How to Pick a Profitable Niche
The first step to becoming a Youtuber, Instagram influencer, blogger, Tiktok creator, etc., is picking a niche.
What is a Niche?
A niche is an umbrella of subjects a creator publishes content on.
For example, Dave Ramsey’s niche is personal finance.
Correspondingly, Ramsey may provide content such as “how to budget in 2021” or “why you need to save 10% of every paycheck” but he won’t publish content on the keto diet or the best shoes for running a marathon.
Picking a niche is important for two primary reasons.
It builds trust between an audience and a creator
It gives the audience a reason to follow the creator. In other words, using the Ramsey example, “I post weekly finance tips” provides a stronger incentive to follow than, “I also write about pizza, marketing, and running.”
How to Find the Right Niche
For those reasons, having a niche is better than not having a niche; but at the same time, not all niches are created equal. Further, a particular niche could be perfect for Johnny but terrible for Sarah.
I learned this the hard way.
Three months ago, I decided that personal finance would be my niche.
Here was my process for picking it:
Googled “10 most profitable blogging niches”
Chose the item off the list that seemed the most interesting
Started writing articles and making Tiktok videos pertaining to personal finance
It didn’t seem like a bad strategy and I’m not mad at how I went about it. The last thing I wanted to do was spend weeks choosing a niche and ultimately never end up getting started.
Nonetheless, after three months of writing about personal finance, I’m realizing I picked the wrong niche.
Consequently, I decided to pivot semi-tangentially. I feel a lot more confident in my selection process this time around. So, I wanted to write an article sharing how I went about it.
I used four steps, or “tests” to dwindle down the daunting and infinite list of available niches. More specifically, I used step one to create an initial list of options and then removed options from the initial list using steps 2-4.
Four Criteria For Picking A Niche
1) Aligns with Your Background/Expertise
2) Balance Between Evergreen and News-Related Content
3) A Profitable Audience
4) Identifiable Content Gaps
1) Aligns with Your Background/Expertise
Personally, this is the biggest reason I’m switching niches.
I looked at Graham Stephen, Jorden Makelle, Jeff Cavaliere, and Amanda Natividad. All of these creators have successfully built not only an audience but a community.
One of the reasons they’ve been able to do this is because their backgrounds and expertise align perfectly with the content they create.
Graham began creating content on real estate, he was already a successful real estate agent and investor. Jorden Makelle creates content on freelance writing and content marketing, she had already made $5,000 in a single month freelancing. Jeff Cavaliere creates videos on weightlifting tips, he trains professional athletes for a living. Amanda creates content on marketing, and she is the marketing architect for Sparktoro.
The synergy between their niches and their backgrounds does two things:
It gives them credibility — the audience knows they have expertise about the subject at hand
Their daily experiences likely give them a stream of ideas for future content
bonus: the research required to create new content also probably helps them improve at their professions
2) A Profitable Audience
Personal finance was an appealing niche because it had the right audience. People that consume content on personal finance, are attractive to advertisers. This is because they likely have money to spend. Correspondingly, advertisers will pay more to put their ads in front of these people and that translates into more money for the creator.
I ended up deciding to switch niches, but I was on the right track here — a good niche has a profitable audience.
Conversely, a blog targeted towards broke college students is not a good niche. Most advertisers would want to pay for ads to be shown to this demographic. This makes the niche less profitable than other options.
3) Identifiable gaps in content
Momentum helps.
If your Youtube channel has 0 subscribers or your website has a domain authority score of 1, it’s going to be tough to reach new audiences organically.
Most growth is driven by momentum.
Low-hanging fruit builds momentum.
Spend some time doing keyword research before picking a niche. If you can’t identify at least 20-30 queries to create content for, that's a bad sign.
4) Balance Between Evergreen and News-Related Content
If the nature of a niche lends itself to “hot topics” or “pressing news” all of the views are temporary.
Celebrity gossip? It’s likely no one is going to be Googling the details on Kim Kardashian and Pete Davidson a year from now. Investment opportunities? A one-year-old analysis isn’t very helpful because prices change and what was once a bargain may now be overvalued.
When the news dies, the views will decline and revenue will evaporate.
Evergreen content has its own problems. First of all, the most common questions in any niche are likely already extensively covered and highly competitive. Secondly, there are only so many evergreen topics. Eventually, after years, finding topics will be hard.
Finding a niche with a balance of evergreen and news content can provide the best of both worlds. News pieces can attract new viewers, and evergreen content can provide consistent traffic.
My New Niche
I want to use the business tools I was given in college to analyze trends in the creator economy/digital real estate space. Here’s this niche holds up against the four tests:
Background/expertise: I majored in business economics in college and will begin working as a digital marketing coordinator on 11/29/2021.
Profitable audience: Most likely well-educated, working-class people.
Gaps in content: A lot of dry or verbose content, there’s a lack of punchy, easily-digestible information.
A balance between evergreen and news: Foundational marketing principles will persist, but platforms and strategies are always changing.
Final Thoughts
Content creation is a long game. The last thing anyone wants to do is bounce around from niche to niche before ever gaining any traction.
Without a compelling reason to do so, I don’t think there’s a reason to switch niches.
I’d love to hear everyone’s thoughts on picking a niche.
What do you think of this process? Please leave a comment below!
