If you look up any how-to guide online, it usually starts with “Step 1: Find Your Niche.” Whether you’re starting a blog or an online store, finding your niche is indeed an essential part of setting yourself up for success.

But just how do you go about finding your niche? And, once you’ve found it, how can you tell if it’s a good niche? A niche that’ll set you apart from the competition and bring in the big bucks? Also how will understanding your niche help you to maximize your web revenue? All this questions will be answered in this article

• What is a Niche
• How Do You Choose a Niche for Your Website?
• How to Drive Traffic to Your Niche Website?
• Niche Website Ideas
• Niche Website Examples
• How to Monetizing Your Niche Website
• 4 Ways to Increase Profits by Focusing on Your Niche
• 10 Most Popular Niches to Make Money Online

What is a Niche

A niche website is an online resource that focuses on a particular interest, topic or theme that is common to a narrow group people in a larger market.

While targeting a very specific term that people type into the search engines, a niche site offers its visitors helpful and quality content that aims to answer a question or to solve a problem that those searchers share among themselves.

A niche site focuses on a particular interest that is shared by a group of people. By nature, topics have different sizes and different amounts of people looking for them.

That being said, the size or, in other words, the number of pages a niche website will have depends on two main factors: how much there is to talk about the topic it targets and, obviously, how many pages the site’s owner is willing to publish.

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And, also, the number of visitors a niche website will be able to bring in depends on the demand (the number of people searching for the keywords it is targeting), the level of competition there is in said niche and the number of high-ranking pages.

How Do You Choose a Niche for Your Website?

There are two main paths to follow when picking out a good niche:

Passion

Picking a topic you’re passionate about can have a huge impact on the quality and quantity of the content you’ll be publishing and on the effort and dedication you’ll put into your niche site.

Talking about something you’re interested in is a lot easier and incredibly more pleasurable; it won’t feel like actual work. Whenever you need to research for information, it’ll also be more interesting for you to read all you need. After all, it’s something you enjoy learning about.

It will allow you to build trust with your audience because such passion can and will be felt by those who will visit your website and consume your content — they’ll be able to get that you truly know (and love) whatever it is you’re talking about.

Plus, when or if things go sour you’ll at least have something that you’re proud of and it will make you keep going until the day that success finally knocks at your door.

The passion path should be taken if you’re just building your first niche website. This is even truer due to all of the additional things and skills you need to learn and master when you’re entering the online marketing world for the first time.

Opportunity

If you’re done talking about your passions or you’re aiming to build a niche site empire (a portfolio of several niche websites) or, even, if you can’t find your passion, you should go where the opportunity is.

You’ll need to find a profitable niche market and build a website around that specific topic.

Bear in mind, though, that it’ll be harder for you and you’re going to struggle, because you won’t have your passion to support and push you forward.

Regardless, if you do things right, you can go a long way — especially if you’re more experienced in niche marketing. Besides, you can outsource some of work you need done (like content writing and other repetitive tasks).

Whichever one of these routes you choose to pursue, you ideally need to pick a niche that has a considerable amount of people interested in it and a fair amount of demand for related products.

In other words, you need to make sure your niche is profitable — Is there something to sell? Is there enough demand? — and that you can drive visitors to your website (meaning, there’s not too much competition.

Identify problems you can solve

To create a profitable business, you first need to find problems your target customers are experiencing, then determine whether you can actually solve them. Here are several things you can do to identify problems in specific niches:

• Have one-on-one conversations or idea-extraction sessions with your target market. Make sure to find or create a framework for asking questions that helps you uncover pain points.
• Peruse forums. Search Quora, or find forums related to your niche, then take a look at the discussions that are taking place. What questions are people asking? What problems do they have?
• Research keywords. Explore different keyword combinations on Google Trends and Google AdWords’ keyword planner. This can help you uncover popular search terms related to pain points.

Research your competition

The presence of competition isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It may actually be showing you that you’ve found a profitable niche. But you do need to do a thorough analysis of competing sites. Create a new spreadsheet and start logging all of the competing sites you can find.

Then figure out whether there’s still an opportunity to stand out in the crowd. Can you still rank for your keywords? Is there a way to differentiate yourself and create a unique offer? Here are several signs that you can enter a niche and be successful, even if there are already other sites serving it:

• Low-quality content. It’s easy to outrank your competition in a niche where other business owners are not creating high-quality, detailed content that serves the audience.
• Lack of transparency. Many online entrepreneurs have disrupted entire industries by creating an authentic and transparent presence in a niche where other sites are faceless and overly corporate.
• Lack of paid competition. If you’ve found a keyword that has relatively high search volume, but little competition and paid advertising, an opportunity definitely exists for you to upset the market.

Test your idea

You are now armed with all of the information you need to choose a niche, and the only thing left to do is test your idea. One simple way to do this is to set up a landing page for pre-sales of a product you’re developing. You can then drive traffic to this page with paid advertising.

Even if you don’t get pre-sales, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you aren’t in a viable niche. It could be that your messaging isn’t quite right, or you haven’t found the right offer yet. By leveraging A/B split testing, you can optimize conversions and find out whether or not there is anything stopping your target market from taking action.

How to Drive Traffic to Your Niche Website?

You have four possible ways to get people to visit your site.

1. Organic Traffic

Once you choose a niche, it’s time to begin publishing content and using SEO tactics to drive visitors to your site from the search engines.

Since your niche site will still be a brand new one (therefore it will have a low level of authority), you should bet on low-hanging fruit keywords. Meaning, low-competition, long-tail keywords and target them on your posts.

2. Mailing List

One of the best ways to drive traffic to your website – and, at the same time, an important step toward your overall success as an online entrepreneur — is to start collecting email subscribers right from day one.

Make sure to get people to subscribe to your mailing list so you’ll have another source of targeted traffic essentially for free.

3. Social Traffic

You can also take advantage of the different social networks to bring traffic to your website.

Establish your presence and share your content where your audience usually hangs out the most on social media.

4. Paid Traffic

If you’re not willing to wait for your SEO efforts to work or social traffic doesn’t work for you, you can take the paid traffic route. See how you can leverage paid ads to boost website traffic.

Niche Website Ideas

Here is a list of my favorite niches that we formulated from analyzing hundreds of websites. We have put consideration into ease of content creation/upkeep as well as monetization and saturation.

• Household tool review website (drills, saws, power tools, etc)
• Software review website (typically offer reoccurring commission)
• Automotive review and content sites
• WordPress theme review website (earn commission for referring themes)
• Mattress review website (good commissions paid out by mattress companies)
• Clothing review website (some high-end clothing retailers/manufactures pay out large commissions)

Niches that may prove to be challenging:

• Tech review websites (technology changes quickly, so new content is a must)
• Finance related content is very competitive (such as credit card reviews, or retirement plans)
• Health and wellness websites have been hit hard by Google algorithm updates recently

Niche Website Examples

Here is a list of 12 niche website examples that we have found in our research over the years. These examples are authoritative in their niche, are well optimized for the reader, and are monetized well.

1. The Gear Hunt – An outdoor website that focuses on guides and reviews for all things camping, fishing, and hunting
2. The Saw Guy – A review website focused on power tools that every DIY’er needs
3. All3DP – A content website that publishes in-depth reviews and guides for everything 3d printer related
4. Car Bibles – Car Bibles focuses on all things cars and driving, from tire reviews to online tools
5. Niche Pursuits – A website dedicated to helping people learn about niche websites (this website inspired me to start my niche site journey)
6. Dirt Bike Planet – Started by the guys at Income School, Dirt Bike Planet focuses on everything dirt biker
7. My Drone Lab – A niche review and buyers guide website for drone enthusiasts
8. Swim University – Started by Matt Giovanisci, Swim University is a highly trusted content website for pool owners
9. Millennial Money – A website dedicated to personal finance
10. Yellowfin Boats For Sale – A website dedicated to solely one brand of fishing boats, Yellowfin
11. Lamborghini For Sale – A super niche website for Lamborghini enthusiasts and supercar fans. 
12. Bonus, The Wire Cutter – While not a niche website, this review website is a powerhouse that The New York Times bought for more than $30 million

How to Monetizing Your Niche Website

There are several ways to monetize your site, from affiliate links to selling ad space to selling Ebooks. For this section, we will focus on two monetization methods:

1. Ad Revenue
2. Affiliate Links

Ad Revenue

Ad revenue is a major contender when it comes to deciding how to monetize your site. There are several ways to get ads on your site, but Google Adsense is the most popular (note: that doesn’t mean it’s the best way).

Google Adsense crawls your site and tries to match your display ads to the kind of content your site is producing. It’s a great way for niche sites to start getting ad revenue, but as your traffic grows, you might want to consider more lucrative ad revenue streams, such as:

1. Selling Your Own Ad Space. This is more time-consuming than using the automatic Adsense process but allows you to go after more profitable advertising and to create more custom content for your users.
2. Using a middle-man like BuySellAds.com. BuySellAds works as the middle man between your site and advertisers. It takes a lot of the leg work out of it for you (hunting down advertising, negotiation rates), while still delivering (on average) a higher CPC than Google Adsense.

There are cons to using ads to monetize your site, such as:

• Disrupting the user experience. Some people consider ads unflattering to a site. To avoid this, don’t plaster ads all throughout your site but pick areas where ads complement the user experience.
• Low click-through rates. How often do you click on ads? Ad blindness is a real concern. In 2019, the average CTA rate for ads on mobile was 0.28%.

But when your traffic grows, ads should become a given.

Let’s look at some average numbers.

If a site is getting 1000 pageviews a day and you get $.50 per click and have a CTR rate of 0.25%, that means by signing up for a mediocre ad platform can start your site making $125 a day or almost $3,750 a month.

Affiliate Links

Whereas ads work for any site, affiliate links only work when you’re recommending or mentioning a product or service.

If your niche site isn’t something that can be tied back to a product or service, then affiliate links won’t work for you.

Here is an example.

Say your niche site is about shoes. In some of your posts, you’ll be trying to rank for high-intent keywords, such as “best running shoes of 2020.”

These are high-intent keywords because the customers typing this into Google are near the bottom of the sales funnel. Someone googling “best running shoes” has a buyer’s mindset.

They don’t just want to end up on a page with affiliate links – they are expecting it. When a reader clicks on an affiliate link, goes to that product page and makes a purchase, then you get affiliate commissions.

But there are three uphill battles for making money through affiliate links.

1. The first battle is getting customers to your site.
2. The second battle is getting your customers from your site to Amazon or merchant site you’re partnered with.
3. The third battle is getting your customer to make a purchase while on said site.

4 Ways to Increase Profits by Focusing on Your Niche

1. Niche Down as Much as Possible

This one is kind of obvious… but we can’t stress it enough, and it’s still something that many people get wrong. The one clear takeaway is this: there are over a billion active sites on the internet today and they are all creating content.

The last thing the internet needs is more content. Instead, we need better content.

Not only do you need to niche down as much as possible and know exactly who your audience is and what they want, you also need to create better content than your competition.

Stay away from writing a bunch of 500-word posts and stick with 2,000-word articles instead. Make sure they are great, provide real value and have multiple call-to-actions throughout.

Remember, the more niche focus, the better off your site will be.

2. Retarget Your Audience

Did you know that the cost of getting a first customer is multiple times higher than that of a repeat customer?

The same thing can be said for traffic to your website. Instead of letting people find your content in the search results, visiting your site and leaving, you should be retargeting them as well.

Through the use of retargeting, you can show advertisements to visitors after they leave your site. This can be done by using ad platforms such as Google Adwords, Facebook Ads and many other third-party retargeting networks.

This advertising option will work much better for niche sites that are pushing higher-end products where they earn a commission of $20-$30+ or more. Either way, this is definitely worth testing out.

3. Create an Original Infographic

Yes, we’ve all seen infographics before and there is really nothing new and exciting about them… but guess what?

They still work extremely well when you put in the time and effort to promote them. Here’s a simple plan to make it work for your niche site.

First, find some great stats around anything relating to your niche. Pull out the best data and make sure to cite all of the necessary references.

Then go to a graphic design editor like Canva.com and create an infographic with one of their templates.

The next step is to write up an awesome article to go along with your infographic and post both of them to your site.

The last step in this process is the promotion. One of the first things you should do is submit your infographic to all of these free image directories.

If you are really motivated, you can then reach out to other sites in your same niche to see if they would like to share or even post the infographic to their site.

The better your infographic, the easier this process will be.

4. Go Live with an Expert Roundup Post

Sticking with the theme of creating original and shareable content, it’s a great idea to go live with an expert roundup post of your own.

Expert roundup posts are usually just long articles filled with answers to a single question, which you’ve emailed and asked several experts to answer to.

The value here is the content they are providing to your audience, and also that you can gain massive backlinks, social shares and authority by posting such content on your site.

You can see several examples of live expert roundups here.

A perfect example of how this could work is if you were promoting a weight loss or exercise product. Since this space is extremely saturated, it shouldn’t be hard to get a lot of fitness experts to contribute to your round up.

Simply run through Google and search out the best health sites and blogs, send out an email to each of them (asking them a single question), and then go live with a massive roundup on your site when you have enough answers.

Don’t forget to include a profile picture and link back to each of the expert sites. This will increase the chances for each expert to share your roundup when it’s live.

10 Most Popular Niches to Make Money Online

If you want to start a profitable online business with the best chances of succeeding out the gate; you can’t go wrong entering a market that is already proven to be profitable.

These are the 10 most profitable niches on the Internet:

1. Fitness and Weight Loss

P90X, Weight Watchers, the Atkins Diet, the South Beach Diet, the Keto Diet… the list goes on. For centuries, people have been obsessed with losing weight and getting in shape. And they’re always looking for the next fad diet, exercise program, or magic pill to help them do it.

Companies have been right there with them with products helping them do just that: supplements, diets, weight loss programs, exercise programs, and more. As a marketer, you can’t ever go wrong on this niche. Just about every demographic in every country in the world is into this.

Again, don’t let the idea that this market is very crowded fool you into thinking you can’t compete in it. Where there is a lot of competition there are plenty of profits to be made. Even if you only get a small piece of the pie; the market is so big you can build a six or seven figure business in this market.

Fitness and weight loss will always be a proven niche market that sells and anybody can grab their piece of the pie, or should I say apple.

2. Health

Health is closely related to the fitness and weight loss market and there is some overlap, but it’s different enough to merit its own entry onto the top 10 list.

People these days more than ever are taking their health into their own hands. They don’t automatically trust what the government or their doctor tells them about their health or what they should do to be healthy.

You’ve seen products in this niche everywhere: gluten-free, herbal remedies, supplements, detoxing… healing arts and products of all types. Anything that will promote a healthy lifestyle that helps avoid disease and makes you live longer. 

Alternative health is extremely popular here. We’re not talking about mainstream medicine. These are cures and alternative treatments that the pharmaceutical companies don’t want you to know about after all.

The opportunities to profit here are endless: books, supplements, information products, physical products, coaching, etc.

Another thing to keep in mind is that there are always going to be new growth areas in this market. Right now medical marijuana and CBD oils are an emerging trend in this field.

Unlike most other niches where having a certain level of expertise isn’t required, it could be helpful to either be an expert or team up with an expert in this field.

3. Wealth Building Through Investing

Let’s face it, people want to make money. And they know that stocks, bonds, options, forex (currency trading), futures, and other investment products are a way to do that. They’ve seen the news and all those hedge fund billionaires and super-successful investors cashing in. They want to get in on the action.

Unfortunately, most people don’t really know what they’re doing. So they have to educate themselves. They need advice on which investments to make. That’s where a variety of products related to investing come in.

Trading services, financial newsletters, trading systems… all different ways that show people how to invest successfully – whether it’s basic budgeting and investing advice or advanced day trading strategies and speculative penny stock recommendations.

This doesn’t have to be high level investing and complicated financial matters, this could simply be basic budgeting and saving as mentioned above. There are some people who have built six-figure businesses just teaching people how to save more money with coupons!

Whether the market is going up, down, or sideways… whether it’s a recession, depression, or boom time… bull or bear market… investment products do well. Because people always want to make money in the markets and you do so no matter how the economy is doing.

Even this field is constantly seeing new opportunities; right now Bitcoin and cryptocurrency are hot topics people want to learn more about.

4. Self-Improvement 

Also known as self-help, this is a huge niche online. There are courses and programs, books, videos, online training, coaching. Whether someone wants to build self-esteem, experience career success, increase their confidence, set and achieve goals, overcome adversity or obstacles… there is a self-improvement product out there.

You’ve heard of Tony Robbins. Same sort of deal. It’s a massive industry that’s always growing. People want to feel happy, satisfied with life, and stress-free. And they almost never buy just one book or program, which lends this market well to repeat purchases and higher-ticket programs.

Again, you don’t have to be a big name like Tony Robbins, Jack Canfield, or have a big brand like The Secret. A small piece of this big market can provide for a very successful online business.

5. Dating and Relationships

Whether someone is looking for love… is into online dating… or is in a relationship but struggling and looking for a way to rekindle the passion, a whole range of products in the dating and relationships niche are there to help.

People always need advice when it comes to this area — one of the essential elements in life but so difficult to navigate.

Possible businesses here include promoting dating websites, many of which offer commissions to marketers who send them new sign-ups. You could also promote “pick up” guides, books on building stronger relationships and communication, and more.

This is a niche where there is plenty of opportunities to even niche down further. You could approach dating for straight couples, dating for gay couples, dating and relationship for certain religious groups, etc… the possibilities here are endless.

Dating and relationships, whether for single people, couples, divorced people, etc. will always be a huge niche market that sells and is full of profit potential

6. Gadgets and Technology

Whether it’s a tablet or smartphone, computer speakers, mp3 players, smart devices for the home, thumb drives, cellphone cases, earphones… people are in love with gadgets and accessories.

Everybody wants the latest technology (can anyone say new iPhone). And you can capitalize on that in a few ways.

The easiest would be to sell the products as an affiliate through an e-tailer like Amazon. Or you could import products through a site like Alibaba.com or Aliexpress.com, which link you to manufacturers and wholesalers abroad. 

Once you have the products sorted out, you have to focus on marketing. One approach is to make money blogging where you highlight all the latest tech and products coming on the market.

You could also have a review site in which you offer reviews on several different products in a category. Every product has a link to buy (with your affiliate link), of course.

You could also create your own tutorials, information products, and such as well.

Though not required, this is another market that would lend itself very well to videos and video tutorial type content.

7. Pets

People love their pets. There are estimated 180 million dogs and cats in the U.S. alone. That’s not even mentioning all the snakes, guinea pigs, parrots, and other more exotic creatures people keep as companions.

And if you’ve been to a pet store lately, you know that pet owners will spare no expense and will buy just about anything pet-relate. Gourmet dog food, pet toys, healthy treats.

Dog training is also a huge market. When people get a puppy, they want to potty train the dog. For older dogs, people also want to train them for obedience, security, even to do tricks.

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If you have a passion for pet training you could create your own information products—like ebooks. Or you could simply sell books and courses of others as an affiliate.

The reality is many people treat their pets and spend more on their pets than they do on themselves, and this is a niche market that is only growing bigger and bigger each year.

8. Personal Finance

Credit scores, mortgage refinancing, debt relief, personal loans… there is a shortage of needs when it comes to the personal finance niche. People need help managing their money or securing money they need for important expenses.

Maybe they’re in debt and need help paying it down or getting a lower interest rate. Perhaps they’re facing bankruptcy and need help navigating that process. In severe cases maybe they’ve gotten that dreaded letter from the IRS saying they owe back taxes.

In any case, you won’t be offering legal help. But you can connect your prospects with expert providers, promote information products as an affiliate, or offer products like credit monitoring as an affiliate. This is a huge niche with a lot of opportunities.

You can also create e-learning and education products to help people navigate these issues and improve their financial situation.

9. Beauty Treatments

Having smoother tighter skin, being more radiant, erasing wrinkles. Looking younger and more attractive is a goal of many people. So any sort of creams, formulas, or similar products that promise to eliminate or reduce the signs of aging are very popular. 

Anti-aging cosmetic treatments, skin care products, and more are a huge business. With more and more baby boomers aging and looking to reverse the signs of aging this is potentially one of the largest markets on our top 10 list of profitable niches.

Another opportunity ripe for this market is to start a YouTube video demonstrating health, beauty, and haircare type products. Just simply being an influencer in this market can be very lucrative.

10. Make Money on the Internet

This is a way you can share your expertise in making money on the internet. You could create your own information products, courses, ebooks, or coaching programs.

And if there are any programs or courses from other big-time marketers that have been extra helpful… you can promote those too as an affiliate. You could be part of the next big launch campaign.

You could also get into network marketing (no, not all these “multilevel” marketing companies are scams). Some are actually valid ways to make money if you do it right.

Even if you’re building an online business in any of these other niches, you can teach others the strategies and tactics you’ve used online to build your own business, creating another side business of your own teach internet marketing.

Conclusion

Focusing your efforts on building a business in an already-popular niche is a great way to get your online venture off the ground. There’s no guesswork here. You know these are products people want… and they’re based on innate human desires and needs that are never going away.

You’ll have a huge head-start in your market research and that means you can be making money online sooner than you thought possible. Whether you sell as an affiliate or create your own products, you’re sure to have the makings of a profitable online business.