Practical reasons why you should find your niche and how it can improve your chances of succeeding in selling your product or service.

Booking my first social media only client happened within the first month that I launched my site. I had listed in my short term service offerings that I did social media management. I mean, I’d managed it for my long term VA girls, I managed it for myself, might as well offer social media management to people who just wanted that, right?

Wrong.

Oh. So. Wrong.

Within 2 weeks, I removed every single bit of wording involving social media off of any services I offered. Why?

Because I absolutely hated it. I dreaded the work.

Hear me in this – the girl I worked for was the absolute salt of the earth. Such a sweet soul, so amazing to work with, and she trusted me with her pretty large account which is a huge deal. It wasn’t her at all.

It was the work. I felt that hour of my life was so unproductive. Scroll, double tap, scroll, scroll, double tap, comment, scroll…..I found myself wishing the time would just speed up a little bit more so that I could move on to other blog related tasks.

But I gotta say, I’m thankful I got to do that because it helped me quickly realize that I was actually not niched down enough.

First of all, what is a niche?

Okay, I’m not going to assume you even know what a niche is so I’m just going to make sure we’re all on the same page here. When starting a blog, a niche is an area of focus around which you create content; your area of expertise.

Do you make the meanest apple pie this side of the Mississippi? Baking is your niche.

Are you 6 paces ahead of fashion at all times? Fashion is your niche.

Do you subscribe to every home magazine known to man and know the cast of every show on HGTV? Home decor and design is your niche.

But finding your niche is so much more.

Let’s take the home decor route for a second. I’m in this niche, so I’m the most familiar with it. Just in the home decor niche you could focus on more of the glam decor. You could be “the Goodwill queen” and everything in your house was $5 and you slapped some paint on it and made it gorgeous. You could be the one that makes all their furniture from scratch because you know your way around a saw.

So, every niche also has its smaller niche. You tracking?

That’s right – you need to niche your niche. So confused you wanna cry? Keep reading, I’ll clarify!

I really thought I had targeted a specific audience. I wanted to be a VA for creative entrepreneurs – photographers, podcasters, writers, speakers, etc. Until I realized I knew nothing about the needs of any of those people. I knew the needs for a blogger.

And bloggers were the only ones coming to me asking for help.

These began to be huge signs to me that I needed a smaller niche market.

So, I thought I would share with you why to choose a niche when creating a blog (well, a successful blog) or any online business. I will also let you know what things to look for if you feel your niche is too small or too large.

Does your blog need a niche?

Short answer is abso-freakin-lutely. Sure, you can have a “lifestyle” blog but if you’re just starting out and trying to gain authority, if you’re posting your outfit of the day one day and then 3 days later you’re posting a sewing tutorial, not only is your audience going to be confused but Google is too.

It takes a looooooo(ooooooo)ng time for Google to recognize your site, crawl your site, and give your site authority (what Google terms domain authority). One of the things the little Google bot looks for is consistent, valuable information on a specific, targeted topic. The more you’re posting on the same things over and over, the better Google will like you and your site and begin to trust it over time.

What niche is best for a blog?

Now, this I can’t necessarily answer for you, but I will say there are definitely more profitable niches than others.

But before I go any further, I’m going to tell you something that lots of people blogging about this topic will not tell you-

Please do not start a blog to make money. Please, please.

Yes you can make money, but if you start it with the sole intent to make money and you’ve never started a blog before, it’s probably not going to go great for you. And it’s just honestly kinda gross.

Set out to make a difference in people’s lives, not to make money off of them. *jumps off soapbox*

With that in mind, personal finance blogs tend to do incredible online because people are always trying to learn how to save money. I mean, I know I am! I even talked about how to start a business with no money a little while ago and also just shared with you my 8 favorite free tools you can use in your service based business for productivity and organization.

Ya girl loves free.

But I don’t like talking about how to save money. That’s not where I’m an expert. Also, it seems sinfully boring to think all I would be blogging about is money and credit and credit cards and how to improve your credit. All valuable information, but I want to read someone else’s expert opinion, not write about it.

Food blogs can be a super profitable and popular niche topic. But, alas – the closest I’ll ever be to a food blogger is taking a picture of my brown paper bag from Taco Bell and hashtagging it #fourthmeal.

The short answer to what niche is best for a blog?

Your niche.

Signs you need to narrow your niche

You realize you don’t like something you’re doing/offering.

There are entire companies that just do social media management. If you’re killing the game on social media, by all means let that be your niche. But the truth is I have a love/hate (mostly hate) relationship with social media as it is. I don’t own the platform, can’t control it, and it gives very little ROI for me.

Social media platforms are their own ecosystems. They’re designed such that you stay in their platform. They don’t want you to leave. Which is all fine and dandy until you have a food blog or a lifestyle blog or a home blog and you want people to leave Instagram and go read your blog posts. It’s going to be an act of Congress to get that to happen.

If you don’t like something, it’s time to take that off your plate and niche down further.

You say your target market is client type B, C, and D, but all you keep getting are a bunch of A’s.

For example, you wanted to really work with CPAs and tax attorneys but it seems orthodontists keep reaching out to you for your services. This is a totally made up situation, but I’m trying to make it all make sense.

For me personally, this is what this looked like – The copy on my website said I was a “Virtual Assistant for creative entrepreneurs. Bloggers, authors, podcasters, mompreneurs.” You know who I work for and am completely booked up by currently?

Bloggers.

So, what did I do? Changed the copy on my site. I am no longer a VA for creative entrepreneurs. I’m a VA for bloggers. Because bloggers are the ones that seem to need my services the most, find value in what I do, and quite frankly, I’m the most comfortable with them too.

Yes, I listen to podcasts (where my true crime junkies at?!) and have been interviewed on 2 so far, I don’t know what their needs are. I could eventually figure it out, but it would be a longer learning curve.

What about you? Who keeps coming to you asking for your help? Is it the same “type” of people? Meaning people in the same area of profession or with the same type of need? Darlin, this is your niche! Go with that!

Why you need to find your niche

This is the bread and butter of this post – this is the entire reason I wanted to write this. When you decide to start a business, typically it’s because you have a passion for something or someone and you want to help. This is great! But in order for you to continue to have a successful blog or business, you need to keep going after your target market with helpful market strategy.

If I’m being real, I have absolutely no idea how to target podcasters or writers. I could figure it out if I wanted to, but it’s not the “natural” thing for me. I’ve worked for an author before, but my tasks were very different than they are for bloggers.

Finding your niche keeps you sane.

Finding your niche keeps you happy.

Finding your niche reminds you that there are people out there who can benefit from the skills you have.

Finding your niche boosts your confidence in yourself and your business.

When you choose your niche, you can spend your time learning and being excellent at one thing rather than trying to be good enough in many things which will keep your client retention sky high!

I’ve had several clients that I’ve done short term projects for and because I knew what I was doing and was able to do it well, they actually returned to me to help them again with something else.

Including my social media client I spoke about earlier! 🙂

How to choose your niche

Even though I didn’t want to make this entire post about how to choose your nice, I still had to include a little section about this because I do believe that there are people out there that are so passionate about so many things and talented at so many things that it’s hard to narrow it down.

Here are a few surface level things that I’ve found might be ways that can help you in finding your niche:

Google trends

I just talked about my new favorite Pinterest tool, but Google actually has something very similar and more robust. It’s called Google Trends and you can see what people are searching for within the past few days or even a year at a glance.

These are some things that were trending in 2019. Now, I’m not sure if starting an entire blog around Toy Story 4 would be a very popular topic that people would come back for (even though I might), but there are some other ones that might be a good foundation for you getting your wheels turning on a niche of your own.

What do other people say you’re good at?

I say other people because many times we think we’re good at something and in reality, we’re only okay at best. What are those things that someone else has watched you do or seen your work after the fact and they’ve said, “Holy crap, you’re incredible at that.”

What is that thing? Crafting? Hand lettering? Multi-tasking as a working mom of 97 kids? Taking stunning, magazine worthy photographs of your home consistently?

Make that be at least a start for you.

What skill do you have that benefits others?

News flash – people don’t read blogs because they’re just so obsessed with you and want to know what you’re doing every waking moment unless you’re an actual celebrity. They read blogs because they want to know how to do something.

What I mean is don’t try to make a profitable blog be all about you. What can you teach others? Can you teach them how to organize something? Cook something? Decorate something? Throw a killer Superbowl party? Travel around the world for pennies on the dollar? Don’t start a blog to brag. Start one to teach.

Lemme say that again for the people in the back.

Do not start a blog to brag. Start it to teach.

If you made it to the end of this post, I take it that means you’re serious about starting your blog and doing it the right way by choosing a niche which is awesome!

I’ve created a freebie that you can get to help you brain dump and niche down. And if you already have a niche, this hopefully will help you actually niche down your niche! Just pop in your email addy below and tell me where to send it. I promise you my email list is not gross or spammy or obnoxious. You’ll hear from me when I deem it just absolutely necessary.

I hope all of this information is helpful! If it is, leave me a comment below and let me know what your niche is or what you think it may be based on my freebie you got!

About Carmen

Seldom found in regular pants, Carmen in her natural habitat is usually covered in crumbs and stays busy dodging questions from her 4 year old daughter and dodging wooden pretend food from her 1 year old son. She has an irrational fear of fish (seriously, they're terrifying) and a very rational love for big t-shirts.