Picking your niche is one of the first things that you should do as a blogger. Before you pick a domain name. 

While picking your niche, start brainstorming who your target audience will be.

When picking your niche, get a pen and paper and begin writing down all your interests.  Now, here is the tricky or fun part however you see it.  Choose your top 10.  Put them in a list. One is your favorite subject and 10 being your least. 

Top 10 to the Top 5

Take the top five of those and think about things you love about each idea.  Come up with at least 5 things for each.

Example Dogs:

  • Breed
  • Training
  • Showing
  • Pet
  • Puppy
  • Companion

Next, pick your top one in that list.  This is called niching down.  Your alcove, nook or slot.  It is your area of interest that appeals to a small, specialized section of the population.

Prompts to Get it Narrowed Down

Here are a few prompts to help you determine what your interests and passions are:

  • How do you like to spend your free time? What do you look forward to doing when you aren’t doing it?
  • What magazines do you subscribe to? What topics do you like to learn about most?
  • What clubs or organizations do you belong to?

After breaking down each category into smaller sections.  It is time for the the research portion of the niching down process and picking your perfect niche.

Now that you have some ideas it is time for some research and brainstorming.  I found the best way to do that is by going to google and then typing in who (niche idea), what (niche idea), where (niche idea), why (niche idea) and how (niche idea).

Why do I do this?  This helps me narrow down my target market and what they are looking for, so that you can Niche Down know who exactly is looking for your expertise and what exactly their questions are.  

Again Use the Internet – UberSuggest

Another website I use almost daily and highly recommend it — is ubersuggest.com.  This will help you tremendously on your blogging journey. 

You will hear me mention Neil Patel all the time.  He is my go-to SEO guru.  And he is exactly that.  

As you are researching your who, what, where, why and how, write down what people are looking for.  Keep a running list.  These will become your blog content and even may become your course content.  

Okay, you have done your research and you have found out the who, what, where, why and how?  You have gotten into the minds of your target market but what knowledge do you have that can help them? Where are you at on that list?

What’s Next…

You don’t have to be an expert in your niche, but you need to be willing to research it and become an expert.  You can just share the knowledge that you know and as you learn more you can share that always building your knowledge base for those that are just a step behind you and will always be one step ahead of your target market.  And that is the key.

Go over to places like Quora and Reddit and enter those same who, what, where, why and how questions you entered into ubersuggest.com and Google.  This is where you find a wealth of what people are struggling with and it will give you ideas on what you can offer your ideal customer/client to solve their problem.

You can check out Pinterest also, to find out what people are searching for.  Pinterest is one of my favorite search engines — do the same with Youtube.  Phrase it all as a question and you will see all the searches for it.  

You will find that simple trick great for searching for Keywords also when you do start producing content.

Narrowed it Down

You have your list and I am sure you have pretty much narrowed it down by now and have your top 2.  It is time to see how profitable it may be.  You may be asking how you can do that without even knowing the product you might be wanting to sell.  

There is a really quick and simple way of doing that.  Go over and check out clickbank.com.  Clickbank is an affiliate marketing platform where companies look for bloggers such as yourself to promote their products.  

When you get over to Clickbank, create an account, and then type in your niche. See how many products that are in your niche and their price points.  If your niche is not showing a lot of vendors, don’t worry that is not a bad thing. 

But however, if it is not showing any that may mean that no one has figured out a way to monetize that niche and you may need to try another until you figure out a way to monetize it.  I have found that there are not many niches that have that issue.  

Testing your Idea

There are a few ways to see if your niche is a good one.  I have found that starting a small Facebook page and a group can help.  Invite people to it that you may know that are interested or just do a small Facebook campaign at $5 a day for a week and get people on the page. Start asking questions on what they want.  

However, if you don’t want to spend money on Facebook ads, much like I didn’t, I just searched for pages and groups that had something to do with my niche and started having conversations with people.  Asking questions — finding my target market.  Testing the waters by offering up solutions to their problems without selling.

I know of some that created simple landing pages and started posting pins on Pinterest and started building an email list to potential clients/customers without even having their blog up yet.  There are some email list providers that are free until you reach a certain amount of subscribers such as mailerlite. I am an affiliate of this email list server and used them when I first started blogging.  They are easy to use and free until you reach 1000 subscribers which is a nice perk.  

I have switched over to ConvertKit which I am also an affiliate for, because I love the landing pages and forms that you have at your finger tip and how easy it is to switch over from mailerlite.

Now what do you do once you pick your niche?  Check out the blog for more… Pick up your free 166 Niche Ideas PDF

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