How to find the best niche for your blog

The Copywriting Forum members have been asking a few questions about how to start and run a successful blog… and while the tips shared have been great, I feel that some background information is missing to build a solid foundation for new bloggers to rely upon.

For that reason, I’ve decided to write a series titled “The copywriter’s guide to blogging success” – and the good news is that it all starts today. So let’s dive right in…

The very first step in having a successful blog is to find a good theme to write about. A blog that talks about everything and nothing all at once will rarely be successful, so finding a good niche or industry to focus on is essential.

These are the 5 steps you must follow to find the best niche for your blog:

Step 1) Follow your passions!
Take out a sheet of paper and make a list of things, topics and activities that you are passionate about. In the end, you’ll produce better web content when you’re writing about something that you enjoy doing (your results will be directly related to this). Plus, when you follow this strategy, writing is fun and it doesn’t really feel like work.

Don’t rush it, write down at least 20 items in the list. If you’re having trouble, ask your friends or family for help… they might come up with a few ideas that you had not thought about.

Step 2) Narrow down the list.
Once you have a list of 20 topics that you could potentially be blogging about, it’s time to narrow it down by truthfully answering these questions to yourself:

* Would you be happy if working on this was your daily job?
* Do you have any particular skills or knowledge in that field?
* How many people do you know that share this interest with you?
* Would you like to talk to these people (or similar ones) every day?
* How passionate are they about this particular topic?
* Would you mind working with these people in an office?

If you are brutally honest, your list should now be 5 items long or less. If it’s not, simply select your favorite 5 topics and run with those.

Step 3) Research the traffic potential of the niche.
The amount of traffic that your blog will receive will be directly related to the number of people who are searching for this topic (and a few related ones), so it makes perfect sense to know in advance the size of your target audience.

To determine the traffic potential of the niches you’re researching, come up with a list of 5-10 keywords or phrases that are directly related to each item in your list. Once you have built a list of related keywords, figure the monthly searches for both the main niche and each of the keywords you wrote using Overture’s keyword inventory or the Free WordTracker keyword tool.

You will want the searches to be at around 10,000 for the main keyword and a minimum of 5,000 for each of the related keywords or phrases. If the niches you selected reach or exceed the recommended traffic, congratulations… you’re well on your way to having a profitable blog.

Step 4) Research the profit potential the niche.
Now that you know which of the niches you selected have enough traffic to be worthwhile blogging about, you’ll also want to know the potential for profit in each of them exists. To do this, simply run each of the niches and keywords or keyphrases in Google, Yahoo and MSN and look at the number of advertisers that come up in the PPC (pay-per-click) results.

Hit the “next page” a few times for each keyword and check how many advertisers appear in pages 2-10. The more advertisers, the more money that is being made on that niche – yes, competition is GOOD for bloggers.

Step 5) Pick your niche.
Once you’ve found a good list of topics and determined the traffic and profit potential for each of them, it’s pretty much a matter of taste. Out of the few niches that came out successful from the traffic and profit potential tests you performed on them, follow your heart and select the one you’d like to try out… By doing some research and picking one of the winning niches, you’ve tipped the balance in your favor when it comes to having a successful blog.