In my post How to Start a Niche Site That Can Actually Make a Full-Time Income, I take you step-by-step through the process of creating a niche site and explain a little bit how I define a niche site. The purpose of this post is to give you more details about what is a niche site and give you some niche site ideas so you can get right to work.
What Is a Niche Site
My simple niche site definition is a site that focuses on a segment of a specific market to target the right buyers for a predetermined product. Focusing on a small segment of a broader market is the main key component that answers the question of what is a niche site. This is how you differentiate yourself in the marketplace and compete against big players. I like to add the part about targeting the right buyers for a predetermined product because this is how you will make sure your efforts are not in vain. The ultimate goal is to create an income, right? All your content will be created with your potential buyer in mind.
What a Successful Niche Site Needs
For your niche site to be a successful passive income strategy, you need to make sure you do it right:
- Do not use free platforms, start your site on wordpress.org using a paid theme like Astra and Elementor Pro (affiliate links).
- Conduct niche research to understand your competitors and the type of content you need to create.
- Pick some quality affiliate produts to promote.
- Create a lead magnet that solves the same pain point as your affiliate products.
- Drive traffic to your niche site using SEO (Search Engine Optimizaion) strategies.
These simple steps will ensure that you make the most of your time and that you avoid producing random content that doesn’t result in sales. To learn more about my 5-Step Formula to Create a Niche Site for Your Online Business, consider signing up for my free 30-minute workshop.
How to Pick the Right Niche
How could we talk about what is a niche site without discussing finding the right niche? When you start your niche site, you will target a very specific segment of your niche, but keep in mind that your niche will most likely evolve over time.
A Niche Within a Niche
New niche site owners are competing against well-established Websites, so in the beginning, you will need to narrow down your niche as much as possible to differentiate yourself and become an authority. Let me give you some very specific examples to make sure you understand what I mean.
Here are some of the most popular niches:
- Health and Fitness
- Relationships
- Make Money Online
- Personal finances
- Pets
- Personal Development
- Blogging for moms
- Fitness
- Survival/homesteading
- Parenting/homeschooling
- Clean food recipes
- Gadgets and Technology
- Hobbies (fishing, hiking, knitting, etc.)
Guess what? You need to pick a niche within your niche and narrow it down further.
How to Narrow Down Your Niche
My favorite way to narrow down a niche is to use the Ubersuggest chrome extension. You can start by googling some topic ideas within your chosen niche. When you install the chrome extension, you will see some related keywords on the right side of your screen. For example, in this case, I was looking into the yoga niche within the fitness niche.
I clicked on the Suggestions tab, which opened a new window in Ubersuggest. From there, you can see all kinds of different niche ideas as well as their SEO difficulty. There, I found the keyword yoga practice at home for beginners. The SEO difficulty is 35, which is quite reasonable. If this is a niche I would like to use, I would then google those keywords for more content ideas and to learn about my competitors.
For example, in this case, I found jadeyoga.com and yogawithadrienne.com to be some good competitors to follow. Take note of your competitors and watch for the keywords that bring traffic to their Websites. This will also help define your niche and your monetization strategy.
That’s it! That’s how you narrow down your niche! You refine your keywords until you find competitors you can actually compete against! In the yoga example, some big websites like yogajournal.com and gaia.com came up. You want to make sure that your keywords make it possible for you to rank. That’s why you are looking at your competitors.
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A Niche That Has Room for Growth
I want you to narrow down your niche enough to rank on Google and become an authority in your chosen topic. However, do not make the name of your website too niche-specific. This is a mistake I made a few times. The name of your niche site is not as important as you think and you need to make sure you have room for growth. Starting a niche site and gaining enough domain authority to improve your Google rankings takes years. I am serious! Don’t be like me and waste 2 years as a serial niche site creator!. Do your research to narrow down your niche, then, pick a broad site name that will accommodate your growth. With the yoga idea, for example, I would simply call my website Yoga With Sylvie or something general like that.
Some Niche Ideas You May Not Have Considered
Now that you know some of the most popular niches, I just want to inspire you with some niche ideas you may not have considered:
- Streaming services
- Remote work tools
- Home learning
- Video editing hardware
- Tiny homes
- Home automation
- Homesteading
The sky is the limit! There are so many niche options out there! And I promise another post is coming up with even more niche site ideas.
In Summary
Picking your niche site topic will boil down to three main factors: your passion, your monetization opportunities, and your competitors. Don’t neglect to make sure you consider all three when making your choice and you are all set! Niche sites are the most reliable way to make a passive income online in my number opinion, so don’t miss out!
