The starting point is always selecting a niche that will underpin the theme of your site. So what is a niche?
A niche is a distinct segment of a market or more easily put, an ‘an audience’ that you are going to be appealing to.
As there are billions of people on the internet, the reason why we aim for niches is because there are still lots of people within these niches that attract less competition than larger markets. An example niche is weightlifting for skinny people as opposed to weightlifting itself as this is way too broad a subject that will be heavily covered on the internet.
All niches have the potential to be profitable as people will always be looking for goods, services and solutions to any given niches so when selecting a niche, you should be aiming to choose something that is ideally an interest, passion or hobby of yours that you will enjoy writing about.
There is no real science in selecting your niche but there are some criteria that you should follow in the decision making process I have set out as follow:
Criteria 1: Use a niche that gets searched at least 1000 times per month and not more than 30,000 times per month. Use this Keyword Tool or Google Keyword Planner to get this information by simply typing in your search terms. There will be lots of associated words within the niche term you use that shows in the results so you can count up these relevant terms too to establish if there are at least 1000 search results per month.
Criteria 2: A niche that gets a healthy amount of Google ads on a Google search. Simply Google your term and see if Google places a healthy amount of Google ads at the top. If there isn’t any, chances are, it’s not as profitable. If there are, it’s a good indicator that your site could feature relevant ads through Google Adsense and create consistent ad income.
Criteria 3: A niche with low competition. Look on Google to see what the competition is like on the first few pages. If there is page after page of authority sites in that area, chances are you will find it difficult to get ranked as there is too much completion within that niche. On the other hand if there are only a handful of sites and you see lots of social media pages such as Facebook sites or Pintrest sites dedicated to your chosen niche, this is an excellent indicator that there is little competition within that niche.
There really is no such thing as a wrong niche as you can profit from anything with your site. But you can improve your chances of monetisation by choosing buyer keywords. Read my article on this to find out what it is about.
You can make you life a lot easier if you choose an interest as you will enjoy what you write about in the coming months whilst make money from it.
With your Niche selected, you are ready to move on to Step 2 – Build A Website.