Of all the important things to do when you are about to launch your blog, deciding what niche you want to write on is one of the most important. It is not surprising that some bloggers even after months to years of blogging are still struggling to find their voices. Some actually admit that they are not sure of what they are doing.

Some people are naturally versatile and this has made it very difficult for them to pick a focus. While it’s possible to write about almost anything on your blog, it’s very advisable to “pick a struggle”. A personal blogger can decide to be up and about, s/he must actually make sure they are interesting things to keep blog readers glued else it is going to another wasted web space. Before starting a blog, there are important things to consider when choosing a blog niche.

These are reasons why choosing the right niche for your blog is important:

You rarely run out of content ideas.

Choosing the right niche for your blog helps you generate as many ideas as you can possibly do. Anything can spark up an idea that can be developed into a blog post. The correct blogging niche opens up your mind to possibilities, it fine-tunes the way you see the ordinary, leftover ideas. You are able to process your thoughts better and bring out the best titles.

You don’t burn out as easily as if your blogging niche isn’t right for you

You won’t make money the first day you launch your blog. I say this because many Nigerian bloggers usually get to monetize their blogs sooner or later, as their blogging journey progresses. If you are opening a blog to make some money alongside and you are not in the right niche, you will burn out quickly. You will be tired and exhausted, frustrated even. This is why choosing the best niche for your blog is more paramount than you might have assumed.

You become an authority quickly

You see, it is very easy for you to rise to the top of what suits you best. You can easily become someone other bloggers in your niche would love to consult and seek advice from. If you didn’t know, becoming an authority in anything brings you fame and in many cases, you need fame to bring your blog to limelight.

You are not exiting too quickly when blogging challenges come up

You have probably never been told but blogging like and any other field in life comes with challenges. If you are not beginning to get pissed at Google AdSense, you are wondering why your blog traffic isn’t soaring yet. If you are not surprised at your ridiculously high bounce rate, you are wondering why your blog header all of a sudden looks blurry. You need to be in the right niche to pull through else you give up on blogging totally.

Your passion easily shines through. People can read your passion.

Let me give you a tip: you really can’t hide passion. Haven’t you wondered why some people outshine other people with little efforts? It’s pure passion! Hard work, of course, has a role to play in rising to the top in your blogging niche, but your passion for that niche brings you success faster.

Now, there are so many niches that you can focus on. Topics you can blog about are (but not limited to) : fashion, technology, news/gossip, beauty, blogging, books, reviews, personal lifestyle, general lifestyle, relationships, business, food, career development, inspiration /motivation, faith, movies, music, finance and movies.

In fact, you can practically pick anything into a blogging topic as long as your choice of a blogging niche meets some of the requirements I will be talking about shortly.

Important things to consider when choosing a Blog niche

Having listed these reasons above, below are the important things to consider when choosing a blog niche:

Choose a niche you love

Remember that I earlier said that people can read your passion. You can’t hide it if you love it. This reflects in your writing voice; it also reflects when you promote your content. Blogging and its attendant activities will never feel like a chore.

You should also pick a niche that you are knowledgeable about. It is most likely that the niche you love is one in which you have a lot of experience and knowledge about. Ideas flow more when you are doing what comes naturally to you.

Pick a profitable niche

I said earlier that it’s better to pick a niche you are knowledgeable about than not. In many cases, you don’t have one option; there are usually varied options of interest. Pick the most viable one. In choosing a niche for your blog, you have to be sure that you can trade with it. This is extremely important if you are planning to monetize and earn money from your blog in the nearest future.

In choosing a profitable niche for your blog, be careful about following the crowd. A lot of bloggers make this costly mistake. If the profitability of your proposed blog does not coincide with passion, you should think deeply, take your time. You should not go into news/gossip if you ordinarily can’t bring yourself to even as much as read gossip blogs.

Consider the future potential of the niche

It is not enough to choose a blogging niche that you love and are knowledgeable about. You should consider the potential of your topic. It’s okay to be interested in politics for example but you cannot afford to centre your blog on a year’s election. It’s going to fizzle away as soon as the election is over. It may get all the traffic it needs but if you really want to be a long term blogger, that will not work.

In between blogging about leather and clothes, you should pick the later and revolve it around fashion. Except you live in a locality where they breathe leather, talk leather and love leather, you may find it very difficult to gain audience. What if you would also want to have international readers? Leather blogging is definitely not the way to go.

Research how competitive the niche is

In choosing a niche for your blog, it is very important to consider how competitive the topic you are considering is. This has nothing to do with the popularity of the niche. A guide is to pick a moderately competitive niche. Another tip is to pick a lowly competitive niche with very high searches. This gives you popularity leverage quickly.

Here is an example; it is somewhat rare to find book bloggers in Nigeria. I mean, blogs that actually review books, talk about new book releases, criticize book texts etc. A certain number of people are definitely looking for book reviews. If books are your thing, you read and love to talk about books, why not consider opening a book blog? This will help you milk the audience that is most definitely not finding quality things on books in Nigeria.

Can you bring a fresher perspective into your blogging niche?

There are so many blogs out there as we speak. In fact, the niche you are deciding to go for already has a pretty good number of blogs in it. In deciding the best niche to pick for your blog, you should be sure that you are not going to be doing exactly what other people are doing. Of course, your blog has to be typical of its niche but you have to be able to mark a difference. Why would a blog visitor choose your blog over another blog in the same niche? You have to give them reasons.

Let’s assume that you are deciding to choose food as your niche, what are you going to do other than churning out food recipes? Have you considered reviewing food restaurants in your locality? What about having people give their opinions on recipes? They can submit their own recipes on popular local food. Do something different; just bring something fresher to the table.

Consider your blog’s ideal audience

When choosing a niche for your blog, you have to be able to define your ideal audience. This will help you be as practical and realistic as possible. How well do you relate with a certain age group? Will your passion feed a particular gender? What about location of your ideal blog audience? Of course, other people can come to your blog to read your blog posts but who will be more willing to become your advocates?

Let me give you a practical example. If you decide to become a lifestyle blogger, you can narrow down your niche into female lifestyle blogging for example. If you have more flare for older and successful business men, you can have a men lifestyle blog that defines them as your audience.

Choose a blogging niche you will be proud of now and in future

Sometimes people want to go into noisy niches. By noisy niches, I mean niches that people are constantly talking about. As it is now, news /gossip /celebrity gossip blogs are very popular blogging niches in Nigeria. If you won’t be proud to be associated as a gossip blogger, don’t go into gossip. It will hinder you when you want to begin to promote your blog.

You want to have a blog you are proud to share, to constantly talk about, and to own. This will help your content marketing. If your topic or niche does not match your personality, don’t go for it.

So guys, are you planning to start a blog? Have you been contemplating what niche to focus your blog on? This should have helped clarified some questions that might have come about things to consider when choosing a blog niche. Let me know if you have questions. You can ask them in the comments section.

This guest post was written by Esther Adeniyi. Find more blogging tips on www.estheradeniyi.com