BLOGGING
Three Niche-Blogging Principles I Wish I’d Understood Sooner
Above all, don’t overthink it.
Building your first blog that draws meaningful, organic traffic is a real accomplishment.
It’s a hard-won victory that feels elusive—almost mythical—for months or even years as you grind away in obscurity.
It just ain’t easy, period.
However, we often fall into perceptions and mindsets that make it way harder than necessary. Heaven only knows I’ve created heaps of pointless work for myself, fretted about trivial matters, and imagined all sorts of obstacles that caused me stress yet amounted to nothing.
I’m still in the early stages of a very, very long game…but if I had understood four particular truths from day one, it would have been a more smoother and more relaxing journey thus far.
Everything worthwhile looks saturated
We all want to find a unicorn niche: massive traffic potential, minimal competition, and perfect alignment with our expertise and passion.
I won’t say that’s impossible, but I will say that you’ll never just start as long as you’re hunting obsessively for that trifecta.
Competition means there’s money. Internet marketers are clever on the whole, and have an incredible ability to stiff out monetization opportunities. That’s why they’re in the game, right?
Consequently, if you think you’ve stumbled across an entire niche that lacks competition…be very, very wary. There’s a good reason your site about lasagna popsicle recipes or pet hedgehog outfits lacks competition.
You can find low-competition topics inside practically any niche, and some will even bring high traffic. (More on that in a moment.) But these are specific topics, not whole niches. You’re setting yourself up for frustration by seeking an entire niche where you stand alone.
Assuming, of course, you actually want to earn money.
Nothing is totally saturated
I hope it doesn’t come as a surprise when I say you’ll never rank for “best credit cards” or “best mattresses.” Their combination of huge search volume and huge payouts creates a cutthroat battle between veteran marketers with experienced teams, deep pockets, and occasionally…flexible…ethics.
Those niches are genuinely “saturated,” at least as far as explicit purchase/comparison queries are concerned.
But there’s always another path.
Those are clearly profitable topics, so rather than getting discouraged by the competition, think about unique and valuable angles that aren’t worth massive sites’ time.
Instead of reviewing the best credit cards for international travel, perhaps you can explain what to do if you lose your card in Country X (and slip in an affiliate link to a card with great 24/7 customer service).
Instead of reviewing the best mattresses, perhaps you could share ways to sleep better when you’re anxious (one of which is a particular mattress you’ve found helpful).
This isn’t the place to go into the details of keyword research, but the short version is to focus on specific, Q&A-type content that other publishers haven’t exactly knocked out of the park. You can then point to your affiliate links, or simply enable ads that automatically pick up on the underlying big-money niche that your articles ties into.
You get the idea.
(And just in case not, I may elaborate on this in a future post. It’s a grind, but it’s surprisingly simple to do.)
Give value and let the rest fall into place
Among my own sites, articles that merely don’t screw up SEO, but do provide terrific info, consistently outperform less valuable articles that nail every last bit of optimization.
Granted, there could be some sampling bias. I’m likelier to obsess about SEO minutiae on more competitive topics in the first place.
But if you’re into this for the love of your hobby—not for love of SEO—then it’s usually more satisfying just to create something relevant and supremely helpful.
You can obsess over keyword density and latent semantic indexing phrases…or you just talk thoroughly about things you know, while (appropriately) using Google auto-complete phrases and other search suggestions in your title and headings.
Plenty of publishers do well by optimizing every post down to the letter. Plenty also do well by simply providing boatloads of value in format that Google can easily grasp.
There’s no right answer, but I know which path I prefer.
Again, this is an extremely long-term game. Perpetual learning, perpetual testing, and frankly, perpetual frustration when things stop working like they used to.
But after a few years of dabbling, and a year and a half of serious work building profitable sites, these principles seem as close to evergreen as it gets.
They still aren’t guarantees. But if I’d realized them from day one, I would have seen encouraging results and even profits quite a bit sooner.
That said, you can’t take theory to the bank, so that leaves one final tip:
Start writing, now!
