I've been seeing a lot of people on the boards asking what good and bad niche's are, and I just wanted to share my own experience about how I found mine, in hopes that it will help you. I own two popular blogs (approx 2000 uniques each) but the amount of money I was getting per click was between 20-30 cents on average. While some may agree this is not bad, I wanted something good. I didn't want to settle for the average click. But I truly believe that if you want to have a successful website you have to write about something that you love and are passionate about. I started looking at people's suggestions, some suggesting a weird kind of cancer (mesothelomia or something?) and others suggest writing about law. I don't know about you, but I have absolutely no interest in writing about cancer for a year, nor lawyers in an area I've never heard of. And if you want to be successful, you better do it about something you're at least somewhat interested in. While studying these patterns, though, I realize that your niche has to be something extremely specific. It's not enough that I'm writing about topic X -- I had to write something a lot more specific than that. For about a month, whenever I'd walk around, before I go to sleep, while eating, and every other spare moment of the day I kept thinking to myself what it is that interests me and is very specific. When ideas came to mind I would write them down. Finally when I had a few ideas, I wrote them down, headed over to blogger, and opened a blog for each of these ideas. I wrote a couple of articles for each one, and waited. I wanted each idea to get roughly 10 clicks so I can judge what I'm getting per click on average. These blogs were new and it took roughly 2 weeks to get those first 10 clicks on each blog. I have finally found my niche. One of the blogs turned out to be a real success. Out of 10 clicks, my lowest paying click was $1.36. I was able to achieve this by writing about something so specific that I must have had all advertisers competing for my blog (maybe a few). This is something a lot of you already know, but I wanted to stress how important it is to find something specific. If you have a website about dogs for example, think about how you can narrow it. Maybe you like german shepherds, narrow it down to that breed. But what is it about german shepherds that you can narrow further? Perhaps you can narrow it down to those that have rescued people. Keep asking yourself can I narrow my topic any further? Give it a try first by opening up a free blogger account. Why go through all the expenses to end up with something that doesn't work? I hope this article helps some of you, and inspires the rest of you to keep on working until you find that niche that you love and makes you a lot of money. Keep up the work!
Good advice, a niche within a niche, not only better for you but useful to the visitor, pleased its working for you.
That's a great tip-- and one that works as I've tried it too in a way. It's a concept that is introduced in the easy wordpress system really. For a blog to drive adsense revenue, I will keep the posts on a given page within the same subtopic/concentrated niche. So if I have 5 posts showing on my page, all 5 will be concentrated on a specific area of the site's overall theme. They don't have to be redundant and allow for even more flexibilty in posting. Of course, keeping the posts specific raises the clicks. I have a site too that the lowest click is like $1.23 i think it was. Also a great point about writing about something you like. This will allow for you to post content easier and thus save you money because you aren't buying posts/articles. This will also allow for you to keep fresh content up and to continue your project longer.
Thanks for all the comments. I think the importance of having a good niche is keeping it private so your clicks remain valuable. My reason for writing this was to inspire and help those that are looking for a good niche, not to give them one. If you have any questions though besides what the niche is I'll definitely answer them. As for Nilgesz's comment, I immediately bought the real domain instead of the blogspot subdomain as soon as I realized its value, along with .org .info and .net. Thanks again for all the comments. I hope this inspires you. If you have questions please share so we can all learn. I'm no expert, but through reading from the knowledgeable people's posts on this board and hard work I managed to finally find mine.
Excellent information on how to find a good paying niche. However, being a new blog, how are you driving traffic to it? That's the real question most I would think would like to know.
Thanks webgator. The new blog hasn't gotten a huge amount of traffic yet, which explains why it took nearly 2 weeks to get 10 clicks. One of my blogs that pays 20-30 cents per click is a mixed martial arts blog. The way I managed to get 2000 uniques/day is by exchanging links with other blogs. For every article that I write, I shift my time over to getting at least 5 backlinks. Then I write another article, and go get 5 more backlinks. I don't like directory submissions since most links you get are from PR0 pages. Try to contact people with complimentary topics that will interest them and you, as well as each of your readers. Also, when you get listed on someone's blogroll, and they have 1000 articles, your link will be on 1000 pages. If you found a good person to exchange links with, half of those will be PR2-3.
Excellent tips. Hopefully future clicks will continue to bring in the same values. 2000 uniques/day is some pretty decent traffic...hopefully it's converting for you nicely!
pre-testing with a blogger account is a very good idea. Your comments on mesothelioma are entirely correct - everyone chasing the same niche with no real interest in it - effectively splits a small amount of traffic 1000's of ways - far better to do as you say and find something you are interested in. That way if it pays well it won't be such a pain to write more content.