So you’ve decided to start a blog. Exciting stuff! Your next area of focus may be what topic to actually blog about. If you’re blogging as a hobby, you can likely choose to write about whatever you want. 

However, since you’re here, my guess is that you want to blog for a profit and there’s nothing wrong with this. Profitable blogs only make money because they help people whether that’s through entertainment, information, or inspiration. 

So how do you choose a profitable blog topic? Here are a few things you can do to narrow down a niche for your blog. 

Ask Yourself What You’re an Expert In

One of the easiest ways to choose a profitable blog topic is to ask yourself what you’re an expert in then find an angle to market this on your blog. We all have certain skills and interests. If you want to have a profitable blog, your topic should be something that you know a lot about and won’t get tired of talking about. 

Just be sure to niche down and determine how you’ll monetize your blog ahead of time. For instance, some people like to start lifestyle blogs which is perfectly fine. However, you still need to determine what angle you’ll take and who you’ll target. If you like the idea of a lifestyle blog and you’re in school to become a nurse, you may want to blog about balancing life and classes as a nursing student. 

If you’ve been a homeschool mom for the past 10 years, you may want to blog about your life experiences with homeschooling and offer tips and advice to others. 

Google Trends

Profitable blogs tend to get a decent amount of traffic. One way to help ensure your blog is profitable is to choose a trending topic to write about. You can use Google Trends to find out all the current trends and how many people are searching for them online. 

Keep in mind that trends do change over time, so you’ll want to use a long-lasting trend that can evolve as people’s interests change. For example, two things that are always trending are sports and celebrities. Just look at how much publicity the Super Bowl stirs up each year. 

Blogging about sports is on-trend but it’s also flexible because you can change your sub-topics as things change in the sports industry. The same goes for blogging about celebrities or home decor. What’s popular is always changing, but you can blog about the general topic and change gears as you see fit. This may involve writing blog posts about how to emulate Khloe Kardashian’s exercise routine one day, then talking about celebrity beauty secrets the next day.

Ask the Public/Visit Forums

Another way to choose a profitable blog topic is to ask people what they’d like to see. It never hurts to do this since you can’t read minds. You can create a free survey using Survey Monkey and send it to people an analyze their responses. 

Also, consider checking out popular forums like Reddit to see what people are talking about along with Q and A sites to uncover some popular topics that could be explored further with a blog.

Pinterest

Pinterest is not all just about pinning cute pictures and recipes. It’s a popular search engine that you can use to gather data about a variety of topics. What’s even better is that a lot of bloggers use Pinterest so you can scan through topics to see which pins are most popular with audiences. 

Pinterest also has a ‘trending’ section that you can view for inspiration and ideas. 

Top Blog Lists 

Have a blog idea that you want to test before moving forward? Check out top blog lists on Google. You can search for ‘Top personal finance blogs in 2020’ or ‘Top fitness blogs’ or fill in the blank with your desired topics and see what you come up with.

Why search for other people’s blogs in the first place? Well, you can tell how popular a blog topic is by the amount of other successful bloggers in that niche. Yes, I know it sounds a little weird that you’d create a blog in a popular niche, but try not to view it as competition. 

Seeing other people with successful blogs in the niche you are considering is a good thing. If you searched ‘Top underwater basket weaving blogs’ and nothing came up, this means this topic is probably not popular and this means it’s definitely not profitable. 

Finding other successful blogs in your niche means your concept has already been proven and you can add your own personal touch to your own blog content. Remember, you have a unique voice and unique experiences so top blog lists can be extremely helpful in validating your ideas. 

The Importance of Niching Down

Choosing your blog topic is a very important step toward having a profitable blog. Some say the riches are in the niches and in a way it’s very true. It’s important to realize early on that you can’t please everyone. When you narrow down your topic and choose a blog niche, you’ll identify a very specific type of audience that you can eventually learn more about. 

This allows you to create an ‘ideal reader avatar’ to determine who your target reader is and what type of content they’d prefer. From there, you can choose specific affiliate programs to promote and products to sell that will help this type of person. Knowing your blog niche and exactly who you’re writing to will allow you to create more targeted content and avoid wasting time and energy on topics that don’t serve the niche you’re in. 

Need Additional Help with Building a Successful Blog

Register today for my FREE workshop How To Start A Money-Making Blog The Right Way. In this course, you’ll learn how to find profitable blog topics, increase your traffic, and monetize your blog for extra income. You’ll have your blog up and running in less than 30 minutes.