How to Pick a Niche

Darren over on ProBlogger asks some very good questions around picking a niche for a new blog and we are going to list some tools and tips that will help you answer some of them.

1. Are you interested in the topic? — Well only you can answer that but I can tell you from experience that it is a lot easier to write about something you are interested in as compared to something that you aren’t.
2. Is the topic popular? — One of the best indicators as to how popular a niche is the number of times it is searched for on search engines. A great free tool to help determine this is the Overture Keyword Selector Tool. Just enter in your topic and find out how many times it was searched for along with the number of times related search terms were searched for.
3. Is the topic one that is growing or shrinking? — There are some tools out that that will tell you how many times a particular search word was searched for during a specific date range. You may want to look at search patterns over several months to determine if your topic is getting more or less popular.
4. What competition is there? — Another really good free utility that will help you determine your competition from other websites is NicheBot. Enter in your topic and it will tell you the number of times it was searched for in the passed 12 months, and give you a ratio of searches to pages among other useful tidbits about your niche.
5. What is the competition neglecting? — This question can be answered by truly knowing the niche that you want to enter. As Darren states, try to find gaps the other sites in the niche aren’t filling.
6. Will you have enough Content? — This is another one that you will ultimately have to answer for yourself.
7. Are there Income Streams on the Topic? — One way to find out if your niche can actually make money is to see how much advertisers are bidding for on your niche keywords. Overture has a Keywords Bid Amount Page and Pixelfast has created a tool that combines Keyword Bid Amounts and Search Term Suggestions into one tool..