CONTENT CREATION JOURNEY

CHOOSING
A NICHE
FOR YOUR
BLOG
An eBook by
Hira Saeed

CO-AUTHORED BY @RIMSHASALAM
WELCOME!
Hello Reader,

Thank you so much for reading this eBook. My name is Hira

Saeed. I run a content partner and consulting company called
Digital Doers. I have been creating content for the past 8 years
and have learned a lot during this time. My journey as a non-
native English speaker was challenging and full of doubts. I
have learned a lot from my fellow creators and my only
strategy to scale is to share what I have learned.

This eBook is part of the same strategy. If you are a content

creator or a blogger, and the word ‘niche’ overwhelms you,
hold this eBook close to your heart. It’s in very easy language
but meaty enough to help you learn the concept.

For any questions or concerns, DM me on Instagram at

@hirasaeed__ with the first word [eBook Magic] and I’ll
respond as soon as possible.

Ready to learn? Let's dive in!

WWW.HIRASAEED.COM
TABLE OF CONTENT

Chapter 1: Introduction of Niche

What is Niche?
Importance of Niche Selection

Chapter 2: Why do you need a blog niche?

How to Brainstorm a niche?

Chapter 3: Niche Validation

3 Questions to ask yourself

Bonus Chapter 4: 100 niche ideas for FREE

WWW.HIRASAEED.COM
Chapter 1
An introduction of Niche and why it is important
for content creators

You have been playing with the idea of starting a blog and have done all
the research on tools, platforms, optimization, marketing, and more. But
one thing is still missing...

What are you going to write on?

If you are like me, your mind is always buzzing with the ideas, you always
have possible topics to explore, and various interests to talk about. Your
biggest challenge is to pinpoint one specific area you want to write about.

I get it, selecting a niche for your blog is the hardest part about starting a
blog. Once you figure it out, things start falling into place.

In this eBook, I am taking you to a wild-ride of niche selection. We will

discuss what is a niche, how to choose one, and any other questions you
will have along the way. Let’s begin.

What is a Blog Niche?

You have heard it plenty of times, find a niche, focus on it, and build from
there. Talk about what matters, create a blog around your niche, sell your
niche. So the question is, what is this niche anyway?

CHAPTER 1
A blog niche is specifically a topic, subject, or core of your blog. It is what
you want to talk about, make content, discuss, and promote.

However, when we speculate, the idea of what a specific topic, a niche, is

different for everyone. One of the first blogs I started was a WordPress
blog that I treated as a dear diary. I worked hard on building it but had
little or no success.

Here’s where I went wrong:

When I began, my goal was to create a review blog that was going to
attract people from all walks of life. Foodies, readers, writers, critics,
reviewers, publications, fellow bloggers and everybody else was my
target audience.

So where did I mess up?

I messed up when I didn’t define my target audience. When you select a

blog niche, you need to have a clear understanding of who your target
audience is. For example, when writing about books, I needed to get
specific about our target audience. It is essential to do so because of the
enormity of the reading community, and it is massive in many ways and to
make our blog stand out and succeed we needed to target a small portion
of the audience. All this effort of being specific would have made our blog
a significant success.

So what I should have done is select a specific genre of book and

dedicate it to writing on it.

CHAPTER 1
For example, we could first select between fiction & non-fiction, and then
pick a sub-genre with high popularity such as young adult fiction.

Now let’s look at another example; people often ask me is technology a

right niche for blogging? The answer isn’t simple. Why? Because the tech
industry is immense, with a vast collection of subtopics, and most
importantly, the types of people interested in tech are varied, some of
these include:

Programmers & Developer

IT Personnel
Graphic Designers
Writers
Marketers
Engineers
Gamers and many more.

Additionally these people fit a lot of other niche’s target audience profiles
as well. When writing about tech, you have a lot of areas to cover, and a
lot of options to select your choice of topic. But the key is to be specific,
choosing the niche and connecting your target audience to it.

Be the right amount of specific.

However, when selecting a blog niche, you will not always have a massive
pool of sub-topics. Let’s consider that you start a blog for vintage car
dealers, in this case, your topic is specific enough, and you don’t need to
go into subtopics.

CHAPTER 1
Plan for the long run, consider future goals and growth.
When starting a blog, always plan for the long run, keep the name and
niche broad enough that you have the freedom to expand and evolve
with time, grow your target audience, and rebrand with ease when
required. It is crucial to consider because most first time bloggers don’t
take this into account before launching and face issues in the long run.

CHAPTER 1
Chapter 2
Let’s get right to it, Why do we need a niche anyway?

When starting a blog, there is always a reason behind it; you do it to share
your views, ideas, information, knowledge, and thoughts with the world.
So why can’t you share whatever you want to without restricting yourself
to a specific topic?

Because finding success in such a scattered approach isn’t easy, finding

readers who will be interested in everything you write will be close to
impossible. While some people have had success in this kind of content
creation, often people fail to attract sufficient target audience.

When starting my first book blog, I followed a similar approach. My idea

was to create a blog that was an outlet for my thoughts, likes, ideas, and
views, a kind of ramblings of the sort. And while my blog succeeded as an
outlet. It failed to attract an engaging and dedicated audience.

A niche can make or break your blog.

So here’s why selecting a niche and sticking to it is essential, this will

allow you to cultivate your audience, grow your blog, and create your
brand.

CHAPTER 2
How to Brainstorm Niche?
Niche, niche, niche, that’s why you are here, aren’t you?
You need to pick a niche.

While this may sound simple, finalizing one for your blog can be a
daunting process. Here’s where you need to get down and dirty and
brainstorm. Keep feasibilities, and growth analysis on the side and think up
a few topics that sound interesting to you, that you can write on.

Some good ways to think up ideas and niches are:

Think about your interests, reading, writing, gaming, movies.
Take your daily life into account, what you do, what your routine is.
Evaluate what you are good at, something you can teach, or talk about,
or discuss.
Browse the internet for popular topics and products.
Think about your hobbies, travelling, fitness, sports.
Reads blogs, books, magazines, articles, to create a spark.

I also want to introduce you to a life-changing model (at least for me) of
⽣き甲斐, pronounced as [ikiɡai]). It is a Japanese concept that
Ikigai (
means "a reason for being".

While many people use the Ikigai model to find their reason for being, we
are just going to use it to find our blog niche or in more philosophical
language, “Finding the reason for your blog being”. This is how multi-
faceted this concept is, it works on so many things.

CHAPTER 2
Ikigai is found when you focus on four primary elements:
What you love (your passion)
What the world needs (your mission)
What you are good at (your vocation)
What you can get paid for (your profession)

Discovering your own ikigai to find your niche will help you determine the
things you love, its value to the world and if you can get paid for it. This
model is the perfect mix of finding things you love but, keeping in mind
that your goal, in the long run, is to make money as well.

CHAPTER 2
Ask yourself the following four questions:

1. What do I love?

2. What am I good at?

3. What can I be paid for now — or something that could transform into
my future hustle?
4. What does the world need?

Think long and hard, follow your heart as much as your head, look for what
sparks, and what interests you. Do your market research on which niches
are profitable and which ones don’t bring good money. Find a perfect mix
of both worlds.

Also, don’t worry if you can’t think of a niche on your first try. And if by the
end of this article you are still stuck on selecting a niche then don’t worry.
Because I will share a massive list of blog niche ideas and topics that you
can choose for starting your first blog.

CHAPTER 2
Chapter 3
We aren’t going to let you just dive in headfirst into blogging
without doing a bit of validation first. Are we?
Now is the time to evaluate how feasible and valid your blog niche is.
Hopefully, you have come up with a couple of ideas to get you started.

A good blog has a niche that revolves around passion, your knowledge,
competition, and profitability.

Consider this, if you pick a topic that you are passionate about, with
products that you can monetize, but the competition in that niche is so
high, What will happen? You will get traction, but it will take so much time
that you will most likely feel demotivated and leave it.

Similarly, if you go for something that the people are interested in, but you
are not, you will end up struggling to come up with good content and
material.

And if you go with a niche that has a sizable, passionate audience, and is
also something you love. But, you can’t monetize it or earn money from it.
It will be tough to sustain it.

So how do you choose a niche that fits all three factors?

Here are three main questions that you will need to answer to figure out
your perfect niche:

CHAPTER 3
Question 1:
Will I still be passionate about this niche a year from now?
The main question when considering a niche is how long you can
continue writing on it. The internet is full of people starting their blogs
passionately, posting blogs every day or twice a week and then, after a
while, things change.

Creators feel the burn-out and they feel they are not interested in this
niche anymore. This decline keeps going until it eventually leads to a
complete abandonment of your blog. Many times, people pivot so many
times that the audience stops relating to them.

This decline of interest is because consistently blogging about any topic

isn’t easy. You need to keep coming up with new ideas, exciting things to
talk about, and keep your passion going. So before you choose a niche,
make sure that you will still be able to write on it with the same passion
and enthusiasm 50+ posts from now.

When choosing a niche think long and hard on how passionate you are
and will you be able to write happily even if:

The excitement, intrigue, and newness of the blog have passed.

A year or two has passed.
Once you have written 50+ posts on the topic, and are having difficulty
coming up with new ideas, blog posts, and things to discuss.

CHAPTER 3
Do keep in mind, though, that every writer goes through a writer’s block.
There will be a time where you will be full of ideas and topics to write on
and times when you will be blank.

The key is to push through it and keep going.

While blogging is not all sunshine and rainbows, it is not all doom and
gloom either. Here are a few tips that will help you get through a writer’s
block, a lack of passion, or after the initial rush of starting a blog:

You can hire writers to contribute to your blog.

You can consider guest posting on other blogs on different topics to
get your creative juices flowing.
You can call bloggers to guest post on your blog.
You can extend your niche if your topic is vast enough and venture
into different sub-topics.

Things get better though, once you get into the flow of writing, topics will
come quickly to you. You will also be more motivated after your blog has
gained a bit of popularity and success. If you monetize your blog, the very
first payment will be a great motivator as well.

The key is to, as Dory says, just keep swimming.

Or in this case, just keep writing.

CHAPTER 3
Question 2:
Are there other people who want to read about this topic?
Now that you have figured out if your niche will last longer than the initial
excitement and rush of blogging. Next, you need to figure out how many
people will be willing to hop on the ride.

Fortunately, this is easier than the first question, as it’s more facts and
figures than heart and soul.

So, how do you find out whether or not people will be willing to read your
blog?

You research

To find out whether or not your niche has an audience, you need to look at
the data, comb through some facts and figures, and dive headfirst into
research. Here’s how to do it:

Use Google Trends to quickly check the popularity of your topic

The easiest way to see how trending your niche is is to plug it into the free
Google Trends Tool. The tool will allow you to quickly evaluate two main
data points:
Is your niche’s interest increasing or decreasing?
Are there people actually searching for your niche?

CHAPTER 3
If you are starting a blog on Instagram, use your niche’s leading
hashtags to see what kind of posts are trending.

It’s not the thorough research that you might be expecting, but it is a great
place to start. It will provide you with feedback on your brainstormed
niches so you can decide how to move forward.

That’s not all though; you can also compare other niches to see how yours
stack up in terms of trends and popularity.

Keyword Research or Hashtag Research your Niche

Next up is keyword research; this will allow you to get a deeper look into
how much your niche is trending. With keyword research, you can
evaluate how many people are actually searching for your blog topic.
Here’s how to do it: First, brainstorm a list of keywords that are related to
your niche.

For example, let’s use vintage cars as a test case. Related keywords can be:
Vintage Cars, Vintage Muscle Cars, Vintage Automobiles, Vintage Bikes,
Etc. Next, take those keywords and plug them into any keyword research
tool. My picks are KWFinder and Moz Keyword Explorer that let you search
for free. These tools will also help you by suggesting related similar
keywords; this will allow you to explore your niche in depth.

On Instagram, type your keyword hashtags on the search bar and see the
total number of posts on each hashtag and go through top 25 posts to
understand what kind of content is dominating these hashtags.

CHAPTER 3
Question 3:
Can I make money from this niche?
Well, know that you have covered the first two questions, or hurdles, and
are more than halfway there, What’s next? Well know it’s time for the big
question:

Can you make money from this blog?

Even if this is not your end goal, it should be. I always preach people to
give (provide value) before they take (monetization). And if you are
creative and full of ideas, you can easily make some money from your blog,
if you have the right audience.

So while this may seem like the least important question of the three, it is
still worth considering. And if making money is your end goal, then this
might be the most important one.

When selecting a niche, you need to understand one thing. No matter how
good your blog is, some niche blogs make a lot more money than others.
Your blog can be the best in town, but if it’s among the less money-making
niches, than you might be making less than one that’s worse than yours
but in a popular niche. So you need to wrap your head around the fact
that;

Some blog niches will always earn more than others.

CHAPTER 3
But this shouldn’t dishearten you or deviate you from your niche unless
making money is your top priority.

So how exactly do you figure out if your niche is profitable or not?

Well, it’s the same answer as before, a shit ton of research!

Checkout affiliate programs

Once you have done the initial research, next, you need to look into
affiliate marketing programs. Not all niches can utilize this type of
programs; however, so be sure to check if this applies to your niche.

In affiliate marketing, you earn money by referring people to products.

Once a purchase is made from your referral, you get paid a commission.

Amazon also has a great affiliate program, as well. It is a gold mine for
monetization ideas. You can write blog posts promoting the best products
and earn a commission when a purchase is made.

See if you can create and sell your own product

The best way to make money is to sell your own product. This requires a
bit more work and effort, but the payoff is great if you have a large
dedicated audience.

CHAPTER 3
Your product can be a physical item or a digital one like an ebook, audio,
music, video, software, or more. You can also sell courses as well if you can
teach or compile legitimate resources.

All in all, creating and selling your own product is a long process with a lot
of effort and uncertainty. But if you succeed, you can earn a sizable income
from your blog.

Use these tools to calculate and predict niche profitability

Google AdWords: Keyword Planner

One of the main tools for this that you may already know about is the free
Google AdWords tool. It has been a favourite for SEO experts for many
years. Not only is it a good keyword planner but also a great help when
you are looking to create and expand your content and niche circle.

The main benefit of this planner is that you can directly pull your keyword
information and stats from Google. As it is the most widely used search
engine and likely the one you will target for optimizing your content it will
be a great fit.

AdWord & SEO Keyword Permutation Generator

Next up is AdWord and SEO keyword permutation generator, one of the
best SEO tools to help you search keywords that align with your site,
marketing strategy, content, and target goals.

CHAPTER 3
It is easy to use, will help you generate permutations of your primary
keyword without much hassle. The result may be sometimes a little off but
with careful consideration and work you can use this tool to determine the
profitability of your selected niche through keywords and more.

Google Correlate
Now we are back to the source, the source being Google as it is the most
widely used search engine to date. So why not get the data from the best
engine available. And here’s where Google Correlate steps in.

Google Correlate is a lesser-known tool that can be extremely powerful for

generating large keyword lists for optimization.The main reason this tool is
so helpful is due to its ability to see which keywords get searched
together. So it helps form a correlation between keywords. With this
information, you can easily cultivate your keyword list and longtails.

Once you have a long list of keywords you can use them to determine your
niche’s profitability. The lack of keywords can also be a strong signal to
your selected niche’s lack of profitability and popularity.

CHAPTER 3
Chapter 4
Bonus: Here are 100 niche ideas to help you get started

With all the tips and brainstorming ideas above, I hope that you won’t
need this section to help you out.

But we all hit a dead-end once or twice in a life.

So if you are still struggling to find your niche, here are some of the best
100 topics and ideas to get you started on your very first blog.

Hopefully, this will help you overcome your niche selecting problems and
start your journey on the road to blogging success.

Make sure to select the right target audience, and be specific about
subtopics if you are choosing a broad niche like technology, lifestyle, or
news.

And if all else fails, you can always write a blog about blogging. Jokes
aside, it might not be a good idea to write your first blog on this niche.

Here’s a list of blog niche ideas to help you start your very first blog:

CHAPTER 4
 100 Niche Ideas to Get Started

CHAPTER 4
THE END!
Against this FREE eBook, all I want from you is to send me your
review or feedback and follow me on Instagram at
@hirasaeed__

For any questions or concerns, DM me on Instagram with the

first word [eBook Magic] and I’ll respond as soon as possible.

Good day!

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