Do you want to make money blogging? What about replacing your full-time income and quitting your job? Or even making enough money to where your spouse could quit their job, too? This is all very, very possible with blogging… As long as you choose the right niche and understand how you’ll make it profitable. And luckily, this article will help you do just that. Here are the most profitable blog niches, along with tips on making any niche profitable.
How Blogs Make Money
Before we get into the most profitable blog niches, let’s first take a look at how exactly blogs make money. While blogs make money in a variety of ways, their main income streams come from the following four sources:
Ads: Place ads on your site and make money. This is the most passive form of blogging income because once the ads on your site, you don’t have to do anything else with them. However, to make more than just a few cents per day, you need traffic. And lots of it. Blogs that are making five figures a month off of ads are getting millions of page views per month. They post multiple times per day and have a huge audience.
If you plan on making the bulk of your money from ads, you need to focus on getting as much traffic as you can.
Affiliate Sales: This is where you recommend a product and then get a commission if someone makes a purchase. You do not have to have tons of traffic to make a full-time income with affiliate sales. The goal here is to determine what exactly it is your readers want, and then to find reputable, awesome products to recommend to them as an affiliate. You want to provide a solution to their problem. This same point is true for the next way to make money…
Product Sales: Instead of recommending other products, you create your own and sell them. Again, the key here to success is you have to pinpoint your readers’ problems, and then find a solution for them. If you’re a personal finance blogger, your readers most likely come to you for financial advice and guidance. You could consider creating a budget guide/workbook for them to keep better track of their expenses. If you blog about simple living, maybe you write an eBook titled, “100 Easy Ways to Simplify Your Life and Gain More Freedom.” You get the idea 🙂
Sponsored Posts: Bloggers team up with brands and write posts or share the brand on their social media platforms in exchange for a fee. The bigger your blog and social platforms, the more you can charge. Fashion bloggers are oftentimes what comes to mind when thinking of sponsored posts. A company may pay a blogger a fee and send the blogger a free product in exchange for a review and some social shares. Other niches can work with sponsors, too. A mom blogger may review toddler-friendly sippy cups, a finance blogger could review credit cards or budgeting apps, a food blogger could sponsor a mixer or other kitchen tools, etc.
Here is my full tutorial on how to make money blogging >>
Why Most Blogs Fail
A lot of people start a blog without a clear vision or focus. They assume they can write about their day, share some insights, post a recipe here or there, and all of a sudden make money. Usually, after a few months of doing that, they realize their blog isn’t making money or growing as fast as they’d hoped, and they give up.
First, let me tell you, very few bloggers see success within a few months. And for those that do? Well, usually it is NOT their first blog.
Blogging takes time.
It takes time to write engaging, SEO-friendly posts. It takes time to grow your email list and your social media following. It takes time to figure out your voice and determine how you’ll help people. But eventually, you will. And that’s when you’ll start to see success.
The other reason bloggers don’t make money is the focus is on them, not their readers. Now of course there are some “celeb bloggers” that have tons of traffic and readers genuinely want to know what they did over the weekend and where they’re vacationing. But, for most of us bloggers, we need to step away from blogging about our own life and instead focus on solving our readers problems.
And nope, when you first start your blog, you will not know what problem you’re solving. But, you should have a general idea as to what it will be (your focus, ie niche).
That being said, really any niche can be profitable. As long as your ultimate goal is to help out your readers, you will make money. The next thing you’ll want to look at when choosing a niche is what you’re interested in.
Choosing a Blog Niche: Pick Something that Interests You
I like to cook, but not enough to create a food blog. I also like to decorate my home for the holidays and make our space cozy, but good grief I would never be successful because my house definitely does not look like a page out of the Pottery Barn catalog.
When choosing a niche, you need to choose something that interests you enough to the point that you could write about it for years. Yes, years. And, you want to pick something that you’re generally good at. (Again, I may like to write about home decor, but I know deep down that I’m just not that great at that, ha.)
Once you’ve narrowed down a few ideas, come up with a basic business plan for each of those ideas. How will you make money? Will you get a ton of traffic and make money from ads? Will you recommend products as an affiliate or create your own? Or, will you work with brands and make money via sponsored posts?
The Most Profitable Blog Niches
Again, I believe any niche can be profitable so long as you do not give up and you understand how you’ll make money with your chosen niche.
However, certain niches will be “easier” to make money in than others.
The first is…
Teaching Others How to Make Money
If you create a course on how to make money selling courses, you’ll probably sell a decent amount of copies. People view your product as more of an investment rather than just a purchase. They hope to walk away with the skills to create their own profitable course and make money.
There are millions of successful courses and blogs out there who’s sole purpose is to help others make money. These include teaching others how to freelance write, how to be a virtual assistant, how to start a profitable blog, how to succeed in affiliate marketing, how to make money taking surveys, and so on and so forth.
A blog niche that helps others make money will be successful, but to warn you, it is competitive. To stand out, you’ll have to create a blog that’s better than what’s already out there.
Other profitable blogging niches include:
Food
Food blogs, if done correctly, can be extremely profitable. How? First, you have to be on Pinterest. Pinterest is a visual search engine, and who doesn’t want to see gorgeous photos of delicious meals they can make themselves?! If you can get high traffic, you’ll make money in ads.
Other ways food bloggers can monetize is with affiliate sales and their own product sales. In your recipes, you can link to the kitchen gadgets that you used. You could also create a cookbook full of recipes not on your blog, or release a course on “How to Start a Successful Food Blog.”
One of my favorite food blogs is Pinch of Yum. They make tens of thousands of dollars per month from ads, affiliates and their own signature product – Food Blogger Pro.
Lifestyle
Lifestyle blogs include a ton of different blogs – mommy blogs, fashion blogs, home decor blogs, parenting blogs, possibly cooking blogs, personal finance / budgeting blogs, and more. But again, if you want to start a lifestyle blog, your business plan needs to be about how you can help your reader, not just what you’re up to all day.
You may include hair tutorials, share recipes, post gift guides during the holidays, share parenting hacks, marriage tips and more. With every single post, your goal should be to help someone.
Lifestyle bloggers make their money via ads and sponsored posts. Of course, they still can make money with affiliate sales and product sales, but usually their income is generated from high traffic (ads) and working with brands (sponsored posts).
Self-help
Self-help blogs include personal development, marriage, parenting, mental health/disorders, and more. This can be a difficult niche (similar to lifestyle blogs) if you don’t have a singular focus. So, if you want to start a self-help blog, really think about what you want to hone in on and create your blog around that.
Since your blog will be super-niched, you most likely won’t have high traffic (thus, you won’t make much money on ads). However, you will have a tight-knit audience, making affiliate sales and your own product sales two potentially huge forms of income.
In the self-help niche, I highly recommend creating your own eBook. Then, create a free product (sort of like a mini version of your eBook) to get readers subscribed to your email list. Once they are on the list, you can upsell them your product. Of course, you should also promote your product throughout your blog within posts!
Here’s how to create and market an eBook that sells >>
Are You Ready to Start a Profitable Blog?
I hope this article has gotten you into the mindset of starting a profitable blog. As a recap, you want to choose a blog niche that you are interested in and one that can help other people. Think of a few different ideas and brainstorm how you’ll make money. Then, purchase your blog hosting through Bluehost (your domain name is free!), download WordPress (one-click install with Bluehost) and start creating content.
Once you have 10+ blog posts, it’s time to go live! From then on, you should be spending 20% of your time on content creation and 80% on marketing that content. After a few months, you’ll want to start creating your own products and monetizing your blog.