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The SITS Girls

The Secret to Success is Support

How to Find a Niche You Can Love and Serve

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Niches have amazing super powers that can open doors for growing your blog.

The trick is to finding a niche that you can love and serve. Once you do, you’ll quickly see that working within a niche will help you to eliminate competition, build a committed readership, and move your blog forward.

niche market

Finding Your Niche

If you’re worried about a niche limiting your creativity or stifling you voice – don’t! While writing for a niche may seem counter-intuitive at first, over time, the more specific you get and the more narrow your focus, the easier it is to blog.

If you decide to create a niche, know that your blog won’t be for everyone. And that’s OK. The people you appeal to most will become devoted followers and eventually, devoted customers. When it comes time to monetize, a small group of super fans is a much stronger force than a larger collection of semi tuned-in readers.

There are two primary factors you should consider when selecting a niche:

#1: Be Passionate

No matter how much you love your topic at the beginning, the strength of that love will ebb and flow. That’s why it is important for the love you have for your niche to start out really strong if it’s going to get you through the down times.

If you don’t already have a blog topic or a business idea, here is how you get started finding your niche:

  • Start by brainstorming a few ideas. Write down at least 10 things that interest you. Write down more if you can. Then rank them.
  • Next, take a look at the first five. These should be topics that really get you’re blood pumping.
  • For each of these five ideas, write down one or two unique perspectives you bring to the subject. This (your interest plus your unique spin) will become your niche idea list.  

Example: You like to crochet – there’s your passion. You mainly crochet in bright, bold colors because you make thing for your boys. Your unique blog niche could be a crochet blog that features patterns and ideas for things you can make for boys and men.

#2: Identify Problems and Offer Solutions

Blogs with the most loyal following are blogs that solve problems.

  • Mommy-humor blogs cure me of the blues. They make me feel better about my shortcomings as a mom by reminding me that no mom is perfect.
  • Crafty-blogs solve my problem because I am not creative unless I can copy someone’s idea.
  • Mompreneur blogs help me balance everything I have going on and minimize the guilt.

Keep this in mind and revisit your niche list. Next to your interests and unique perspectives start listing problems faced by people in that niche. You’ll have a pretty good idea what they are because you are in the niche yourself. If it’s a problem for you, chances are other people struggle with the same thing.

Remember our crochet blog? There is precious little available for boys older than three months — there’s not a lot of color inspiration, not many patterns and not much variety. That’s a problem that could be solved with a blog focused just on men and boys.

Hone In On A Niche

You probably already have a blog and at the very least, a focus (if not, feel free to steal my crochet for boys idea, I will be your first and biggest fan). But a focus is different from a niche. It’s also not as good because it is too general.

So even if you have a blog, the brainstorming exercise is something you should try out because it will help you narrow in on your true, unique niche.

Once you find your niche online, the new direction will bring everything into focus and give you clear purpose and direction. A niche will help you define your reader so that when you sit down to write, the process will flow like it would if you were talking about the subject over lunch.

About Tracie Nall

Tracie lives in Arizona with her husband, teen daughter, and more books than her shelves will hold. She spends her days writing and editing. Many of her words end up on her blog, From Tracie. Find Tracie on Twitter @FromTracie and on Instagram where she takes pictures of things that are yellow.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. joanne says

    Just fell across this post and wanted to say that I really enjoyed it.
    You hit the nail on the head, when you mentioned we have to find where we love to be and love to serve.

    Find that and everything else will fall into place.

    Thanks for keeping it real and in perspective

  2. eco-genics.co.uk says

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  4. Faith Bomar says

    This post was helpful! I am learning the importance of finding a niche. It has been keeping me up at night. It seems so much easier to make a list of what niche’s I don’t want to be in then making a productive list in the right direction! My near term goal is that when I am asked the question “So what is your blog about?” my answer does not include “stuff”!
    Thanks for your help!!

  5. Kim says

    This blog post was very helpful…thank you! I keep coming back to my “niche” and am still trying to decide what that is so your post included some thought provoking ideas and question for me to contemplate!

  9. Cat says

    I read this just in time as I was rebranding my blog. I know I’m not everyon’e favorite cocktail and your comment that “that’s ok” really gave me momentum today!

  10. Anne Galivan says

    This is the reason I blog…to help people. It sounds simple but boy, it’s a lot of work!

    Eventually I would surely like to make money off of my blog or something related to it…I’m planning on writing a book so hopefully having some authority established in my niche already will help.

  11. Natalie says

    Thanks for the feedback! Happy niche hunting to you all. When you find it – I hope you’ll come back here and share or Tweet it.

  12. Denise says

    Finding your niche is so important! I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. I feel that I have a focus, but I need to zero in on a more specific niche. I’m going to use your ranking 10 interests suggestion this week; thanks!

  15. Jennifer says

    Great post. Even though I have a craft blog, I feel like I’ve kind of been all over the place with my blog topics. Narrowing my posts down to a specific theme or niche has always been a problem for me. As a result, I feel a bit unfocused when it comes to ideas for blog posts, and because of that I blog sporadically. You’ve provided some great tips in trying to come up with a niche. I’ll be spending some serious time brainstorming.

    • Natalie says

      Hi Emma! I took a peak at your site. What if you really honed in on your toy reviews? You could also offer posts about how to encourage imaginative, dramatic play and things like that. That would put you in a niche of a play-time expert.

  19. Emily says

    I haven’t had a very defined niche in the past, but I’m realizing more and more how difficult it is to grow a blog when I have semi-tuned in readers, like you said. Thanks for the food for thought Natalie!

  20. Kim @ CoffeePotChronicles says

    I’m finding myself honing in as a lifestyle blogger with three main topics:

    Photography
    Writing
    Blogging

    I’m sharing my experiences more than anything else since I really have no idea how I can solve any problems. I enjoy reading others’ experiences and want people to feel welcome when reading mine. As a photographer I enjoy sharing my images. As a writer, I enjoy sharing my experiences. As a blogger, I enjoy expressing my viewpoints on topics in blogland or my frustrations as a blogger.

    I’m getting there, I think.

  21. Carri says

    Great post! I have a few things to think about. I do mostly humor but I go back and forth between parenting and life in general.

  23. Book4MyDaughter says

    This article is extremely helpful, but I’m not certain that I have a niche or not. Hmmm . . . i think I may have to read the suggested articles to see if I can figure it out. Thank you for getting me thinking, and for giving me the tools to learn more about this world of blogging.

  26. Living the Balanced Life says

    This is great info! We’d like to think that EVERYBODY would want to read our blog, but if we focus we will attract more people! My blog is a “little” bit wide. It is BUSY WOMEN!

  29. Chrysta Bairre says

    Great suggestions! I especially like #2 and think this is exactly what I needed to hear at this stage in my blogging. Thinking about the problems my readers might have is a great idea for coming up with new blog topics.

  30. Optimistic Mom says

    Thanks for such great information. I think one of the things I have to remind myself of is that my blog may not be for everyone and that is okay. I already notice a small group of dedicated readers, so I must continue to embrace them and know that the numbers will grow as others visit.

    • Natalie says

      Yep! Just keep saying that mantra over and over again and eventually you’ll believe it. I had a hard time deciding to focus on Etsy sellers…I wanted to stay broad so everyone would love me…but in the end it’s been fabulous because I can really help the people I’m focused on.

  31. Dr. G says

    This is great advice! My niche as a family doctor is child behavior and development. There are some blog themes and link-ups that I miss, but I can get involved by commenting. And I find it much easier for media relations, I think because it is clear who and what my site is.
    I’d been feeling a little sorry for myself that I couldn’t “join the party” on some topics recently. Thanks for the reminder that it is all to good purpose.

    • Teresa says

      Maybe you can help me. My niche as a mom and special ed teacher is autism…something I’m still learning about through my son. I may start following you and seeking some advice!