questions from my readers, I began to expand my content to also cover writing, social media and marketing.

But then two things started to happen: A) I couldn’t keep up with all the different topics well and B) I started to blog less about design, which is what my entire career and passion has been about from the first place! That caused my blog to become unfocused and I started to lose interest in blogging altogether.

When I went back to blogging about design, it helped me focus my content better and tailor it to my specific target audience: women bloggers looking to learn how to DIY the look of their own blogs. So from my own personal experience, I think that starting with a narrower focus is what helped me gain my audience because it set me apart from other bloggers and I can use my target audience to determine what type of content to put out.

These two blogging stories started out quite differently but still resulted in successful blogs.

So What Can You Do to Choose a Profitable Blog Topic?

First things first, download the free Website Planner so you can follow along:

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1. Write Down Some Problems You are Able to Solve

What do you enjoy doing? What are you good at? What do you love helping people out with? Do you find yourself giving advice to people about certain things? Do people come to you when they need help with something?

Katharine Trauger, a member of my Blog Beautiful Facebook group, says it like this…

“Think hard about what people love to hear you talk about, what they ask your opinion about, what they send their friends to you for. That type of question you keep having to answer, that you wish you just had a handout for. Then go there. Make the handout. Promise people you can answer this one type of question, and challenge them to ask it. Doesn’t matter if it’s food, children, home interior, or what. It’s what you know and what you were meant to share, to help with.

For me, women keep asking me how to stay married and sane at the same time. I’m a home schooler and know a lot about that, but you know what? It’s [actually] not what people want to hear from me. Nope. They want to save their marriages. So that is where I go.”

Exercise: In your Website Planner, list all the things you like to do, all the things you are good at, all the things people come to you for. Then next to each one, write down the problem your skills or talents can help solve.

2. Narrow it Down

Out of the problems you’ve written down, choose the two or three that have the most potential. The ones that you feel will make the most impact. And also the ones that have opportunity to grow.

Exercise: In your Website Planner, circle or highlight the ones you feel would work best for you.

We’ll work a little more on narrowing it down to one niche in the next post.

Now Let’s Talk About Your Target Audience

Ok so now let’s talk about your ideal target audience. We want to know who we are speaking to so we can tailor a solution specifically for them.

It’s important to know that you do not want to please everybody.

Bet you’re thinking “But wait a minute, I don’t want to turn anyone away or leave anybody out.”

But here’s the thing: when you try to please everybody, you end up pleasing nobody.

You see, people want to feel like you’re speaking directly to them. They want to know that you get them and you understand where they’re coming from.

This may make you feel better: just because you’re targeting a specific market doesn’t mean that you will chase everyone else away. Noooo…. actually the opposite is true!

DYOB is geared towards female bloggers, specifically moms with young children who want to create or run an online business that helps them support their families and have the ability to spend more time with their kids. This is who I think about when I write my posts.

Does that mean that these are the only people who follow me and read my content? Not at all!

I have plenty of retired empty-nesters who follow me, college students that read my content, and even men that subscribe to my blog! But the reason I have success is because there is consistency in my brand and messaging, and there is focus to my content.

So keep that in mind while you’re trying to get specific about your target audience.

3. So let’s define your target audience

Who will you write for? Who will resonate best with your solutions and offerings? Why do you write about what you write?

Get as specific as you can and focus on one person. This will be your persona who will help you to create a focused, targeted message to your target audience.

Exercise: Go back to your planner to work on your blog’s persona.

1. Think about WHO needs what you can offer. Think about all the different demographics that could possibly need what you might offer.
2. Now, out of those different demographics, think about who you actually WANT to serve.
3. Once you’ve determined who this ideal person is, think about what their gender, age, marital status, sexual orientation, location, job, income level, etc. would be.
4. What kind of interests or hobbies does this person have? What is their personality like? What makes them happy, angry, frustrated or sad? What is important to them? What kind of values do they possess?
5. Finally, give your persona an actual name so that he/she becomes real to you. Someone you can channel when you’re creating content.

Next, let’s work on the solution you’re going to offer your target audience

In the next step, we’ll find a way to solve a real problem (or set of problems) in your own unique way that helps your target audience.

Step 2: Offering a Solution to Your Target Audience >>

Now tell me, what’s the thing you struggle with most when choosing a profitable blog niche or audience? Share with me below and I’ll try my best to help!