How To Select The Best Blog Topic For Long-Term Profitability
When you’re starting a new blog, the most important decision you’ll have to make is about what your blog topic will be.
The alternatives are unlimited, and it’s tough to predict which one will work out in the beginning.
There are 600 million blogs today on the internet, and still growing. Eventually many will succeed and a lot more will fail.
Even if you have a great topic idea, are you sure it’s in a niche that will be both distinct and long-lasting?
Not clear about what to write on your blog?
Here’s an interesting clue.
People use the Internet to find solutions to problems, to learn new things, to achieve goals, and be entertained,stimulated and inspired.
Within the folds of those human longings lies your opportunity.
So it’s not so difficult to identify your suitable niche, really.
But how do you narrow down, and actually pick your niche after all?
Picking a niche or theme for your blog may be done in two ways:
1. Choose a topic that you are enthusiastic about, or
2. You can search for a topic that people are interested in reading about.
Of course, if you can discover a topic that matches both, that’s ideal!
However, if you must choose between the two, I believe that blogging about a topic that a large number of people are interested in, is the ideal method.
That’s when you realize that you have to really know your audience well.
And that’s not all.
You’ll have a decent chance of receiving a lot of traffic to your blog if you choose a topic that people are looking for.
By and by, you may monetize your blog to earn money as you start getting more traffic.
Is It Necessary To Be An Expert On The Subject?
Most people will possibly advise you to blog only on topics of expertise.
Well, the fact is, that isn’t always the case.
I say this, despite the fact that Google is laying increasing emphasis on expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (EAT for short).
However, even Google’s criteria can be satisfied with your own commitment to your topic.
All you need is a genuine interest in the topic you’ve selected, even if you’re not an expert, yet. And you’ll be able to learn more about it as you go.
But still here’s the thing.
Content research assumes great importance, even in a well know topic.
So make sure you do excellent content research.
Yet I recommend you do some soul searching to gauge your own level of inherent ‘expertise’ in a subject. Because it does give you a headstart.
Important Questions For Examining Your Expertise
I’ve found these questions adding nice ‘fuel to fire’, when I went about brainstorming for my blog topic.
There’s no set order to these triggering questions, though.
So here you go.
Ask yourself this:
1.What are my interests?
2.What am I interested in learning about and reading about?
3.What do I do with my spare time?
4.What work would I do for the rest of my life, regardless of pay?
5.What is anything I’d like to learn more about?
6.What is the one subject about which I could talk for hours, if my friends or family would allow me?
7.What were some of my favorite classes in high school or college?
8.What would I do with extra free time if I had it?
There’s another factor that determines whether or not your blog topic is popular. And that’s called search volume.
Search Volume
Wordstream says “search volume refers to the volume (or number) of searches for a particular keyword in a given timeframe”
This essentially refers to the number of users accessing search engines like Google to look up your topic and related subjects.
Ask yourself the following questions to see if your topic is worth blogging about:
• Are there any other blogs about your subject?
• Are there any queries on your topic that have a lot of views and responses on forums?
• Are there any well-known publications on your subject?
• Are there any well-known blogs with over 15,000 subscribers?
• Is there a prominent Instagram or Facebook group dedicated to your subject?
If you answered yes to most of the questions above, you’re on course!
This indicates that a sizeable number of people are interested in learning more about your topic.
You may also monitor the overall trend of your topic on Reddit, Quora, and Google Trends. Because interestingly, most topics on these platforms are indicators of hunger for more information.
After going through this exercise are you able to draw up a guesstimate of suitable topics for blogging?
Common Successful Blogging Topics
Here are some common blogging topics that have been successful, to get you started:
1. Personal Finances
2. Health and wellness
3. Fitness & Physique
4. Traveling
5. Kayaking
6. Diets
7.New tech
8. Pets and Animals
9. Sports
10. Ecommerce and business
By the way this list ain’t exhaustive, but just a model of the kind of lists you can draw up for yourself.
Let’s move on to the next phase, now that you’ve homed onto a topic.
Focus On Relevancy Of Your Topic
Make the concept of relevancy your guiding principle.
Relevancy is all about a particular niche, and its target audience.
Is there a sufficiently big audience for your topic? Or are you merely going to keep punching out content, with no one to read it?
More importantly, are you able to offer your audience what they seem to want and need?
Think of your topic, and how useful it will be to your audience. How much can you satisfy the wants and needs of your audience with your topic.
What are their passions?
What issues do they have to deal with?
What are the specific challenges they’re attempting to overcome?
Wanting to be relevant without identifying your target audience is like trying to sail without a paddle or ashore.
The more pinpointed your specialty, the easier it will be to identify and build relevance.
Say,if you’re in the rabbit pet care niche, a relevant article would be about rabbit care, rabbit nourishment, rabbit safety, rabbit pellets, enriching rabbits, rabbit vet, and so on.
Surely, you wouldn’t put an article on “Medieval Europe Sculpture” in your rabbit blog.
Another thing.
Relevancy is also deeply related to problem-solving.
Relevant content begins with a need, and then progresses to a solution. When you can successfully tackle real-world problems, you’ve nailed the “relevance” aspect.
And guess what? That is your objective.
But all your relevance may still not produce income for you, if it’s not a profitable niche.
Is This A Profitable Niche For Me?
If things went well, you should now be able to determine:
• Whether the niche is something you can commit to.
• If there are others who are as enthusiastic as you are.
Now you must determine whether or not you can profit from this venture. This question will also determine how much money you can make blogging, in the long run.
A very, very important consideration indeed.
If you’re creative, you can generate money from almost any specialty as long as you have an audience.
This can also be a technique to get more blog followers.
But, how can you determine if your niche has profit potential?
I think a workable solution is to go over some brainstorming again.
Here’s the thing…
Check around other related blogs in your niche if:-
1.People are offering to do freelance blogging in your niche
2. Ebooks are selling in your niche.
3.Others are creating and selling online courses.
4.There is potential for a consulting business around your niche.
5. Blogs or sites in your niche are offering paid membership plans.
6.Other sites in your niche are making money with display advertising.
7. There are affiliate marketing businesses or products related to your niche.
More research on similar lines will reveal more.
Examine How Other Blogs In Your Niche Generate Revenue.
The first thing you should do is look at how other blogs in your industry make money.
Open a few tabs and look at some of the most popular blogs in your niche.
Then look over them to see if they:
1. Use banner adverts or other forms of advertising on their website?
2.Write about specific products and include links to where people can purchase them?
3.Offer their own information product for sale?
Create Categories To Help You Focus.
Remember, your blog’s structure is constructed with categories. They’re like the scaffolding of the house that you’re building.
That is to say, the more clearly defined your blog categories are, the more focused your topic is.
For example, if you were launching a Harry Potter fansite, you’d need to build blog categories.
They help you convey to your audience which aspect of wizardry you were discussing in each post.
In this specific example, the different article topics could be Quidditch team, Hogwarts, Voldemort’s Horcruxes, 4 Privet Drive, Marauders maps, and the three-headed dog.
Your blog categories could be Harry Potter films, Harry Potter Books, Gallery, Wizardly Beasts, and Harry Potter quizzes.
By establishing these blog categories, you’ll be able to distinguish your Harry Potter blog and have focussed content creation.
Clarity on blog categories of interest to your audience helps you in multiple ways:-
1. It helps in setting up your content schedule.
2. Generating more blog post ideas.
3. Enables your visitors to decide in favor of your blog.
Frequent Blunders In Selecting Topics
This part is crucial.
To begin with,I would suggest that we must learn from others’ mistakes.
And how do we do that?
Well, consider this.
It’s pretty common for newbies to make an error in the topic selection stage. And it later becomes very difficult to amend. (Though that’s not impossible either).
I learned this the hard way when I started off.
But why must you make such mistakes, when you can avoid them?
It’s quite intriguing, really. In fact, the most common mistakes people make while deciding on a blog topic are:
1. Choosing a topic merely because others have made money writing about it.
2. Starting off on a subject about which they alone are passionate. But few others are. (So there’s no viable audience for their blog).
3. Launching a blog about something which they barely know, or have little experience with.
4. Writing about many unrelated topics on the blog. Remember, your blog needs to have a focus. It can’t be “rabbit shelters” today and “UFOs” tomorrow.
Related Topics
Conclusion
For the selection of a blog topic make sure you focus on your audience first. That’s the relevance part.
Also then don’t go off on a tangent and start blogging about something which you’re totally clueless. It won’t help in the long term.
Eventually, you really enjoy blogging when you know a topic well, and better still if you are really passionate about it.
Having done all that, make sure there is enough monetization, or earning potential in your topic of choice.
I would say learn from others’ mistakes. And don’t create the same blunders others have done while selecting blogging topics.
But don’t let the fear of blunders stop you. Go ahead, regardless. The risk is worth the long-term benefit. I can vouch for that.
So, select a topic. And blog.