Blog Tipz

Starting out, it can be a difficult decision as to what niche or topic to primarily write about, especially if you are at either end of the spectrum – having too little or too many ideas when getting started. Many bloggers want to get something from their work and efforts. From this, readers can be valued as well as advertising placed on the blog.

Not all niches have been created equally, so to speak. You can realize this just by your habits searching the Internet. Grouped together, a majority of your searches likely fall into a few main, distinctive categories, while the rest tend to fall into specialized categories. While you could follow this approach, there are better methods for discovering the ideal niche to enter.

This Post Addresses:

1. How to select the best niche/topic for your blog.
2. How to judge the number of content available to write about.
3. Knowing what is an untapped niche/market.
4. Using other sites to find out what potential income streams are available.
5. Signing up for networks to increase your income.

Exploring Content

Browsing for a topic is the first step when you start out. You need a clear direction for you blog or it’ll be difficult to expand in the future or condense what you want to say into a single post each day. You want to find the balance between too much content and not enough – a topic that is narrow enough that everyone else isn’t writing about but wide enough to have the level of content necessary to keep going.

The best way, at this point, to gauge a topic’s popularity is through some searches on Google or any other search engine. You can’t exactly look at metrics from sites, as traffic to a particular blog in a niche is not always a good metric for determining the number of potential visitors your blog will receive once you start it.

Doing the search, you will find that there are more than ninety million results for both blogging tips and blog tips, which indicates that the market for that type of site is quite saturated, and it will be hard to make a name for yourself unless you have a proven method of “gaming” the system.

The Best, Untapped Markets

The next step is to get the most from the market/niche that you enter. Thinking about traffic, you want to have the highest amount of quality traffic. Without this, you won’t be able to grow in the long-term, as your visitors will typically quickly leave, without clicking ads/articles, or subscribing.

One place to start for keyword research is the External AdWords Keyword Tool. This should not be used as the sole method of determining the level of traffic, as trends can lead to a huge difference from one month to the next, as well as other factors.

If you can find a niche that only has a few thousand results, but with a strong demand, then you are going to be entering one that may or may not last. In other words, the demand could not have been high enough, thus there aren’t that many sites covering it yet. You have to analyze the fastest growing areas, excluding topics that might not lsat – specifically people and news items.

Using the tool previously suggested, advertiser competition will indicate how much advertising is done in your particular niche. Now, advertisers typically follow trends and keywords that have a lot of searches, so again, there could be major inaccuracies here.

Essentially, there should be a good balance, with not too many sites already covering the topic, a good number of advertisers, and a good search volume. You shouldn’t see figures in the millions for any of these, unless you really want to enter a niche that it will be hard to reach the top of the pyramid.

Profit Sources

Compared to the number of content versus sites, advertisers don’t really follow the trends. There may be ads that focus on recent trends, but for the most part, you will find that advertisers stick with niches and topics where there is a lot of competition – that is where the most money to be made is as well as the largest target market/visitor base.

There are stark differences between getting advertisers through private deals and through networks. Basically, the ad delivery networks, like AdSense and others, will deliver ads no matter what, even if you don’t have a huge amount of content or visitors. They base their ads displayed on your content and any keywords within your content. Private ad deals only come about if you are able to convince someone that your blog is the best place to advertise on for them to gain new customers or traffic.

On the other end, the type of content can also have something to do with the income that you generate. People who may be more interested in the content will be more likely to click on an ad compared to those that want to leave your site as quickly as possible. This is connected to how people click on unrelated ads when they aren’t interested in the content.

Looking at ‘Competitors’

Before you get your blog started, I always recommend looking at what your competitors are doing. Now, I have to use the term loosely because depending on your mindset, they could just be other blogs that cover the same topics as you, rather than an organization/company that you are “working against.”

Here are a few things that you need to look at when you size up your competition:

1. How long they have been in operation – look at their archives or about page.
2. See what types of ads, if any, they are running on their blog and the level of content that has been spread throughout the site.
3. Judge the level of comments and amount of content within each post.
4. How many posts are on the blog – several hundred or just a few?
5. Does it appear/verify as though the site gets a lot of visitors?

If you can tell that a significant number of blogs (from the search engine results pages) get a lot of visitors, then it is a good indication that there is content and a demand for it. It isn’t an exact science, so these are basic tips that you have to adapt to suit your own needs.

Other Factors

The extraneous factors don’t end withe the aforementioned topics. If you have no previous background in transforming a non-profit site to one that can generate a small income, it will be more difficult to reach your goals, no matter what the laws state.

Secondly, if you have no desire, willpower, or ability to find topics to write about, there is no reason why you will see your blog grow or expand, despite following the tips that other bloggers and I try to expose.

Finally, just because you have placed a set of principles for your blog to earn income, it doesn’t mean that you will. It takes the ability to transform your readers, grow a following, and continue to produce a demand (with little supply) for anyone that visits your blog.

Conclusion

Following these basic tips will help you profit from the start with your blog. Now, we didn’t get into the details on ad placement, keyword usage, how to use content to your advantage, and so on, but we laid the foundation for what you can expect when you start.

The problem that many have is that they aren’t able to follow through with their goals and ambitions, thus setting lower standards as their blog grows in age. This is what ultimately leads to the failure of so many. Knowing what works and what doesn’t is the key in this situation.