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So, you’ve decided to start a blog. Congratulations! Blogging is an excellent way to promote yourself (or your brand) and share your expertise.
But what topic will you cover in your blog?
Many first-time bloggers struggle to decide what exactly to write about. Some fill their blogs with any idea that happens to pop into their heads—a scattershot approach that, unfortunately, often leads to little success in terms of readership. After all, most people read blogs to find answers to specific problems and aren’t interested in a blog that covers everything and anything.
To avoid this problem, decide on some possible blog niche ideas early in your process. A niche blog not only helps focus your writing, but also attracts the specific visitors you want.
Let’s examine what a blog niche is and how to choose one for your blog.
What are blog niche ideas?
A blog niche is the specific field or topic you cover in your blog.
It sounds rather straightforward, but you should invest time and research into determining the exact topic you want to blog about before you start writing. Your ability to choose and cover a niche ultimately determines whether you'll reach an audience that returns to your blog and keeps reading your content.
As an example, suppose you decide to write about the entertainment industry. Unless you pinpoint a specific aspect of entertainment, you run the risk of making your content too broad. This makes your blog look generic, and it becomes impossible to stand out from the thousands of other entertainment blogs.
A well-thought-out blog niche covers a key area you have expertise in. Rather than write about the entire entertainment industry, you could, for instance, focus on:
- A film genre – art films, 1950s horror films, etc.
- A popular computer game – first-person shooter games, MMORPG’s, etc.
- A music genre – folk, R&B, blues, etc.
<div class="tip">Focusing on a specific niche is especially helpful for building an affiliate marketing website. You can promote niche products relevant to a specific audience—and make lots of money.</div>
How to Find Excellent Blog Niche Ideas
When brainstorming blog niche ideas, start by looking at your own interests. Consider:
- What topics can you write about for months at a time?
- What subject areas do you already have expert knowledge in?
- Do you want to keep learning more about these topics?
Next, determine your target audience—the group of people you want to communicate with. Research public online forums such as Quora to search for your topics and find questions that people are asking about them. You can answer these questions in your blog articles.
To see how popular your topics are, visit Google Trends, a handy free tool for keyword research. Type in keywords related to your topic and look at graphs of how interest in your topic has increased or decreased over time. You should also test different keywords to discover the words people most commonly use to search for your topic—this will help you decide which of your topic candidates are the best blog niche ideas.
After choosing a blog niche in a specific area that you and others are passionate about, begin to establish yourself as an authority in your field by producing quality content your audience can’t find easily anywhere else online.
Some people believe creating a blog niche that only covers a specific topic limits the number of people who will read their blog. However, as you’ll see from the examples below, choosing a unique blog niche will earn you many devoted—and regular—readers.
1. Pets and Pet Care Tips
Animal and pet care blogs are popular. However, rather than offer a generic blog on dogs and cats, why not brainstorm some compelling blogging niche ideas that address specific pet owner concerns?
Take Paws, for instance, is a pet friendly travel blog that offers articles on taking road trips with cats, finding the best dog backpacks, and visiting pet friendly national parks.
By providing quality content in its niche, this blog earned its host website, GoPetFriendly.com, over 147.2K Facebook fans and 88.3K Twitter followers.
If you have experience and knowledge about pet care, your own blog could address other pet owner concerns, such as how to train a specific breed of dog or how to care for exotic animals like bearded dragons.
2. DIY and Craft Projects
From puppet making to basket weaving, blogs cover an extensive range of craft projects. Successful craft bloggers, however, focus on specific crafts they have expertise in.
Sewrella, for example, is a blog for people who love to crochet.
By offering original knitting and crochet patterns for sweaters, blankets, and scarves, this blog fills a demand for the online crafting community.
Depending on your interests and expertise, you could offer similar instruction for other unique crafts such as glass blowing or calligraphy. Other popular blogs in this niche include:
3. Music Lessons
With all the different musical instruments out there, there are a vast number of successful music blog niche ideas. Many music blogs offer lessons on how to play piano or guitar, but there’s also a need for lessons on how to play instruments like the recorder or saxophone. Blogs that offer voice lessons on singing baritone or harmony also fill their own niches.
Some music blogs fill a niche by combining different disciplines. For instance, Dr. Noa Kageyama merged his music background with his training in performance psychology to offer Bulletproof Musician.
The blog features articles that help musicians deal with performance anxiety, providing strategies to cope with unpleasant dreams and manage mistakes made mid-performance. Kageyama’s unique approach to music makes him a respected authority that NBC News once interviewed for an online article.
4. Test Preparation
Everyone takes tests—from college admission exams to driving tests. If you have special knowledge of or extensive experience with certain tests, why not offer tips and strategies on your blog?
Simon Corcoran offers free daily lessons on his blog, IELTS-Simon, for passing the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) exam, the world’s leading test for international migration and higher education. As a former IELTS examiner, Corcoran offers professional knowledge of the exam—and with 3.5 million IELTS exams taken throughout 140 countries and territories in 2018, he caters to a large audience!
5. Cooking and Food Recipes
Even if you’re not a five-star chef, you may have expertise in cooking for people with specific dietary needs or restrictions.
Baby food recipes—like the ones offered by Michele Olivier on Baby FoodE—are very popular with new parents. The success of Olivier’s blog led her to publish three books and numerous eBooks, highlighting the demand for her ultra-niche content about baby food.
Since there are thousands of recipes, you can even niche down further with a cooking blog—for instance, by focusing only on baking or keto diet recipes. Some popular blogs in this space include:
6. Gardening Tips
Gardening often means much more than raising food or flowers. People who don’t have a lot of space in their home might want to read a blog on kitchen garden tips. Those who enjoy the aesthetic appeal of a garden might be drawn to a blog on rock garden design.
You can also build a blog niche around gardening needs specific to your geographic area. The Washington Gardener offers articles specifically about gardening in Washington, D.C., Virginia, and Maryland. The blog also promotes its award-winning Washington Gardener Magazine, showing how niches lead to wide acclaim.
7. Parenting
It might seem like “mom blogs” are everywhere, but the wide array of challenges faced by parents offers a wealth of blog niche ideas.
Many do not consider issues faced in foster care, for example, but Confessions of an Adoptive Parent targets a specific audience, creating an online community that supports adoptive and foster parents.
After adopting 8 children and writing 7 books on adoption, blog creators Mike and Kristin Berry have certainly established themselves as experts in their niche.
With parenting blogs, you'll also tend to see some niche overlap—with bloggers putting their own spin on parenting by incorporating their personal interests. For instance:
- Lovely Indeed - DIY crafts and goods in addition to kid-centric activities and printables
- Lunchbox Dad - Food prep tips as well as product recommendations for other parents
- Mom Style Lab - Fashion tips and inspiration for moms and kids, plus lifestyle, skincare, and beauty
8. Self-Improvement Tips for Specific Audiences
Many people enjoy reading self-help blogs. Rather than offering self-help tips for everyone, however, a niche blog focuses on a specific population.
Nerd Fitness offers health and fitness advice to self-proclaimed nerds.
To keep exercise fun, Nerd Fitness mixes Star Wars, Marvel, and other pop culture references in its fitness articles. Its posts also encourage readers to stay active by participating in fun events such as Live Action Role Playing (LARPing). Thanks to its ability to reach its target audience, Nerd Fitness receives over 1 million visitors each month. It's even been featured in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and Forbes.
9. Travel Tips
Travel blogs tend to be known for promoting exotic destinations. However, even if you don’t fly to Europe or Asia on a regular basis, you can still find successful blog niches for travel.
Frequent Business Traveler, for instance, offers travel tips to people who travel for business. Their articles cover top hotels, airline cabins, restaurants, and cultural activities. Other travel bloggers may find a related blog niche focusing on business travelers with different budgets or itineraries.
10. City Guides
If you travel a lot within your city or state, create a unique niche blog that recommends places to eat or entertainment venues within your area. I Love Memphis does this by publishing articles on Memphis music, food, arts, events, and sports written from a local perspective.
By learning about events and places of interest from other Memphians, blogger Holly Whitfield offers an online resource that’s popular with both locals and visitors.
11. Senior Citizen Blogs
Though online blogs are relatively new—having come about in the late 1990s—they don't only appeal to or target younger demographics. One popular niche, "elder blogging," centers around creating content tailored to older populations. Some of these focus on healthcare and adjusting to retirement, like Elder Chicks, while others offer a fresh spin on other niches.
Take, for example, The Roaming Boomers—a blog about globetrotting husband-wife duo Carol and David Porter.
The dearth of older travel bloggers in a space saturated with millennial and Gen Z influencers makes the Porters stand out. Similarly, the blog Grey Fox isn't just about men's fashion—it targets men who are 40 and older.
12. Niche Sports
Sports enthusiasts regularly frequent blogs featuring football and baseball. If you have knowledge and interest in a sport that falls outside typical pop culture sports, create a popular niche sport blog.
Roller Derby Athletics covers all aspects of roller derby, a sport with a devoted following. The blog features articles giving training advice, workout routines, and even special diets to prevent muscle cramps. By focusing on a sport that doesn’t receive as much attention as basketball or football, this niche blog attracts an underserved audience.
13. Internet Addiction Support
This idea sounds counter-intuitive. Why would anyone offer a resource teaching people how to break their Internet addiction on an online blog? Nevertheless, Internet and social media addiction is a growing problem—meaning niche blogs that cover the issue meet a strong need.
The Center for Internet and Technology Addiction, for instance, hosts a blog covering electronic etiquette, warning signs of Internet addiction, and even cyber bullying. With more people getting hooked on social media and web surfing every year, the need for such a niche blog will only grow.
14. Green Living
Many lifestyle blogs promote living an environmentally friendly life. Some even make green living the main topic of their blogs, covering issues that range from environmental politics to green technology.
For instance, Big Green Purse focuses on incorporating green practices into daily life.
Its articles teach readers how to switch to solar power, use paperless banking, and even cook a “green” Thanksgiving dinner. By offering quality content on a popular lifestyle choice, blog founder Diane MacEachern has become an award-winning bestselling author and keynote speaker for Harvard University and The Discovery Channel.
15. Coffee Blogs
Food and drink blogs promote a wide variety of cuisines and beverages. Few drinks, however, inspire the passion coffee does—making coffee one of the best niche ideas for blogs.
Online since 1999, I Need Coffee has cultivated a fervently devoted fanbase. This niche blog presents articles on how to brew coffee, coffee comic strips, and reviews of different types of coffee equipment. Based on its longevity and enthusiastic readers, this niche blog won’t run out of topics to cover anytime soon.
Conclusion
Finding blog niche ideas is often the most challenging part of creating a new blog. Nevertheless, if you take the time to come up with a niche topic that you specialize in, you will reach a large audience hungry for your quality content. Use the blog niche ideas in this article as inspiration; odds are you’ll find multiple ways to create an innovative niche for your own blog.
This article was written b Compose.ly writer Michael Jung.
