Don’t start a niche site… here’s what to do instead...

So you're ready to

start

a blog and wondering

what

the best

niche

is. This is definitely the overwhelmingly most common question I receive; However, t

here

are a lot of problems with the way traditional advice on specialist

site

s has been given over the years. passionately base yourself on an SEO report choose the

niche

that is most lucrative, it just doesn't work that way, that is why in this video we will see exactly how to choose your specific niche and how this new formula will in turn increase your chances of success and make more money in the long run, but before we get

start

ed, I want to invite you to watch my free masterclass on how to start a profitable blogging business.

It covers exactly

what

blogging is today in the 2020s, how I make over 300,000 a month from my blog, thousands of students have read it, so be sure to click the link in the description below, sign up and Let's get into today's topic, so first, when we think about choosing your specific niche, we have to talk. about the old way of choosing your niche and the problem with traditional advice on niche

site

s so the old way of choosing your niche is basically based on SEO reports, competitive metrics and passions so you know you look at an SEO report or use ahrefs and go oh. this is a good opportunity based on this SEO report or this niche is new and based on search tools and data and potential money to earn and stuff like that, competitive metrics or something you're passionate about, you know, start with a passion in mind .

Write about this for years and that's the niche you're going to choose because you have to be consistent, that's just not the case anymore and the key principles are really missing

here

, the actual real world business principles that you're going to do. The blog is successful from a monetary standpoint, so it is a small niche site. You know there are a lot of things missing from a business and human psychology point of view, so first of all, we have to discuss what happens if you choose the wrong niche and what happens if. you pick that little niche site and then it just doesn't work or you never get Google to trust that specific niche and you know it never works, you never get traffic right, then what happens you pretty much abandon it and that's what happens with There are a lot of niche sites, you are also putting all your eggs in one basket so you know as much as a niche.

Niches change and evolve over time so that niches never stay the same. New products are added to niches. New products in which you know the technology is there. Niche niches disappear changes in search volume, so putting all your eggs in one basket is difficult to build a sustainable business, you also have the inability to pivot, so pivoting is a crucial component to running a business. online business, the ability to adapt and quickly change what you are doing is really important and when you are pigeonholed into a small niche you cannot pivot and adapt the odds of leaving a niche site are also very high when it is not linked to your identity, so if you just create something on the side and you build this website and no one really knows about it and it's like this little micro niche site, well, it's very easy to quit because you haven't really invested in it, you haven't tested it. because the thing is, you're going to have to do this for six months a year and two years to start making a good amount of money from it, so the chances of quitting smoking are much higher because you know the self-limiting beliefs and the things what we have.

Seeing that this website is not working at all, it is much easier to abandon that niche site when it is not tied to your identity. It also limits the number of partnerships you can make, so when you're on a small niche site, well, who's going to work? with their companies in that niche, so they can't really get out of that. If my site was just emailmarketingguy.com, I could work with some email marketing software, but I couldn't work with all the other software companies that want to work with me. so you really limit the number of partnerships you can make in a big business sense when you choose a small niche site, you also lower your income ceiling so you know you can take advantage of your niche potential, think about this, we'll talk about this later, but how many articles do you need how much income do you want to make from your blog, but by having a small site, you lower the income ceiling, you can limit it to a certain amount and you limit the amount of opportunities that arise naturally through this because we just need to give ourselves the freedom to pivot, adapt and change the content and do these things and test and modify based on thinking like a scientist, without trying to force something and then the odds of choosing the perfect niche at the beginning, so if you are just starting out and you are a new blogger.

You know the first option is to choose this niche, so it is a little difficult because we are all beginners when we choose our niche for the first time, we are not experts in SEO, now there are some experts. that says you can do this formula, so if you have five years, ten years of SEO experience and you want to buy and change niche sites and cool things, this doesn't necessarily apply to you, but if you're a beginner and you have some experience . but you haven't created a successful blog yet to make it profitable, so it's very difficult to choose a specific niche at the beginning and make it work because you just don't necessarily have the advanced knowledge that you will develop.

Doing it over time becomes easier, but you have to give yourself this freedom, so the chances of choosing the perfect niche at the beginning if you are a beginner are very low, so to combat that we just have to give ourselves the opportunity. freedom and flexibility to adapt and ultimately what it comes down to is that a real business lives outside of an SEO report, so when you think about the world of online business, we can't base things just on numbers in a report that thinks that "You are going to be successful, there is human psychology, there are partnerships, there are ways that you are going to do link building and you know how to trade and build affiliate marketing relationships and all of that will be dictated by this first initial choice, which is your domain name and your niche, so if that's not the best way to choose your niche, what is the best way, it has to be personalized for you, this can't just be something we choose at random, the niche it has to be personalized and work specifically in your life, and that's why I created what's called the authority flywheel, so this is an exercise I do with students on my course blog growth engine to really figure out and take advantage of the specific niche that will work best for you and that is based on four key components that are based on you. your market experience and your leverage, so we'll go through each of these pretty quickly just to show you that a niche should be selected based on these four key principles: First you are you, then you are just you, and you are your identity.

Your experience is the message that you want to share with the world to have a unique identity, a unique perspective on life, you know that you have a flow of experiences in your past that have led you to this point today, so you have to think about what What has that made you? Who are you and what message do you want to share with the world? You are a living, breathing thing, much like a blog, so in a creator economy, your business and your blog are also a living thing that needs to adapt and evolve over time.

I'm not the same person I was when I was 18. Thank God, I'm not the same person I was when I was 25, you know, I've evolved over time, my flow of experience has changed, so we have to think about that the first time. One kind of pillar is just thinking about yourself, ultimately, if your face was on the home page of a website, what would it say? What would you teach? What would you say to the readers of your blog? That comes down to you and your unique identity, so after you, you want to move on to your expertise, so your expertise is whatever area you have expertise in, so that you know and ultimately have more experience than the that you think a lot of students have had and said, I don't have it, I don't have experience.

In this or that area, ultimately, you should know that the Internet is full of beginners, so when people search for things on Google and search for blogs, they are pretty much at the beginning stage of learning and in their journey they are not searching. for super advanced stuff that google doesn't have, it's not full of first page results for super advanced math formulas and crazy stuff, it's mainly just for beginners looking for simple sources of information so you know you have experience in different areas and that you have experience personal and professional experience, so this can work here too, so maybe you have a career, maybe you have hobbies that you are very smart at and you can make money from both.

Work, you have to be vulnerable on your journey and share where you are. It doesn't matter where you are, so if you are just starting a blog and want to teach people how to blog like I did, I don't recommend it, it's very competitive and difficult, but know that you know how to teach people exactly where you are. don't look like someone who isn't based on your level of experience, even if you are one step ahead of a new beginner who still has experience to that beginner, so we have to start thinking about what areas of experience we have in our personal sphere and professional life and that's the second rung quickly on this wheel of authority, then we have the market, so this is really important, so let's say you know you've written some things about yourself and your experience and you're making a shower of ideas about these things, then we move on to The Market and the Market is how you and only you extract value from the market.

Based on your experience and your identity, what can you potentially make money with? First we have to go where the fish are, that means what people are really looking for. online, so we can't just blog about everything, we have to write about things that people are interested in and looking for from an informational standpoint and from a transactional product standpoint, so we have to determine their tolerance. to pain so each niche has different competitive levels, so if you are going to try to enter the finance niche, you should know that to do so you will have to spend a few years building links, building partnerships, writing tons of articles and all that, while that maybe you could do it. in a more eCommerce focused niche, like camping or outdoor or home decor, and you wouldn't need as many links so your pain tolerance would be lower, maybe your income ceiling would be a little lower, but not You will have to go crazy and try to create a million links so you will have to determine your pain tolerance and what your end goals are.

Then we have to talk about what the products are in your niche, so start writing about affiliate marketing opportunities in your niche. If you want to write about kitchen items, what kind of kitchen utensils are out there, what kind of products are on Amazon that you could write about and review, look for keyword tools and try to see if you know the best food processors, the best kitchen faucets, the best microwaves. Different similar products in your niche that exist, that are new and emerging and start thinking about what affiliate opportunities are emerging. They have to basically determine the overall competitiveness of their niche and the revenue ceiling of their niche for competitiveness to use a tool. like hrefs and you can type something like in the keyword expo explorer like best plus your niche so best camp and then you'll see all the different keywords and terms that come in that niche and all the competitive metrics so you can get a high level overview of how competitive the niche is and then you'll want to make a plan, start thinking through what these articles are going to be so you know in my course we cover exactly how to do it, exactly what to write the templates and everything, but this it's kind of a high-level overview of trying to figure out the market potential of your niche because ultimately, if you want to make money as a business, this is what's important, not a passion, that it's something you're passionate about. so when I choose my niche I am passionate about many things I am passionate about running I am passionate about science and the universe and astronomy I am passionate about it like I like fantasy football with my friends I am passionate about many things, but if I have to write about them for years, writing about it is very different from doing it, so you have to realize that money drives passion more than passion drives money.

This is a game. This is a way to make money online like a game and if you are in the game and you like the game you will be successful, if you don't like the game and you hate the idea of ​​trying to make money online then you probably won't. forachieve it, you have to be, you know, once you start making money and you see your website working, then the passion comes and you say, oh wow, this passion is coming because I see this result of this niche is actually going to allow I have the freedom of time that I need to leave my job to make more money to do all these things and that emotion is what drives you to not necessarily write about something that you enjoy doing as a hobby, it doesn't make sense, so finally let's go back al The last part of the authority wheel is your leverage.

Leverage is basically anywhere you can get some hidden advantage, so we all have different starting lines when starting an online business, some of us have no SEO experience, zero digital marketing experience. we have some some of us have many some of us have many connections some of us have maybe personal friends or something that could help us get into an industry, you know, imagine you're in the film industry, who do you know that can I put you in? This is pretty much the same in blogging, who do you know in any industry that could get into it? do you have some links or some opportunities for guest posts or know early stuff about affiliates, for example when I was in my career I was a middle manager at a company in Austin in the tech industry and I just used that little middle manager title on some of my reach and it helped me so small points of influence even one small thing can propel you forward in a niche so that's the last thing to think about and this is the most common question I get definitely says Adam , what fabric should I choose. and I get this question on YouTube in the blog comments and everywhere and it's like telling me my niche, what's the best niche?

Should I go into finance? Do you have any experience in finance? Ultimately it's like asking a complete stranger what business you should start, I can't tell you that you have to go through this exercise, you have to understand your identity, your experience, you know the market and any influence you have, and I can't tell you. You shouldn't just go into any niche based on SEO reporting metrics and things that you think can make you money. Another one I understand is this one. I have no experience, I don't take advantage of multiple hobbies all over the place and I also live in my mom's basement, so let's talk about the power of self-limiting beliefs because when you really put these things on paper and see that this is my experience, these are the opportunities to affiliation, these are all the different things you could make money with, you start to see that there are opportunities everywhere, not just some. niche about making money online or finance or cryptocurrency or something you think will make money What if you have a pet?

What if you have a cat or a dog and you say: I love my dog? Well, think of all the things you could write about the pet niche, there are tons of easy opportunities and opportunities there or maybe you enjoy home decorating and interior design and you're a stay at home mom and you say: I love having ideas and design inspiration. for living rooms and kitchens and I go to Wayfair all the time and do these things well, then I create a home blog and just write about living room ideas, sectional sofa designs, you could make a ton of income as an affiliate, You know, to qualify for something. like the best modular section that's not as competitive and could make you a ton of money funneling traffic writing about ideas writing about these things so you don't have to be an expert, but you know you have something that you need to understand more.

The more you learn, the more success you will find, so let's first look at what makes a good niche. There really are tons of different niches, whatever you know, from traveling to home to outdoors, all of these things, but ultimately it comes down to three key factors. so number one is finance, so finance is high reward, high competition, finance is something that can make a lot of money and we see sites like credit cards and nerd wallets, all these financial sites make a lot of money because they can make money with huge percentages. What I mean by this is that if someone signs up for an IRA or a retirement plan or a business loan or something worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, the blog can earn a percentage of that so they can earn something like the 10 percent of 500,000. and earn a 50,000 affiliate commission on a sale, so it's high risk, high competition, that's why it's so competitive, tons of big sites are entering the space and they're already in the space, but when I think about finances, I think in percentages of really. high value stuff, so that's what happens when I think about that niche, next we have software, so software is great for the recurring nature of affiliate programs, that's why it's competitive and why people buy things every month you can earn affiliate commissions like 30 of that monthly payment and it creates stability, that's why I don't worry as much about traffic fluctuations and all these things, because there is stability built in, that's why it's also competitive, so we have all physical products, so these are things like me. said camping kitchen living room patio outdoor recreational stuff think amazon so everything on amazon has people searching for these products on google every product category out there is searched on google and blogs are expected to be there like source of information comparing these products to physical products is a volume game because affiliate commissions come as a one-time payment so think like a basketball hoop if you write an article about the best basketball hoops and earn a tenfold commission percent for a thousand dollar basketball hoop which is a one-time commission of one hundred dollars, it's not fifty thousand dollars and it's not recurring, it's one time, so physical products are less competitive, so I think Many more people should enter these spaces because you don't need as many links. you need to build that authority, you just write articles about products, the income limit is a little lower, but you make up for it with volume, so you can write a lot of articles over time, 100,200 articles over the course of a few years and then We are making a lot of money since each item is its own mini business, so when I think about niches, I think about these three main categories, not 100 categories, that's how I think about it, then we have what I call you. meet ymyl google eat and the competition, so ymyl is your money, your life, google eat is experience, authority, trust and the competition, so know that when you choose a niche you should look at the niche landscape from a point of view competitive.

It's from an authority point of view, so if one of the most difficult, for example, is to enter the health niche, if you want to compete with webmd and healthline, that will be the most difficult because Google likes it when it becomes on something related to life and money that's where you know it's most competitive and you need the most authority because Google isn't going to rank some random blogger on how to wash your hands to avoid covid or something like that would be really risky, like that that that's where Healthline and webmd and these articles written by health experts and then you know this guy trusts and verifies, that's where all that stuff comes in and that's why finance is also competitive and you need a lot of authority because you're recommending things as credit. cards or business loans like that can change someone's life, the site needs more authority so that's something to keep in mind, so the things that are higher, you know, the intensity and the risk to the reader will be older, you will need more authority and links. because that's something to keep in mind, so when we think about creating a niche site, we think about the path to 100 articles, so

instead

of creating a small site and a small area, think about having 100 articles eventually on that blog. comp Would the niche be completely exhausted?

Would you be completely done with content at that point or would you still have room to grow? That's why we know we'll go over exactly how to do this, but think about it. That way, we don't want to write 20 articles and then say that's the entire niche, that's the site I'm going to make money from. No, that's not how blogs work, we need 100 articles, 200 articles eventually, over time, we keep building it. and building in the background of our life is making money passively, we have writers, we do all these things, but eventually we need hundreds of articles, so your niche has to be big enough for that, ultimately we talk about studying the landscape of the niche, so that's just using keyword research tools like ahrefs or something else to see how competitive the niche is in a broad sense, even just go to Google and search for some specific products in the niche to see what kind of sites are ranking and what authority they have and then We also want to have multiple sub-niches and areas to pivot to, so within a niche within a broad niche, what kinds of different things can we write about?

If it's the home, we could do all kinds of things, from the living room to the kitchen. gardening to all of these things, so there are many different sub-niches and product categories to analyze, although what I really like here is a niche with many new and emerging product categories, so what I mean by that is that there are new technology coming to the niche and new things to write about because time is a crucial component of ranking and time is something that is not in that SEO report. The time comes from niche authority and understanding the niche yourself, that's why we're doing it.

This niche exercise first because if you understand the niche, you have an advantage in understanding what products are entering the space. If you write articles first, you'll have a better chance of ranking and that comes down to how many emerging product categories are coming out. new technology, new devices, new features in that niche that you can write about, like software, it has a lot of new categories in devices and technology, it has a lot of new categories and products, like platoon, platoon alternatives, all these new in-home mirror devices for fitness some niches don't change that much, so maybe something like golf has a lot of new golf clubs every year, but that's seasonal, so you need to think about your niche, for example how much is changing, how much it's evolving and the ones that are evolving the fastest are easier to classify, so think about that too, so this is the new way I like to choose your niche: start broad, start with a name of broad domain in a broad niche, so we don't want to make several. niches where it's like I'm going to do gardening and software, I'm going to travel and I'm also going to do living room furniture like that, they're too different, but if you start with a broad niche, then you don't have to perfect this perfect sub-niche, maybe you have ideas for the sub-niche and can start with some content in that area, but we don't want to pigeonhole ourselves with our domain name, so our domain name needs to be broad enough to cover everything. niche so that we can eventually get to 500+ articles without pigeonholing ourselves and we can adapt and test multiple sub-niches so that's how you do it and then pivot to what's working so that your experience, authority and confidence can overlap across multiple topic areas, so if we are talking about travel and you want to start a travel blog, then we can talk about travel credit cards, travel insurance, we can talk about best foods in Italy, we can talk about travel backpacks and luggage and all products physical, and we're not just pigeonholing ourselves into just travel credit cards or anything like that, so think about the multiple sub-niches that we can try and tweak this content strategy, but we need to start broad enough to be able to give ourselves the freedom to understand and Sort this out.

So let's look at some examples here, so in the travel niche, the niche site example we would do is look at the SEO report, look at the competitive analysis, and then create a domain name called travelcreditcards.com. A great domain name that would be great. but what if you know you want to talk about other things like travel backpacks and meals in Italy and how to travel alone, you know, around Europe or any number of travel articles, maybe a little more strange if credit cards for trips would they write about that? Too corporate and a little weird and probably harder to rank for link opportunities and all that, but look at someone like nomadicmatt.

Great domain names for everything under the sun when it comes to travel insurance, credit cards, how to travel the world. of these different things and that's just one more examplewide, another is the home, so you could create a website like smarthomedevices.com. A great domain name again could work could work. Do you know what works well? But what if you want to talk about something you don't? It is not a smart home device. What if you want to talk about something that is a home device and you find a good opportunity and a good keyword, but it's actually not?

It doesn't make sense, then that domain pigeon is holding you back, but then look at a A site like Tom's Guide writes about every piece of technology and software under the sun and ranks hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of keywords with that simple name. domain. Let's talk about software so I can start my blog at ecommerceguy.com, that's the world I come from, but wouldn't it be strange when I started talking about virtual conferencing platforms and how to start a blog and make money online and passive income and all these other things that have nothing to do with e-commerce, yes? would have been like that, I would have been pigeonholed into this niche and the domain doesn't need to be your niche.

My domain name is just my name, so you know you have to give yourself maximum freedom to pivot, so then it comes down to the final question and I really get it if you use your own name or not, I get it, it's like Adam, you know what if you want to sell your blog, you know, use your name, it's really hard what's up with all this stuff and I get all these questions from people about how to sell my blog and I want to sell my blog before they've made a dollar so that we need to take a step back and realize that we want to build a passive income driven business for our lives. and it's really up to you if you can use Tom's guide, which is kind of a corporate view with a name, but not really the full name or you could use it like I did with my full name, ultimately it doesn't matter much, it What does matter is the content and the link building strategy and the monetization strategy.

More than anything, I like the full name just because it keeps it simple, makes it easy to spread, creates links, all that, and gives you maximum freedom to pivot, but if you don't like the idea of ​​having your face on the website and want to be more of a ghost niche site, that's fine too, you can do that, but keep it broad enough that you can test a big niche and then find your real niche and sub-niche topics over time. The truth is that niches evolve just like your identity and your experience niches change search volume changes things come and go in terms of products outside the niche and so does your identity the things that matter to you that's why passions don't work That's why small niche sites don't work Putting all your eggs in one basket doesn't necessarily work, but tailoring a blog specifically to you and what you're interested in, what you can offer to the market and changes and fits your life is the definitive key and the truth is that you are the niche that thinks about what I finished my blog, started my name, wrote about all kinds of software to make money online, saw what worked, changed the content I made and I moved to YouTube.

I create these videos. There is no information I can go on. everything we're pivoting towards financial content and all the other areas and it's because I started broad and I thought like a scientist and I'm doing it, you know, in a different way, so it's not a little niche site. , it's about creating a real sustainable brand for Rank and compete in the 2020s, so if you're interested, if you found that helpful, if you want to learn more about what I did with my blog, how I make over 300,000 per month, some of the strategies, be sure to check out my free blog. masterclass so click the link in the description below thousands of students have gone through it and let me know what you think about the authority flywheel because the more authority you build with your unique experience in the identity market and leveraging it is a snowball effect.

A steering wheel is something that continues to grow and continues to grow. An increase in one entry improves all results, so this is something that simply increases your authority online and to build real authority you need to be known for something, so I hope the video was helpful. Please like the video, check out my channel for all kinds of videos about blogging and business tips and I will see you in the next video.