When I first started blogging three years ago, I struggled with the same question as all newcomers: "Should I focus on writing photography tutorials, or share travel experiences and equipment reviews at the same time?" I remember that at two o'clock in the morning, I was refreshing the cases of various successful bloggers on the computer screen, and I found an interesting phenomenon - those bloggers who earned five figures a month all had clear positioning labels in the upper left corner of their websites.
Now, today I will unveil the secrets of niche selection which will become the basis for you to create a profitable blogging business .
This article is long, and you should also bookmark this guide for future reference. Grab a cup of coffee or green tea and eliminate all distractions.
What is the biggest mistake in niche selection?
There are a few mistakes that many beginners make when choosing a niche. Let me list a few.
1. Entering the general market:
Generic niches are broad niches that are usually highly competitive and very wide in scope. Examples include the health niche, the technology niche, and the fashion niche.
A better way to study it is to focus on a specialized narrow niche within a broad niche .
This alone will ensure your blog’s success in terms of popularity, traffic, and money.
Additionally, you will become a professional expert because you will spend a lot of time researching, studying, and writing around a focused topic.
Read: Single Topic Niche vs Multi Topic Niche: Which is Better and Why?
2. Fewer profit options:
Many newbies only focus on AdSense when starting a blog. This is mainly due to lack of information, and it should not be the only criterion for choosing a profitable niche.
You need to broaden your horizons and focus on a niche that offers more profit opportunities.
Can be (but not limited to)
- Direct Advertisers
- Affiliate Program
- Online Courses
- Merchandising
Read my guide on how to make money blogging which will help you learn more about your blog monetization options.
3. Without research, you will fail:
If your goal is to build a sustainable business (source of income) through your blogging efforts, then you need to take the time to research and use data to choose a niche.
This may take 2-3 days before you can start writing a blog . However, this exercise alone will help you validate your idea and make your decision based not solely on passion and intuition.
On the contrary, intuition is not a bad thing as long as you are able to get the right information before publishing the blog.
4. Persisting in the wrong positioning:
Thinking “it’s okay, I’ll succeed” often leads to near-term frustration and ultimately to giving up on blogging.
Often, when you realize that you are working in the wrong niche, you can choose to create a new website (in a new niche) and then make it work for you. In fact, your second blog will probably be successful because you will be utilizing what you learned in your old blog in your new blog.
In my 12 years as a blogger, each new blog has been more successful than the one before it. So don’t be afraid to leave an old niche and start a new one when you realize that the old niche is saturated or no longer interests you.
Please take these suggestions with caution and think carefully before you decide to change your career.
5. Failure to start due to lack of niche:
Choosing a niche is definitely the first step to a successful and profitable blog, but you shouldn’t stay at this stage for too long. There are more challenges waiting for you, and you should complete the entire niche selection process within a week.
Even if this means you choose the wrong niche, you can always correct it later. The key here is to not get bogged down in the niche selection process.
Now onto the benefits…
What are the benefits of niche selection?
1. More traffic – Google Love:
Since you’ll be choosing your niche with the help of data, your chances of building a high-traffic blog will be higher. Also, since you’re working in a highly focused niche, you’ll be more likely to be rewarded by Google in terms of organic traffic.
2. More loyal users:
Getting into the right niche will also attract like-minded users. Since your blog will be centered around a topic, getting into the right niche will also attract like-minded users.
Since your blog only covers one topic, your readers are more likely to stick around.
You will notice that your bounce rate decreases, your average page visit time increases, and your community grows. The whole process may be slow at first, but eventually one day everything will change.
3. You may become an expert:
Learning is a slow process but as you spend a fixed amount of time every day studying a topic, eventually you will be in the top 1%-5% of people in that field. The best part is that you won’t even realize how you acquired this knowledge because your thirst for learning more will never end. This difference is mostly noticed by other people or by yourself when you compare your recent work with your older work.
4. Marketing becomes easier:
This reason alone should compel you to spend a good deal of time choosing a niche. When you have a focused blog, your marketing efforts will be a little easier than if you didn’t, and you’ll see better results with less effort.
5. More Money:
Once your blog starts gaining traction, advertisers will reach out to you. This phase of your career will be a game changer because your initial niche choice will help you make more money than your peers.
Because of the focused niche, your ads should get high click-through rates from a hyper-targeted audience, which is the biggest advantage. In one of the niches I worked in, I netted over $1,000 in a single day because of the focused niche I worked in. Now, you may or may not be able to duplicate my results, but you will definitely be better off than starting a blog without choosing a niche.
My first experiment
At that time, I stubbornly believed that diversification was the way out. Under the domain name "Digital Life", I updated photography tips, coffee tasting, and outdoor equipment reviews at the same time. The first three months were indeed lively, and readers left comments saying "the content is very rich", but the conversion rate dumbfounded me: the ad click rate for photography articles was 3%, and that for coffee articles was only 0.2%, and the reader retention rate was declining by 5% every week.
Until one day I received a private message from a reader: "I follow you to learn composition, but recently there are always coffee machine ads on the homepage. Can you set up category filters?" It was then that I realized the seriousness of the problem.
Lessons from blood and tears: three fatal injuries
Reader stickiness trap
Imagine going to a barbershop and finding out that Tony also runs a pet grooming business. My fitness readers are as confused as vegetarians walking into a steakhouse when they see a baking tutorial suddenly appear on the homepage. Here’s a real case: After food blogger @Anna’s Table tried to add parenting content, her subscriptions plummeted by 42% in 30 days.
The invisible ceiling
Last year, when I was helping a friend optimize his travel blog, I found that a site focusing on "island travel" reached the first page of Google in just 6 months, while another site covering "global travel + hotel management + photography skills" was still on the third page after 9 months of optimization for the same keywords. Google's algorithm is getting smarter and it is more willing to recommend "experts" in a certain field.
The harsh reality
When I approached advertisers with the data from the two test sites, the CPM (cost per thousand impressions) for the site focusing on "macro photography" was $18, while the CPM for the comprehensive site was only $4.5. What's even more heartbreaking is that the camera brand clearly stated: "We only need accurate traffic. 50 people who really want to buy a camera are worth ten times more than 5,000 people who just look at it."
The solution: My transformation plan
After six months of losses, I made three key adjustments:
1. Create a content matrix
- The main site "Light and Shadow Catcher" focuses on photography teaching
- The sub-site "Coffee Research Institute" is operated independently
- Travel content moved to Medium column
2. Traffic funnel design
At the end of the photography tutorial, I set an Easter egg: "Follow my coffee research institute to unlock the photographer's private coffee bean collection." As a result, 30% of photography readers were converted into coffee station subscribers, and the reverse diversion effect was 5 times higher than that of mixed writing.
3. Keyword layering strategy
Focus on long-tail keywords: The conversion rate of "How to take photos of the stars with an iPhone" is 230% higher than that of "Mobile photography skills". Using Ahrefs tools to monitor, it is found that the advertising bids for precise long-tail keywords are lower.
A practical guide for beginners
If you are struggling to choose a theme, try my 21-day test:
Brainstorming Phase (Days 1-3)
Listing all the areas of interest, I wrote about 12 topics that year, ranging from drone aerial photography to hand-brew coffee equipment reviews.
Content Stress Testing (Days 4-14)
I wrote three drafts on different topics every day. By the 10th day, I felt that I had more ideas when writing photography tutorials, while coffee articles required a lot of research.
Data Verification (Day 15-2)
Publish the test article to an open platform such as Medium and monitor it with Google Analytics:
- The average reading time for photography is 4 minutes and 32 seconds
- Coffee category only 1 minute 17 seconds
- The bounce rate of travel category is as high as 82%
This method saved me at least half a year of trial and error. Now my photography website generates a stable advertising income of $2,000 per month, and the coffee website, as a sideline, can also bring in an additional income of about $500.
Common Misunderstandings Warning
I have received a lot of inquiries recently and found that newcomers often step into these pitfalls:
"Build a comprehensive website first and then segment it" → The transformation cost is extremely high after the traffic is dispersed
"Solve it with a category directory" → Search engines will still judge the site as mixed in topics
"Multiple subdomains are enough" → The operating cost is more than 3 times that of a single site
I helped a mother and baby blogger split her site last week. Her lesson is very typical: the original monthly advertising income of the comprehensive site was 800, and after splitting out the independent supplementary food review site, it reached 800 in two months . After splitting out the independent supplementary food review site, it reached 1200 in two months. However, because the content of the main site was more focused, the income increased to $1100.
Final Advice
If you’re determined to make money blogging, remember this formula:
Accurate positioning × continuous cultivation × time compounding = profit potential
There is still a note on my desk that I wrote when I transformed in 2019: "Instead of being an encyclopedia-style grocery store, it is better to become a specialty store in a certain field." Now every time I look up and see this sentence, I will be grateful for the painful but correct decision I made.
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