I often talk about the importance of choosing a niche blog topic to grow your audience faster. Since niche blogging helps decrease the competition significantly, you will be able to grow your traffic more effectively. I have said it before, and I will say it again: you need blog traffic to sell your products and you need to sell products to earn an income. You want to blog for fun? Sure, talk about whatever you want under the sun. Want to run a business? Pick a niche blog topic. It’s not complicated f you follow these 3 easy steps.
Step 1: Decide What You Want to Sell
Blogs don’t make money, businesses do. If you are serious about earning an income from your niche blog, it’s a good idea to think about what you want to sell before you pick your niche. Knowing what you want to sell will most likely narrow down your niche options as you will have to consider what audience will be most interested in your products. I sell digital and affiliate programs on this site, but on two other sites, I sell health and wellness MLM products and affiliate products. You may combine all three on one Website, but make sure you determine exactly what types of affiliate, MLM, or digital products you want to sell.
Affiliate Products
The most common monetization strategy for new bloggers is affiliate products. Affiliate products are helpful to test the market before you create your own products down the road. They also provide a wide array of opportunities. Some bloggers sell digital affiliate products for weight loss, education, and personal interest topics. However, there is more, you can also sell hard affiliate products like supplements, DNA testing kits, books, cooking ingredients, and more. Then, there are also services that you can promote as an affiliate like meal delivery services, cleaning services, meal planning sites, etc.
How to Pick Your Affiliate Products
The most obvious approach to choose some affiliate products or services will be to think of what kind of products you love using yourself. Maybe it’s beauty products or maybe there is a digital course you took and found life changing. You would be surprised at how many companies offer affiliate opportunities. Whatever products you love will also most likely tie in nicely with your interests. You can also do a quick Google search and type in “affiliate products (topic of interest)”. This will give you an idea of the affiliate opportunities that exist and what kind of money you can make by promoting them.
MLM Products
On this site, I have lots of posts for network marketers because selling network marketing products is how I make most of my income on my two other Websites. You will promote MLM products the same way you promote affiliate products, but the advantage of MLM companies is that most offer a wide array of products aiming at solving various problems in a specific niche. Your customers will have many options to choose from and your commission will generally be higher than what affiliate programs offer. Moreover, as a customer yourself, you know and love your products.
How to Pick a MLM Company
You most likely have someone around you who is involved with a network marketing company. You can always ask for some info. Or pick your niche of interest and Google some related MLM companies. Look at the product selection, the commission (should be in the 20-25% range), look up the company that interests you most on social media and you will most likely find a distributor that would be happy to collaborate with you. My MLM Company is a health and wellness one, I love that all the products are organic, pure, and effective. These were my criteria.
Digital Products
Digital products can be very lucrative, but they are the last option you should consider. Before investing hours into creating a digital product, you need to grow your traffic and your mailing list. You will get to know your audience and as you do so, some ideas for digital products may come to mind. If so, write more blog posts on similar topics and see if you get blog traffic to these posts. See how your audience is responding to them. With time and experience, you will be able to determine if creating such a digital product would be worth your time and effort. Sometimes, you may also be able to find some done-for-you options, particularly in the health and wellness niche.
Step 2: Narrow Down Your Niche
After deciding what specific products you want to sell (remember, I want you to determine the exact product that you want to promote, not just the type of product), you will want to think of different ways the product can solve a problem and what types of people would be most likely to purchase it. This will really help narrow down your niche. Start jotting down some ideas of what kind of blog posts could present the products you offer in the context of your audience’s life.
Niche Examples
To get the juices flowing, let me give you some niche examples:
- Promoting a meal delivery service: Busy moms of little children who have a home business. You could write many blog posts about productivity and time-saving hacks for moms.
- Selling MLM shakes: Fitness for women over 40. You could write about workout routines that are tailored for more mature women and create meal plans that include your shakes.
- Marketing an 8-week digital program for weight loss after pregnancy: New moms who practice attachment parenting. You could write various articles about nighttime parenting and breastfeeding and promote the program in other posts to help mom feel great again. Then, you could also choose to be an affiliate for baby gear like baby carriers, wooden toys, nursing pillows, cosleeper, etc.
Step 3: Narrow Down Your Categories
Yes, we are narrowing further. The above examples are effective niche blog ideas to increase your traffic fast, but to create even faster results, narrow down your categories and blog on the same category over and over again (around 10 blog posts in a row on the same topic from different angles). That’s how you increase your traffic from search engines like Pinterest and Google because they will notice you provide a lot of content in these areas a view your domain as having more authority. Another benefit of focusing on one narrow category at a time is that you will start seeing patterns and notice which categories are gaining traction faster. The topics that bring you more traffic will become the basis for even more blog posts.
How to Know Which Blog Posts Are Your Most Popular Ones
It will take some time, if your blog is new, don’t worry about this point yet. However, after 4-5 months (faster if you blog more than once a week), you will start noticing patterns and some blog posts will be bringing most of your blog traffic.
Pinterest is still the best source of traffic for most new bloggers. If you check the overview of your Pinterest analytics, you will discover which of your pins perform best. Create more similar content.
For Google, you can check your Google Analytics under Acquisition and Search Overview. I also enjoy consulting Ubersuggest to learn which keywords are bringing most traffic to my site. Then, I can write more blog posts with the same keywords in mind.
YouTube
I often talk about the benefits of starting a YouTube channel or a podcast to sell faster. The connection you can establish with your audience through video or audio is superior to anything you would be able to accomplish through writing only. Read my Top 7 Most Effective Tips to Get More Traffic While Working Less for more info.
In Summary
You are going to pick your niche blog topic based on your interests and the products you want to sell, but remember that ultimately, you will need to pay attention to your audience to really zero in on the right niche. If you would like more tips to pick the right blog niche, read my post How to Pick a Profitable Niche for Your Online Business. In this post, I share more niche ideas and give you a list of questions to ask yourself to pick one. The perfect niche for your blog will combine your interests, your skills, and the demand in the market. Getting it right requires some planning and a lot of experimenting.
