Table of Contents
Are you thinking about starting a blog but not sure which topics or niche to choose? Choosing the right niche for your blog makes it easier to create engaging content and even make money online. In this article, we will explain how to easily choose the best blogging niche that will eventually help you start earning online.
What Is a Blog?
A blog is a website that’s updated regularly with new pieces of content, which are normally written articles. These are called ‘posts’ and appear in reverse chronological order, with the newest at the top of the list. When blogs first started, they were mostly personal diaries, sharing information on a range of topics of interest to the person writing them. That’s still how some blogs work today, but a large number of WordPress blogs now focus on specific niches that interest the blogger and their target audience. For instance, blogginghelpline.com is a blog focused on helping non-techy users do more with WordPress through helpful tutorials, how-tos, and other articles.
How to Make a Blog
To start a blog, you need three key things:
- A domain name: the address of your site (ours is blogginghelpline.com)
- Web hosting: online storage for your site so visitors can access it
- A blogging platform: special software that lets you easily create a blog without needing to do any coding
Normally, a domain name costs around $9-15 per year, and web hosting starts from $7.95 per year. That’s a significant investment, especially when you are just testing the waters. Luckily, Bluehost has agreed to offer our users a free domain name and a generous discount on hosting. Basically, you can get started for $2.75 per month.
When it comes to your blog platform, there are plenty of choices available, including many great free ones. However, if you want to make money from your blog in the near future, then WordPress.org is your best option (this is what we use on blogginghelpline.com). It is easy to use and comes with thousands of design options and add-ons. Most importantly, it gives you the freedom to monetize your blog in any way you want.
Can You Really Make Money Blogging?
Starting a blog isn’t going to make you rich overnight, but you can definitely make money blogging. Many popular blogs make money online using different methods. Often, this is called ‘monetizing’ your blog. Smaller blogs with a specific target audience can easily make a nice side income. Many popular blogs make six and even seven-figure income (see: blogginghelpline.com income – how much money does blogginghelpline.com make?). The following are just some of the most popular monetization methods used by blogs all over the world.
- Advertising: Running ads, often through an advertising network like Google AdSense. Some bloggers sell ads directly to companies instead.
- Sponsorship: Running sponsored (paid for) content from an advertiser. This is often in the form of sponsored blog posts but could also include social media posts on Instagram or other social networks.
- Affiliate marketing: Linking to products or services that offer commission when someone clicks on your link and makes a purchase. This is a great way to monetize your blog. We have lots of affiliate marketing tips and tools to make it easy for you.
- Digital products: By selling digital products like eBooks, online courses, printables, apps, software, music, and more. Digital products generally have low overheads and can work for almost any niche.
- Services: If you are a writer, photographer, coach, or similar, that can be a great way to monetize your blog. You might even start a blog to help you market an existing service you offer, like logo design or freelance writing.
- Physical products: Although they have higher costs than digital ones, physical products can be a great way to make money. It’s easy to add an online store to your WordPress blog and start selling.
Things to Consider When Choosing Your Blogging Niche
Many new blogs die within a few weeks, and most don’t even make it to a couple of months. Whatever blogging niche you choose, make sure you are genuinely interested in the topic. This will make it easier to stick to it and keep yourself motivated. It’s also important to consider:
- Do you know enough about your niche to be able to write confidently? You don’t need to be an expert, but it’s best to start a blog on a topic that you are able to write about without having to do loads of research.
- Can you easily make money from your niche? While blogs on all sorts of topics can and do make money, some niches are a lot easier to monetize than others. A blog about a little-known or uninteresting topic might not get enough readers to make much money.
- Have you chosen an appropriately sized niche? It’s best not to go too broad. If you are aiming for an audience of ‘everyone’, you are likely to end up with ‘no one.’ Try to find a sub-niche that’s a great fit for you.
- Are you happy to have your name associated with your niche? While it’s fine to blog anonymously if you want to, you might find it difficult to monetize.
Top Blogging Niches That Will Make Money
You might already have a topic in mind for your blog, or you might not have any ideas at all. All the niches below are great ones to try, so long as you pick a topic that you’re truly interested in. These are all big, popular niches that have been around for years and that can make a lot of money.
1. Health and Fitness
Health and fitness are huge topics, and you’ll definitely find an audience if you’re blogging about something in this area. Health and fitness is one of the most popular blogging niches. It is a lucrative niche, which means there are a ton of blogs that will be competing with you. The easiest way to build your voice is by narrowing it down to your general interest. There are lots of different angles that you could take:
- A particular diet: paleo, gluten-free, raw food, 5:2, keto…
- A particular type of exercise: running, weight-lifting, CrossFit…
- A specific audience: women, men, young, old, geeky…
- A particular approach to health: homeopathy, acupuncture, wellness…
- Sharing your progress: if you are on a health journey of your own, then you could update readers on that and share your lessons learned or create a fitness tracker to help users track their progress.
2. Personal Finance
We all need money, and many of us want to earn more, spend less, or save more. Blogs on personal finance have found huge audiences, and again, there are lots of different angles and approaches you can take. You might choose to write about:
- Frugality: money-saving tips, using coupons, anti-consumerism…
- Investing: market tips, best index funds, angel investors…
- Debt: paying off debt, mortgages, student loans…
- Budgeting: software, motivation, cost-cutting tips…
- Sharing your progress: this is quite common with blogs that focus on getting out of debt.
3. Fashion
Fashion is another immensely popular blogging niche and one that could be a great money-maker. It’s a particularly good fit if you love posting on Instagram, which is where some fashion bloggers have become especially influential. Many fashion blogs focus on the blogger and include lots of photos. If you want to remain anonymous, or if you hate being photographed, then this type of fashion blogging probably isn’t for you. Instead, you might want to blog about particular trends within fashion or share fashion-related news. Although you might associate fashion blogging with female bloggers, this niche isn’t just for women. There are plenty of men’s fashion blogs (often called “men’s style”) out there too. These tend to focus more on tips and product suggestions than on personal photos.
4. Lifestyle
What’s the ‘Lifestyle niche in blogging? It can be a little confusing if you are new to blogging, so let’s break it down. Lifestyle means writing about a range of different topics that are connected through having the same audience. For instance, you might have a lifestyle blog where you write about food, fashion, and motherhood. The connection is that you’re writing for women in their 30s and 40s who want to eat well and look great while raising young children. Alternatively, you might have a lifestyle blog aimed at single women that focuses on travel, beauty, and hair. Or you might have a blog aimed at men aged 20 to 40 that’s all about style, fitness, and music. The mix of topics is up to you, but it’s important to make sure your blog has a very clear brand to give it focus and direction.
5. Business and Marketing
There are loads of blogs out there that cover business and marketing-related topics. If you’ve been reading a lot about blogging, you might feel like every popular blog talks about something to do with blogging, marketing, or building a business. If you’ve got a business or marketing background, then starting a blog in this niche could be a great idea. As with the other niches on our list, this is a huge one, so you’ll want to find a clear focus and voice for your own blog. Depending on your expertise and interests, you might choose to blog about:
- B2B (business-to-business) marketing
- B2C (business-to-consumer) marketing
- Entrepreneurship: starting and growing companies
- Small businesses: more and more people are moving into self-employment, so this is a great area to target
- A particular type of marketing or area of marketing: networking, social media marketing, copywriting, direct response marketing…
6. Technology and Gaming
The fast-paced technology niche is great for making money from affiliate income, either directly from manufacturers and software companies or through a website like Amazon. Your best monetization routes are likely to be through advertising and affiliate marketing. Even if you are not writing in-depth product reviews, a technology or gaming blog will give you lots of chances to link to products or software using affiliate links. You might not be able to break industry news or share insider information, but there are still lots of things you could write about in this niche:
- Specific equipment or gadgets: phone handsets, digital cameras, fitness trackers, Chromebooks…
- Games: for consoles, PCs, mobiles, Facebook…
- Tutorials: either for a specific piece of software (e.g., Photoshop) or more wide-ranging
- Latest news: usually about a particular company or type of product
- Technology or gaming for a specific demographic, such as teens or boomers
7. Travel
The final niche on our list is travel. Again, it’s a hugely popular niche, both with bloggers and with readers, and there are a lot of different approaches you could take to build a successful blog. Blogging about your own travels could be monetized through affiliate links to hotels, recommended travel buys, and so on. It might even give you opportunities for free vacations. Great photos are, of course, an important part of your travel blog. Even if you are just writing about local attractions, people will want to see pictures. You could focus your travel blog by writing about:
- Specific countries or continents: things to do, restaurants to visit, ways to get around…
- A particular type of traveler: families, solo female travelers, digital nomads…
- Travel deals: for flights, hotels, packages…
- Your own travels: having a key theme or brand can make this easier to monetize
Other Popular Blogging Niches to Consider
Of course, these aren’t the only blogging niches you can make great money from. There are bloggers out there with successful blogs on almost any topic you can think of. Maybe none of the ideas we’ve looked at sound like a good fit for you. Don’t push yourself to start a blog on a topic that you’re not interested in. Here are some other good options to try. They all have the potential to make plenty of money.
Crafts Blog
If you love to knit, paint, sew, make jewelry, or engage in some other type of craft, why not blog about it? There are lots of great crafty blogs out there, and they tend to do really well on Pinterest. As with other highly visual niches, like fashion, lifestyle, and travel, you’ll need to be able to include great photos. You could monetize by using affiliate links to any crafting tools and supplies that you want to promote or by selling your crafted items through a marketplace like Etsy.
DIY Blog
Do you enjoy decorating and remodeling your home? Or maybe you’ve gone further and redesigned or even rebuilt your home. There are plenty of DIY blogs out there, and this can be a great type of blogging niche to try if you enjoy writing tutorials and “how-to” articles.
Parenting Blog
Do you have kids? There are thousands of blogs out there about parenting, covering all sorts of different angles. While you might think the niche is already full of mommy bloggers, the audience for parenting blogs is so large that it’s definitely worth considering. To help your parenting blog stand out, you’ll want a clear angle. You could write about a stage of parenting (like parenting toddlers), or you could write for a certain group of parents (like older parents or teen parents).
Educational Blog
Is there a topic that you know well and that you could teach others about? That could become a great niche for you. For instance, perhaps you are a keen amateur photographer, and you could write detailed tutorials for beginners. Or maybe you are an experienced developer, and you could offer tips for people learning to code. Sites that teach people how to do something can almost always be monetized through selling eBooks, online courses, or other information products.
Food Blog
We all need to eat! Blogs about food can be hugely popular. In this niche, you’ll almost certainly be sharing recipes, so you’ll want to take photos that make your food look great. Again, it helps to have an angle or specific area that your blog focuses on within the broader niche. Perhaps you’ll be writing about quick and easy meals that taste great or about gluten-free or dairy-free recipes.
Final Thoughts on Choosing the Best Blogging Niche
You could spend forever trying to pick the very best blogging niche. Or you could start your blog and six months or a year from now, you could be making good money from it. First, choose a niche that interests you and make sure you have a clear idea about how you can monetize it. Then, choose a domain name that works well for your blog topic. Finally, sign up for a hosting account and register your domain name. That’s all you need to do to get started with your blog. We hope this article has helped you choose the best blogging niche to make money from your blog. If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.