Starting a blog can be your way out of the corporate world, it can be your way to spend
more time with your family, be location-independent and travel the world, it can be your place
for creative writing.
It can be so many great things but at the beginning everything seems so overwhelming!
Especially the burden of making choices. Not only the technical part of the process, like
which hosting provider to use, which website building platform, etc. But even a more difficult
decision is to choose the blog niche or the main topic for your website.
You have to think of a niche that will be profitable but at the same time, it has to
be something that you are genuinely interested in writing about – otherwise, you will have
an early burnout.
I don’t know you personally and I have no idea what YOU would be interested in writing
and researching about, but I can tell you what are the most profitable blogging niches
out there today.
Hi! I’m Anastasia and you can find me at anastasiablogger.com. On this channel, I share
my tips for starting a blog, an online business, for driving traffic from Pinterest and for
making money online. If that’s what you want to learn more about – Subscribe to
my channel and hit the Bell button to get notified about my new videos.
So, in this video I will first tell you how to choose your blog niche or topics, and will
talk about the 8 most profitable niches to consider, based on current trends and forecasts
for 2020 and beyond.
Let me just tell you one thing before we move on about a special offer for my followers
that will help you start a blog for less than $3/mo. Check my link in the top right corner
and in the description below this video! I can’t promise this offer will be available
forever, so check it out while the link is here!
Things to Consider and Research Before You Start Your Blogging Career
In this video, I will not even mention choosing any technical or design elements, marketing,
or other content-related tasks. I will focus on the steps leading up to a topic decision.
1. Explore Your Interests and Expertise It is important to choose a topic for your
blog that you are passionate about, or at least interested in, or it can become very
tedious very quickly. My advice is to explore the intersection of your interests or expertise,
hobbies, past experiences, and so on, with trending topics or what might interest others.
Find a problem to solve or a unique voice to provide, and you’ll be on the right track
to focusing in on a good popular blog topic.
2. Monetization When thinking about blog topics that will
you make money, you need to give some thought to your method(s) of monetization. How are
you going to turn visits to your blog and pageviews into a source of income? Popular
options include advertising, affiliate or referral programs, making and selling your
own products or services, and alternative support methods, such as Patreon. Why you
need consider this in the context of blog niche ideas? Well, it’s because the best
monetization methods are different for different niches. For example, with a food blog or a
home décor blog, the easiest way to start making money would be with ads. That’s possible
because you will be able to get a lot of traffic in some niches, for example, from Pinterest.
In other more narrow or business-related topics, you will not ever get as much traffic and
it making money with ads on such topics doesn’t make much sense when you can offer high-ticket
affiliate products or sell your own services or digital products.
3. Competition You likely will want to come up with a few
blog niche ideas when you brainstorm, and then research each one. It’s vital that
you spend some time doing keyword research and looking at your competition. How will
you differentiate yourself? Some of the most profitable blogging niches have a lot of competition
in them already, and if you don’t bring something unique to the table, you may not
be successful. That’s why we stress again it is possible that an extremely niche blog,
with limited competition, that otherwise doesn’t appear on our most profitable blog niche list
below, may in fact be the best choice for you. Do your research!
Choose a Topic and Get Started After all is said and done, you will eventually
need to choose a niche and get started on developing a plan for your blog. This may
seem obvious, but this step deserves some attention. Figure out the scope of what you
intend to cover, and brainstorm important topics or areas related to your blog niche.
This will help set you up to make the best choices for things like design, structure,
marketing, and other steps that come later. It’s always better to have an abundance
of ideas within your chosen topic, rather than have too few and end up running out of
content ideas after you go live.
And as it comes to traffic generation to your new blog, you know that my advice is always
start with Pinterest because it will give you the fastest results before Google will
start recognizing that your site even exists. If you don’t know how Pinterest can help
you drive traffic fast to your blog, I have a free Pinterest Masterclass – use the link
in the top right corner in the info icon, or check the link in the description below
this video. Most Profitable Blogging Niches for 2020
Now that you know the steps for choosing a blogging niche, I’ll tell you what are the
most profitable blogging niches for this year.
1. Lifestyle Broad, Family and Mom Blogs Lifestyle blogs is probably the broadest way
of defining a blog niche. I am myself really confused about this term and the way I understand
it, lifestyle blogs can include mommy or parenting blogs, as well as multi-topic blogs that explore
fashion, health and fitness, beauty and makeup, and other topics I will mention in this list
later. Lifestyle can also include topics specific to your everyday life, professional or non-blogging
career, and similar, provided they have wide interest and appeal. It also pairs well with
those who have extensive Instagram and/or Pinterest followings related to style, fashion,
food, and life in general.
Along this video when I show you different niches, I will also show you really quickly
a few income reports from some of the blogs that could be categorized as one niche or
another. Keep in mind that many bloggers publish income reports just a few times a year, some
were posting them regularly and then stopped at some point so all I can do in most cases,
is show you the latest income report which can often be something published last year.
For example, this is a blogging income report from Elena Peters for March last year, she
calls herself a “midlife blogger” and she made about 4500 dollars mainly display
ads on her site (it’s about $4000 and the rest falls into other sources like affiliate
income and sponsored posts.
Or here is Lena from WhatMommyDoes and this is her income report for Feb 2016 when she
made about 9000 dollars. Of which 3200 was her ad income, 3600 affiliate income, she
also had some good income from sponsored posts and her own eBook.
2. Food Speaking of food…that’s another popular
and profitable blog topic! Naturally, food has broad appeal – everybody needs to eat.
Sorry I just came to my kitchen to make a tea as this video seems to become very long
and I still will need my voice to talk about the other 6 profitable blogging niches. By
the way that’s where food bloggers spend most of the time I guess – in the kitchen.
They don’t only need to invent the recipe, cook it but also set up the lighting and make
amazing photos that will make you click on their recipe photos.
There are numerous monetization options depending on how you approach a food blog, and quite
an extensive world of content opportunities as well. Ideas include recipe blogs, fast
meals, specific health/diet-trend related blogs, ethnic or cultural food specialties,
baking or savory-focused blogs, and many other ideas.
Food bloggers usually make most of their income with display ads because traffic volume has
a huge potential. For example, PinchofYum published their income report for Nov 2017
when they made about 52,000 dollars just with ads on their site. They also made about 22k
with sponsored content, about 10k with affiliate links on their site, and about 2k with their
own product – a food photography eBook.
Here is Cheryl from 40aprons blog and her income report for August 2019, when she made
about 31k dollars of which the majority (about 25k) was made with display ads, and the rest
was distributed between sponsored posts, her coaching services and products and some affiliate
programs.
3. Personal Finance Personal finance, being all about money, is
also one of the common topics on most profitable niches. Everyone wants to know how to better
manage their finances, it’s a weak area for many of us, as K-12 and higher education
don’t generally prepare people for the challenges of personal finance. This is an especially
good blog niche if you have experience yourself in personal finance, financial mishaps or
missteps, or formal training in finance. The potential topics within this blog niche are
nearly unlimited, and it’s both evergreen and evolving, as new technologies and services
innovate and change the way we earn, spend, and manage our money.
You probably know Michelle from Making Sense of Cents. Her last monthly income report was
published in Nov 2018 and it was for almost 160k of blogging income in one month.
In this niche, the majority of income usually comes from affiliate programs because bloggers
in this niche often can promote high-ticket affiliate products. She also sold two of her
courses in that month for about 38k each, and made about 23k with sponsored posts, only
about 2k of her extraordinary income report fell on display advertising on her site. So,
you see now how different are the niches in terms of monetization strategies.
This is Rosemary from BusyBudgeter blog and her last income report was for Jan 2017 when
she made about 86k and her income streams were distributed between her own products,
including printables, affiliate links, and display ads.
There are many other blogs with very impressive income reports in this niche but I still have
to cover the other 4 blogging niches so let’s move on to the next one. It’s
4. Business and Marketing There are many professional blogs that focus
on business and/or marketing, and often do so on a very narrow slice or sector of those
topics. While it’s not at the top of our most profitable blogging niches list for 2020,
it’s a fairly evergreen topic with a lot of potential. Depending on the approach you
choose to take, you have a decently large audience built-in that will be interested
in your content. Unlike some other blog niches, business and marketing also presents a wealth
of opportunities for guest posting, backlinks, and deriving traffic through established industry
or trade group sites, making the marketing and outreach portion of running your blog
much easier.
I would say that Pay Flynn’s blog SmartPassiveIncome is the perfect example of that because if
we look at his income reports which he published for a very long time and I just picked this
one from December 2017 random report. He makes the majority of his income which is usually
above the 100k dollars a month, from affiliate links to various online marketing tools and
digital products that teach people all things about marketing and business. He also made
about 40k selling his own courses, the main one of them is the course about using podcasts
to promote your business.
I’m not really sure into which niche I should put my own blog because I have a pretty wild
mix of niches and topics on my blog. But if you’d like to know what were the main income
streams for my 25k income report I published for Jan this year, I’ll give you a link
to it in the top right corner and in the description below this video.
5. Health and Fitness The next niche I have to cover here is the
health and fitness niche. Year after year, health and fitness remain high demand blog
topics. It’s a pretty broad way to define the niche which includes diet, nutrition,
exercise routines, fitness equipment, and many more topics within this niche.
And all these topics offer the potential for easy monetization. Just a little note or a
small tip from me if you are interested in this niche: don’t focus your entire blog
to a particular diet or fitness technique, as those things tend to come and go very frequently.
Here is Tammy from OrganizeYourselfSkinny blog and her latest income report for April
2016. She made about 9k that month, of which the
majority, about 5k she made with display ads on her site, and the rest was distributed
between affiliate products and her own eBook.
Before we move on to the next blogging niche, just one note for those of you who are thinking
about starting a blog but feel completely lost in all the technical stuff and if you
have no idea how you could make money blogging, I have a free course that will walk you through
all of this in about one week. I’ll give you a link to the course in the top right
corner and in the description below this video. 6. Fashion and Beauty
In terms of blog niche ideas, fashion is a wide-open world. It may cross over with several
other topics on our niche list, but you can get extremely specific and personal in your
fashion blogging. You could focus on your own sense of style, or highlight specific
looks or designers. Perhaps you’re more interested in bargain fashion, and putting
together the best haul for the lowest price? This category has so many potential opportunities,
as well as synergies with Pinterest and YouTube content – especially if you have an existing
audience for unboxing, haul videos, wardrobe or design looks, or anything like that.
This is actually an interesting example of a men’s style blog called The Modest Man.
The author of this blog shares he made about 8.5k with his blog in Jan 2017. A big chunk
of his income that month was from sponsorships (over 3.5k), and then from display ads on
his site. Then about 2k he made with affiliate links from RewardsStyle and Amazon, and some
income came from selling his eBook.
Suzana Rose posted her income report for Nov 2017 when she made about 17k with her fashion
blog. About 8.7k of this income came from display ads on her site, then she made about
7k on various affiliate programs and 1k on sponsored content.
7. Travel Travel blogs remain very popular, but we don’t
know how the world will live after the pandemic as many travel bloggers and traffic to their
sites was affected. Even though this year the niche will be definitely affected, I still
hope that travel niche will remain one of the profitable niches in the years to come.
This travel blog called LocalAdventurer made over 25k in Nov 2019. The majority of the
income for many travel bloggers comes from sponsored content (for this blog in was about
15k in that month), then they also made about 8k with display ads, and some money they made
with affiliate links.
8. DIY and Home Decor DIY and Home Décor is also a fairly large
blogging niche that includes DIY home improvement, all the way down to specific crafts or specialties,
like knitting, pottery, and more. If you create and sell items that you make, this is an ideal
blog niche to choose. Likewise if you are a trained expert in carpentry, plumbing, electrical,
auto repair, or any of the major trade disciplines, and can bring that expertise to an approachable
and informative blog.
Debby from TheFlooringGirl now makes consistently over 20k/mo with her blog
She earns on average about 7k dollars per month only with Amazon affiliate links on
her site, she also makes a few more thousand dollars on other affiliate programs, and about
7k with display ads on her site. In the month when this income report was published, she
also made about 6k selling her own eBook for beginner bloggers.
This blogger from Sewrella.com published her latest income report of about 9000 dollars.
About 5.5k was made with display ads, the rest was distributed between affiliate programs,
Youtube ad income and her own products sold on Etsy
Jennifer from Jennifer Maker published her latest income report on the blog in 2017 when
she made almost 15k dollars. She’s been doing incredibly well with all her income
streams in the next months. I know because I am signed up for her email list and that’s
where she keeps sharing her income reports. In that particular month in 2017 she made
the majority of her income with her own product that is targeting people who like Cricut machines
and would like to learn how to use them. My mind is completely blown away when I think
that it’s possible to sell products to such a narrow audience and moreover, in some of
her latest income reports from Dec 2019 she shared that she made about 40k in one month
only with display ads on her DIY blog.
So, I hope that after watching this video, and especially the story about Jennifer Maker,
you are not going to think that only bloggers in personal finance niche can make really
good money. Sometimes, we don’t know much about profitable niches just because these
bloggers don’t share income reports and don’t sell any blogging courses.
If you want to learn more about how to monetize your blog, I will give you a link to my other
video focused on monetization strategies, in the top right corner and in the description
below this video. If you have any questions you’d like to ask me, the best way to do
it is in the comments below the video!
Before you close this page, check my other videos that are perfectly complimentary to
what I shared with you today. See you in the next videos!