When you are starting your first lifestyle business, there are two ways that I recommend.
Freelance Writing
Writing is a skill that most of us already possess, and the demand for freelance writing is huge. If you wish to make money quickly while learning online skills and gaining confidence, freelance writing is the best thing to do.
However, not everybody wants to do freelancing. For people who enjoy to dive into a niche, I recommend developing what I call a “Hobby Hacking” site, essentially a niche site. That way, you’re building an asset and a brand in the long run and becoming an expert in your niche and earning money in the process.
But the issue is: Most people don’t select their niche properly.
The Errors of Choosing a Niche
I totally botched choosing my niche when I was building my main affiliate marketing site.
I’m a big golf fan, so I wanted to build a golf site. Given what I had learned from running Location Rebel, I thought I’d be a hit immediately.
But it didn’t pan out.
Although I started the site, one thing was a big problem: there was no focus. I wrote club reviews, the PGA Tour, golf travel, golf course architecture—pretty much anything golf-related.
This can be done if you have a team of writers writing every day, but I was doing all this myself and writing once or twice a week.
What was the problem then?
I never established my particular niche.
Golf is not a niche, it’s an industry.
Within the golf industry, there are so many various interests. There are some who care about Tiger Woods and major championships, others who care about munis, and there are some who care about golf course design. But my content was too general and didn’t resonate strongly with any of these groups.
I realized this over time and eventually chose to niche down as much as possible. The result? You’ll see that soon enough.
How to Choose a Niche
In this post, I’ll walk you through how to choose a niche for your website using the Niche Within a Niche (NWN) method, which I’ve discovered to be highly effective. And, I’ll also mention a few popular trending niches you should avoid.
With this approach, I can significantly increase the income of my niche site. I made over $100,000 from one product alone this year and had several months with six-figure income in affiliate marketing. When I started Breaking Eighty over a decade ago, I did not see success on this level.
However, I am not in a position to guarantee such profits, but choosing the right niche plays a critical role in making money on your website.
The NWN method might seem counterintuitive, but it’s the best way I’ve found to grow and monetize a passionate audience.
Step #1: Pick the Industry for Your Niche
You can create a niche site around virtually any industry. No matter the subject, there are people out there who are passionate about it.
Although there are plenty of resources available out there for how to find an underserved niche, I will not cover those here. If you build a niche site in a niche you have no interest in, you will end up hating it, and your readers will be able to sense it.
So, start with something you really like:
- What do you enjoy?
- What are your biggest hobbies?
- What can you talk about forever?
- What do you read or watch during your downtime?
- What would you adore to turn into a career?
Step #2: What Niche In the Industry Excites You Most?
You have your industry. Now you need to decide what niche in the industry you’re most interested in. The idea is to make it specific.
Check out a couple of my websites:
- Breaking Eighty
Industry: Golf
Niche: Golf Travel and Top 100 Courses
Content: Course reviews, travel guides, product reviews, photo tours - HDR Software
Industry: Photography
Niche: HDR (High Dynamic Range)
Content: Tutorials, product reviews, gear reviews
You can apply the same questions to find your niche:
- What’s the sub-section of your industry you’re most passionate about?
- Could you write about this repeatedly over the long term? Do you have 75-100 ideas to write about?
- Would having a site on this niche full-time excite you?
Step #3: Test the Demand for Your Niche
You should have a good notion of your ideal industry and niche by now. But we still don’t know if there’s demand for it.
Here’s how to test interest:
- Is there another site devoted to this niche?
- Is there a product already available in your niche?
- Is anyone talking about this niche on online forums?
- Is there a Subreddit, Facebook group, or other social media buzz about it?
Step #4: Monetize Using the NWN Method
Now is the magic sauce.
Even with a good niche, you won’t truly know for certain if you’ve chosen the best one unless you spend a couple of months creating content, testing, and seeing what sticks with you and your audience.
However, when you finally do come up with a good idea, don’t just leave it there. To maximize your chances at monetization, further niche down using the Niche Within a Niche (NWN) technique.
Now, let me take a step back to my golf example.
Golf traveling is a wonderful niche, but there are too many people writing about it, and the competition is heating up. So, I niched in closer once again.
How was that?
I niched out on individuals who:
- Are members of private golf clubs
- Enjoy having friends over and inviting them to their home clubs
- Love traveling to renowned and historical golf courses
- Enjoy sharing information about golf on the web
This is a highly specialized niche, and it represents about 3-5% of my total readership for Breaking Eighty. But this is a very active audience, and I knew if I wrote about what they’re interested in, they’d likely be interested in what I’m writing about.
So I created The Eighty Club—a members-only forum for members of members-only golf clubs who are in this demographic.
We now have over 200 members from some of the best golf clubs in the world. That was successful because I kept nichifying down further to appeal to a very exact audience.
Working with the NWN Method
Here’s what you can apply this method on your niche:
- List smaller sub-sets of your target niche.
- Which one of these do you think holds the most opportunity for monetizing?
- Where in this business did you ever wonder, “Why aren’t more resources available for this?”
- What market are you willing to pay for extra resources or content?
By asking these questions, you will start to uncover longer-term opportunities with higher demand.
Final Thoughts on Niching Down
Remember that this does not happen overnight. Building a successful niche site takes months of writing, posting, researching, and adjusting your approach.
When I first started Breaking Eighty, I cast a wide net by posting about all things golf. This allowed me to:
- Determine what I liked writing about most.
- Learn what material worked best in engaging readers.
But I might have done even better if I had tapped into a more specific niche sooner.
The goal of this blog post is to help you find your niche and take it a step further by niching it down. That’s where the real monetization potential typically lies.
The most under-served sub-niches typically have high demand, and creating content specifically for them can yield huge rewards.
Once you’ve niched down to your niche, you can start building your site and scaling it to success.
