Blogging For Profit – How to Find Niche Site Ideas

In my previous blog post I shared with everyone my intention to develop a brand new blog from scratch. The first step, of course, is to know how to find niche site ideas in order to know what the subject of the blog will be about. There are hundreds of options for how to find niche site ideas across the Internet, but the trick is to find niche site ideas that are a personal passion, a niche site idea that you enjoy writing about and one that will still feel excited after a few years.

There are many articles on personal development that highlight that the stuff that we love to spend time doing comes more naturally to us than the stuff that we are less engaged with. So when deciding what niche site ideas to develop a blog around start with the question: what do you love to spend time doing? Think about how you spend your down time and, the books or magazines that you read, your personal experiences or expertise, and what niche websites do you enjoy reading and engaging with.

I wrote down a list of niche site ideas, one being “a diary of a music fan”. This appealed to me, but I had to consider what niche site ideas that I could actually talk about over a long period of time. I decided that it would be more interesting if it was focused on one music gig a day for a year – that would be awesome! However, it would be logistically challenging to pull off with a 7 month old and purely local gigs would make it less interesting and compelling for the audience. This dude here has got a similar idea around listening to one album a day http://onealbumaday.wordpress.com/ he’s up to his 521st album at the time of writing!

OK I’m sure that you get the gist of it. You can turn anything into a niche site or blog! The best tactic for picking a niche site idea isn’t just about deciding to write about ‘X’, but also looking at the same time at how you can to help people or fulfil a need. If you can help people then there will be a way to keep people motivated and engaged with the material. We can help people by making them laugh – check out http://theoatmeal.com/ – or do you want to teach people stuff like cookery for example http://www.goodlifeeats.com/ If you can just focus on how you want to help people, the process becomes easier and you’ll never be stuck wondering if a post you’re going to write fits your audience.

I decided a blog where I needed to do something every day to talk about is probably out of the question until Jake is a little older, but I won’t rule it out longer term. In fact something music based would really stoke my fires for sure. So at least I know that I want a blog that I won’t struggle to keep updated, and run it around my other life commitments. So next I revisited my niche site ideas, and worked out which one I not only had enthusiasm for, but could write about for years, and I specifically wrote down how and why it would help people. My blog will inspire others on something I’m passionate about – which you’ll see after the site has had a chance to establish itself. Your blog might, for example, teach art and design http://www.thisiscolossal.com/ .

I got 20 ideas and then I reduced them down to my top 3-5. Then I got on to my next task: niche site idea research. What blogs and niche sites are already out there? Who are the biggest “influencers” in my niche area? (These are people I’ll need to engage with in the future for my blog to grow.) And the important thing: could this blogging niche make me money?

In reality, if I’m able to attract traffic, I’ll be able to make money, but not all niches have the same income potential so it is worthwhile putting in upfront research to get an estimate of income potential. There are a number of different tactics that you can use to get a feel for how to find niche site ideas and identify what income is likely to be generated.

1. Typing in related keywords into Google this will give you a sense of the top 20-30 sites.

2. Using a blog search engine such as Technorati and finding out what popular blogs are in your niche area. You can determine the most influential by examining how many followers they have and how many comments they receive. I also evaluated how the blogs were earning an income. Was it through advertising such as banners? Did they sell products like eBooks? Did they have affiliate links eg, were they linking their readers to sales websites where they would make a commission?

3. Using Google Adwords keyword tool  here I get a good sense of the competitive nature of specific keyword phrases as the keyword tool shows you the total searches per month.

4. Check out http://www.magazines.com/ the idea here is if there is an entire magazine (or magazines) dedicated to a particular subject, you can bet there is demand – especially if the magazine is published monthly.  This is a useful way to find niche site ideas.

5. Amazon is the cat’s meow when it comes to finding hot and popular niche site ideas to build or buy websites around. As the largest ecommerce retailer in the world, you will be able to quickly and easily spot the best niches to pursue. First you want to visit the Amazon Best Sellers. And once you are there, you can browse the best sellers by category – enough said. Don’t ignore the Hot Sellers, Most Wished for, and Most Gifted sections either. All of these are indicators of what niches are popular.

6. eBay Pulse This is another old stand-by for niche research. You’ll see the most popular searches for all of eBay but then you can drill down by category. Not only will you discover popular niches, but you will find some great keywords as well;)

7. eBay Popular Products This is often an over-looked area on eBay when identifying niche site ideas in general but is one you definitely want to add to your list. You not only get the top products overall, but you also get at a glance the top products for each category. Then if you click to any of the categories, you get the top ten products for that category.

8. ClickBank.com No niche research would be complete without mentioning the ClickBank marketplace. If you are new identifying niche site ideas, I can promise you just about any ebook or course you buy on how to make money online will mention ClickBank. It’s the largest marketplace of info products. If you are building or buying websites based on providing information – as in an ebook – then you need to familiarize yourself with ClickBank.

In my case, I I’ve found enough related niche site ideas with very popular blogs apparently earning decent incomes. What I now need is my domain name – which we’ll be looking at next time.

For more detailed information on niche site ideas development and research, see my separate resource page.

To Your Success
Howard Clemence
Professional Internet Marketing Coach

Author of How You Can Generate 50-100 Leads Per Day
http://tinyurl.com/3okcd9z

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