A Niche is a small but specific and well defined segment of the population. Niches do not ‘exist’ but are ‘created’ by identifying needs, wants, and requirements that are being addressed poorly or not at all by other firms, and developing and delivering goods or services to satisfy them – Businessdictionary.com

A niche blog is targeted and specific in its offering. To better understand what a niche is, let’s explore this example – the football store. This is a niche business because the football store is only selling football equipment. They’re not selling basketball kits, they’re not selling golf sticks, they’re not selling swim suits. What they are selling are footballs, jerseys, football boots, goalkeeper gloves and what those interested in football want to buy. Oh!, they even sell red cards! But that’s okay because players like Suarez needs it. Lol

But why do you need to choose a niche?

You might be thinking why do you need to choose a niche. Is it not to start a blog and chunk out post as many as you can. If that’s your thought believe me you are totally wrong and on a path to failure. You see, there are several reasons why you need to choose a niche before you even think of setting up your blog. Infact it is the first thing you need to do if you want to have a successful blog.

Your niche determine your blogging fate. The success or failure of your blog or business is dependent on your niche of choice. Choosing a niche is the foundation that must first be laid before building your blog either a free or a self hosted one. Most people skip this all important part because of the groundwork involved (research) which they find boring.

Reasons why you must choose a niche

Help people know, like and trust you.
Before you read on, answer this simply question. Who would you rather make a purchase from, someone you see as a friend or total stranger? Guess someone you perceive as a friend. Choosing a niche makes people in that niche see you as one of them, part of their community or tribe, someone who understand their unique need, someone with whom they share a common interest – All these help you gain the trust of people in the niche and they will like you as one of them.

You are seen as expert
Thinking about this point the saying “jack of all trade, master of non” came to mind. When your blog is niche focused it would be hard for your readers or people who just stumble on your blog to identify you with a particular thing. But when you are a niche focused – with the quality of information and the degree of originality of your though, you will be seen as an expert and the go to person regarding that niche. Let me use this example to drive this point home – you will never take a cardiac patient to a general doctor. Did i heard you say NEVER!

Readers Appeal
You must have something you stand for, what you want to be known for, what you want you name or brand linked or associated with. If you don’t have any, people will never take you serious on any of your numerous skill or talent or topics you are talking about. Do you know why? No matter how multi-talented or multi-skilled you are you can never be 99.9% good in all. It is impossible, unless you are superman or spiderman. Wait! i have never see these two swim in any of their movies, that means these two are not all super 100%. Lol.

Blogging about several things all one blog without having a particular audience in mind get you blog really messy and confuse your reader. Believe me a confused reader will not need a preacher before he or she repent off your blog.

Easy to monetize.
When you have a niche blog instead of a all general blog, monetizing with your blog becomes a piece of cake when it comes to making money through ads. A niche blog will have Ads related to the niche showing up on it. If you blog is not a niche targeted blog , it become less attractive to advertisers who who would have love to advertise their product or service online on a niche blog. With no way to monetize your blog, your blogging effort becomes a shadow in the dark. Don’t get me wrong ads is not the only way to monetize your blog it just one of the ways. check different ways to make money from your blog

Now you know why you must choose your niche before you take your first step of the billion miles blogging journey.

How do you choose a niche?

You must have a genuine interest
To choose a niche you need to determine if you really have interest in the niche. I mean a natural and genuine interest and not an interest that is reward or profit driven. The pitfall in not going for a niche you have a natural interest in is that with time you will loose interest and you will find it hard to come up with fresh and quality content. And when this happen to you. Your blog will fail. Guess you don’t like the thought of that. So try to choose a niche you are really and naturally interested in.

Is it profitable?
Having a natural interest in a chosen niche is not enough if you intend to make money from blogging. One of the question to ask yourself before you choose your niche is, how can i make money or earn a living blogging in this niche? If that is not enough, find out if your chosen niche consist of buyers. Because to make money from your blog you must present an offer to your audience either an affiliate product or your personal product.

To do this, you must know what others in the niche monetizing with? – one of the fastest ways to know if there is potential to monetize a niche is to check out what others in the niche are doing to make money. Check out the biggest sites first and look at whether they run advertising. if they do, what type? whether they’re promoting affiliate products, what kinds of products or services of their own are they sell etc. You might find that you come up with a quick list of things to start monetizing your own site with very quickly by doing this. If you are unable to do all these, find another niche.

In choosing a niche, another important thing you must consider is the level of competition in the niche.

One of the factors that many bloggers failing to acknowledge in the choosing of a niche is how much competition and how strong is the competition in their potential niche.

The disadvantage of choosing some popular niches is that you might be competing against some very strong and powerful sites in the niches. Well this should not be a factor to stop you exploring a niche. In fact competing with the big guys can perhaps help you to shape your niche to be something that will give you a competitive edge.

On the other hand if there is no competition at all in the niche, two things might be involve it is either the niche is a completely new path or a total failure. Either way i will advise you test with caution and manage risk well while assessing the strength of your competition.

In conclusion

To be successful as a blogger you must have a well structured plan for you niche selection and how you intend to monetize your blog. Unless you do not have the intention to do so.