Niche Blog Ideas (that make money)
This article is all about niche blog ideas. Blog niches that make money.
I call this the “blog niche”. This could really be called the “content” niche because you can use this same concept with YouTube or Podcasts, it doesn’t have to be a blog.
The blog niche is a little backwards because you start with a topic such as “great Danes” or “Vegan soup” and you create a ton of content about the niche topic to create an audience. THEN you talk to your followers and figure out what products and services they want.
In this blog, I’m going to tell you why you should start a blog, tell you how to make money from your blog, and give you ten niche blog ideas that actually make money. This is part of my online business idea series.
Let’s dive in!
Why You Should Start a Blog
The biggest pro about the blog niche is there are so many options. There are hundreds of thousands of niche blog opportunities. I’ve seen successful blog and content sites about animal photography, hiking in New Hampshire, teaching excel, how to buy pickup trucks online, how to become a security guard, how to start a podcast, Insanity workout schedules, and cooking with cauliflower rice. And that’s just a couple of niche blogs that I personally came across within the last week!
Why You Should Not Start a Blog
The main con against the blog niche site is the inverse of the pro. Because there are so many blogs and hundreds of thousands of people creating content, it takes time to research and find a niche. Sometimes, you need to niche within a niche. Rather than starting a blog about Microsoft Excel, find a niche within the niche, like how to write VBA code in excel.
How to Make Money Blogging
There is an infinite number of ways you can generate revenue in the blog niche. Here are a couple of ideas:
- eBook
- Affiliate sales
- Dropshipping
- Membership site
- Google AdSense
- Online courses
- Coaching
- Print on Demand
For each niche blog idea below, I will give you insight into how to make money blogging in each niche. I will give you instructions on exactly what I would do to monetize the blog.
With a blog niche site, the revenue-generating ideas are endless. If you want a full breakdown of how to generate revenue from your niche site, check out our blog of 18 online business revenue streams. This is a full breakdown of all the ways I make money online, and all the possible ways you can generate revenue from your niche site idea.
In this section, I won’t be going too in-depth into revenue-generating ideas (I’ll save that for below). The blog would simply be too long. This blog is just giving you niche blog ideas.
Niche Blog Ideas
If you’ve read my book Step One, you know I set a strict criterion for the types of niche businesses that I’m willing to pursue (based on my experience starting 8+ businesses). I want to see a MINIMUM of 10,000 searches to my niche, along with dozens of opportunities for subtopics, content topics, and products. The niche blog ideas laid out here will follow the same criterion that I set in the Step One process.
Below are a couple of niche site ideas for the blog niche. This is a list of my small profitable business ideas using a blog.
Again, these are blogs that I have researched. I strongly considered creating a website in the below niches, but I don’t have enough time. So, I’m sharing my blog niche site ideas with you.
For reference, I am using Long Tail Pro to conduct a lot of this research. This is my favorite niche and keyword research tool. It is extremely powerful in gauging a niche, reviewing the competition, and seeing how you can drive traffic to your niche website.
There are countless possibilities for blog niche ideas. Anything you can think of can be turned into a blog niche site. Food trucks, knives, tropical fish, beach volleyball, toaster ovens… the possibilities are endless. In this blog, I am just giving you a few ideas to get you started.
Idea #1: Great Dane (Dog Niche)
There are so many opportunities in the pet niche. I often call this the dog niche, but really, it’s any type of pet. I say dogs because I have dogs and love dogs. Plus, I’ve created a profitable blog in the dog space.
The trick here is to pick a specific breed. Don’t create a niche blog about dogs in general, or cats in general. Make it about rat terrier dogs. Make it about sphynx cats. Make it about hedgehogs, iguanas, or clownfish. Pick something really niche and focus on that. Become the expert on that breed or type of pet, bet the go-to resource for everything about that pet.
If you own a pet, what type of pet is it? If it’s a snapping turtle. Great. That is your starting point. A niche blog about pet snapping turtles.
For sake of example, let’s look at great Danes. Simply because I have two pet great Danes and I’ve already researched this niche.
368,000 people per month are searching online for the term “great Dane”. With that search volume, there has to be an opportunity for a niche somewhere. Looking further, I found the following opportunities:
- Great Dane puppies for sale – 9,900 searches per month with low competition
- Great Dane price – 5,400 searches per month with low competition
- Great Dane adoption – 3,600 searches per month with low competition
- Great Dane names – 1,900 searches per month with low competition
These are just four of the hundreds of keywords that people are searching for relating to the great Dane each month. Using Long Tail Pro (see my review of Long Tail Pro here) each of these keywords has keyword competitiveness under 35, which means there is very little competition for these keywords. You can go in right now and write a couple of quality blogs to begin ranking and driving organic traffic to your blog with these keywords.
Based on these keywords, we can determine that people are searching about how to adopt or buy a great Dane. With this, you could become the go-to expert for people that want to own a great Dane.
How to make money blogging in this niche
With this niche in mind, I thought of the following revenue-generating ideas. Here’s how to make money blogging in the pet niche:
- Membership site – create a membership site. The “find a Dane” membership site, you tell your subscribers every time a great Dane is available for adoption in their area.
- Affiliate – pet owners spend a TON of money on their dogs. You can create a couple of resources for new great Dane owners (after you help them find a Great Dane for their home). New dog owners need food, toys, treats, leash, harness, beds, crates, etc… You can use Amazon affiliates to recommend the best products for great Dane’s. Whenever someone clicks these affiliate links and makes a purchase on Amazon, you earn a commission. With my two great Danes, I go through 80lbs of food every four weeks. At $40 to $50 per bag of food, that’s a good commission if you can recommend a big bag of food to great Dane owners.
- Advertisements – Google ads, direct advertisements, and sponsored posts. With one of my blogs, people pay to be featured on my website. I created a new program where I charge other blogs $50 to post an article on my site or $300 to post an article and have the article included in my email series. This price will probably increase because I am getting a lot of people paying for these sponsored posts, so I know I am meeting a need and can charge a higher price. In this case, your customer is other blogs or dog companies (like food and toy companies) that want to post valuable content on your blog to get backlinks to their own website. This is just one way you can make money through advertising on your website. You can also set up a free Google ads account. With this, you can put ads on your website, and you will be paid $0.20 to $1.50 every time someone clicks on the add. I don’t do Google ads anymore, it cluttered my website and distracted my readers, but it was a great way to start earning a little revenue from the website.
- Book – in my dog blog niche site, I wrote a training book. This is an upsell for people after they find their dog. Once they know, like, and trust me because of the valuable content that I provide they buy my training book because they know I am a reliable resource. You can do this with great Dane’s. You could write the book “Everything you need to know before owning a Dane” or “Dane’s 101: The great Dane owner’s manual”.
This is absolutely a blog niche that makes money. This is exactly what I did with the Pomsky Owners Association, one of my niche sites that I later sold for $95,000. I found that hundreds of thousands of people were searching for information about the Pomsky, but nobody was posting reputable information about the Pomsky breed. There were a lot of scams, puppy mills, and bad information about owning a Pomsky dog. As a dog owner, I hate seeing scams and puppy mills. So I started a website by Pomsky owners for Pomsky owners. Everything I posted to the site was cross-referenced by Pomsky owners, veterinarians, dog rescues, and breeders. I began posting real reputable information that was sourced from people that were experts with the Pomsky breed. With this reputable information, I began shutting down puppy mills and become known as the go-to resource for information about the Pomsky breed. I turned this site into a membership program, sharing available puppies from reputable and ethical rescues and breeders so people could find the perfect Pomsky for their home. I also wrote the book “The Complete Guide to Pomsky Training” which quickly became the best-selling Pomsky book ranking #1 on Amazon for the search term “Pomsky”.
As you can see, the pet niche (or dog blog niche) is a great opportunity to find a niche and become an expert on the topic. I did this with the dog niche, you can too.
Idea #2: Vegan Soup
My wife and I are vegan. So, in the winter in Maine, we eat soup like everyone else in the North East trying to stay warm.
The problem is, we can rarely find any variations of vegan soup in the grocery store. Almost every soup at the store is made with chicken stock. Even regular vegetable soup, it’s still made with Chicken stock. Who does that?! So, this past winter, we spent months Googling various vegan soup recipe trying to make our own concoctions.
This piqued my interest. So I went back to Long Tail Pro for my niche research. I found that 8,100 people per month are searching for “Vegan Soup” and almost NO ONE is ranking for this keyword! It has a Long Tail Pro keyword competitiveness score of 29. That is really low for a root keyword with only two words like “Vegan Soup”.
I looked deeper and found more relevant keywords with high search volume and low competition including:
- Vegan cookbook
- Vegetarian split pea soup recipe
- Vegan Mexican soup
- Vegan soup brands
- Best vegan soup recipe
People are searching for Vegan soup and there are very few reputable websites creating content in this niche. There is a clear niche website opportunity here.
Based on these keywords I know people want vegan soup, and they want recipes to make their own vegan soup.
How to make money blogging in this niche
With this niche in mind, I thought of the following revenue-generating ideas. Here’s how to make money blogging in the pet niche:
- Cookbook – write a vegan soup cookbook with the best simple recipes to make vegan soup at home.
- Affiliate program – find the best vegan soups online. I know for a fact there are some on Amazon. Find your favorites and join the Amazon affiliates program. Begin recommending your favorite soups and get an affiliate commission when people buy the soup through Amazon.
- Advertise – use Google ads or sell ads on your website.
- Soup subscription box – I’ve seen hot sauce subscription boxes and barbeque sauce subscription boxes. Why not create a vegan soup subscription box? Send the subscriber five of your favorite vegan soups each month. Or, create something like HelloFresh and Purple Carrot. Send ingredients to your subscribers each month with a recipe to make your favorite at home vegan soups.
- Your soup – once you start building a following, create your own soup brand! There are not many variations of vegan soup out there. We always buy the brand “Amy’s Organic Soups” from Whole Foods. Other than that, I can’t name a single other vegan soup brand.
There is a clear opportunity for a vegan soup niche blog. In fact, there are a TON of viable niche opportunities in the food space. Someone please take this niche site idea and run with it. I could use some new vegan soup recipes! This is one of those blog niches that make money.
Idea #3: Fantasy Football
Any fantasy sport can be a niche. Most are competitive, so it’s better to find a niche within a niche, but really this can be any fantasy sport it doesn’t have to be fantasy football as your niche blog idea. But, for sake of example, I want to focus on fantasy football. Just know that something like fantasy hockey or fantasy golf might be less competitive and easier to niche than fantasy football.
So, let’s look at fantasy football. Hundreds of thousands of people play fantasy football. I’m a fantasy football junky. I follow ten different blogs and five different podcasts. And you better believe I spend money on their premium products telling me who to draft.
It’s a competitive topic. You are competing against ESPN, NFL.com, and Yahoo. 450,000 people per month are searching for the keyword “Fantasy football”. On Long Tail Pro this keyword has a keyword competitiveness score of 64. That is really high. Unless you are creating a website bigger than ESPN, you probably won’t rank for the keyword “Fantasy football”.
This is a good example of finding a niche within a niche. When I look into this niche site idea, I find a couple of interesting keywords that have little competition:
- Fantasy football trade analyzer – 27,100 searches per month with low competition
- Fantasy football trade calculator – 6,600 searches per month with low competition
- Fantasy football trade evaluator – 1,900 searches per month with low competition
Now that sounds like a niche within a niche. Trades are big in fantasy football; I am always looking for the best trade opportunities.
How to make money blogging in this niche
Here’s how to make money blogging in the pet niche:
There are a lot of ways you could generate revenue from this niche. You could create a premium fantasy football trade calculator, you could create a membership site to provide trade advice, you could give 1×1 advice about trades, you could create content about the best trades that you would do each week, you could start a “fantasy trades” podcast and sell ads on your podcast, you could use Patreon to create a premium paid podcast about fantasy trades. There are endless opportunities here and lots of options to generate revenue from this niche.
This is one of my niche site ideas that’s been on my list of niche websites to create. It’s been on my list for the last five years and I just haven’t had the time to build out this niche. Plus, I already spend hours upon hours every day trash-talking my opponents and reading about my fantasy players. I don’t think my wife would stay with me if I dedicated MORE hours to researching fantasy trades.
Someone needs to give this niche serious consideration. There is a big opportunity here.
I know for a fact there are more opportunities in this niche. So make sure to check this niche for all fantasy sports including baseball, basketball, soccer, hockey, golf, and even NASCAR is a fantasy sport!
This is yet another one of those blog niches that make money.
Idea #4: Golf Photography
Here’s a strange little niche blog idea. Golf photography. specifically, golf ball photography.
Photography offers a lot of niche potential, and golf offers a lot of niche potential, so why not golf photography? It’s so niche and specific, it’s beautiful.
How to make money blogging in this niche
I don’t know what this is or why people want it, but people are searching for it. This is one of those niche site ideas where you need to do a little market research to figure out what people want from this niche. Do they want to buy photos of golf balls? Do they want help learning to take professional photos of golf balls? Are these Amazon FBA entrepreneurs that are selling golf balls and need professional photos for their Amazon listing? I have no idea. But it’s a great example of a niche opportunity.
Idea #5: Keto Diet
Any food can be a niche blog. Any diet or nutrition plan that you follow can be a niche blog.
Keto is a great example of this, the perfect topic for a niche blog.
Keto is blowing up right now, I feel like everyone that I talk to is on the Keto diet.
Keto, in general, is very competitive. 1,830,000 people per month are searching for the keyword “Keto diet”. There are thousands of people competing in this space.
This is a case of finding the niche within the niche. With nearly 2 million people searching for this term per month, there is plenty of room for you to carve out a niche.
My friend Kevin Davis and his wife Dena are in this niche, with their website and podcast Our Ketogenic Life. Kevin is a physician, he is carving out his own niche in the Keto space with his deep understanding of the diet. He wrote a top-selling book about Keto and he’s now growing a following through podcasting. He is leveraging some powerful connections to grow a large following and is now a Keto coach getting referrals each time he helps a new client.
Let’s look at where you could carve out a niche in this space. Here are a couple of niches within the niche:
- Keto diet crock pot recipes – 27/210
- Keto dessert recipes – 31/480
- Vegetarian keto diet recipes – 32/480
- Keto diet Indian recipes – 31/390
You could be the go-to resource for everything vegetarian Keto.
How to make money blogging in this niche
There are a lot of revenue-generating opportunities here. You can generate revenue as a vegetarian keto coach, you could write a book of keto dessert recipes, and you could create a membership site to share keto recipes. There are a lot of opportunities to find a niche within a niche here. This is a viable blog niche that makes money.
Idea #6: Pontoon Boats
It is extremely easy to make money in the boating niche. There are endless opportunities here. Boating is too broad, but think of everything that goes into boating. Let that spark additional insights for you. What else is related to boating? Just thinking of my own experiences boating recently, I went out wakeboarding and tubing on a friend’s speedboat. Those are niche blog ideas. I also think about boat maintenance, the boat trailer, and the accessories that come with owning a boat. I would add all of those to my list. You can see how there are a number of possibilities within the boating niche.
One that I have considered pursuing, is the pontoon boat niche. Here is just some of what I found:
- Pontoon boat weight – 1,000 monthly searches and very low competition (14 KC score on Longtail Pro).
- Pontoon boat for rent – 27,100 monthly searches and very low competition (22 KC score on Longtail Pro).
- Pontoon boat kits – 720 monthly searches and very low competition (22 KC score on Longtail Pro).
- Pontoon boat trailer – 3,600 monthly searches and low competition (29 KC score on Longtail Pro).
- Small pontoon boat for sale – 1,900 monthly searches and low competition (30 KC score on Longtail Pro).
Those are five potential topics I could focus on for this website. That’s over 30,000 monthly searches for those five topics. If I can just get half of that traffic to my website (15,000 monthly visits) then I’m confident that I could create a website generating at least $5,000 per month in recurring revenue. I could even take one of those topics like “Pontoon boat for rent” and that could be my entire website! I could go even more niche than “pontoon boats” and instead focus on a specific geographic region and own the market for pontoon boat rentals in Florida.
How to make money blogging in this niche
There are a number of ways to make money in the boating niche. I detailed this in my latest eCommerce case study. I’ve already proved that this is a viable blog niche that makes money.
Here are just some ways you can make money blogging in the boating niche:
- Paid listings
- Financing affiliate
- Cut of each sale
- Membership
- Direct dealer
- Amazon Affiliate
- eBay Affiliate
- Pontoon Rental Affiliate
- Google Ads
- Dealer advertising
Other Boats
Pontoon boats didn’t do it for you? How about these niche blog ideas in the boating niche?
- Bass boats – 49,000 people searching this term per month with niche opportunities like “bass boat accessories” and “used bass boats for sale in Alabama” that could be subsets of your bass boat website.
- Boat trailers – 27,000 people searching this term per month with niche opportunities like “used boat trailers for sale” and “pontoon boat trailer” that could be subsets of your boat trailer website.
- Houseboat rentals – 22,000 people are searching for the term “houseboat rentals” per month.
- Jet boats – 27,000 people searching this term per month with niche opportunities like “jet boats for sale” and “best jet boats 2020” that could be subsets of your jet boat website.
Idea #7: Pickup Trucks
A few months back, I nearly bought a website on Flippa in the niche of “buy pickup trucks online”.
They had a full story, with an affiliate relationship on eBay, recommending used pickup trucks for sale. The website had a plethora of articles with over 10,000 website visits per month, with a blog full of everything you need to know about buying a pickup truck online.
I did not pull the trigger on buying the website, but there is definitely potential for a niche blog here.
Idea #8: Insanity Workout Schedules
This is a website that I almost bought on Flippa, I actually put in an offer to buy the website but I was outbid. The website was getting over 15,000 visits per month in the Insanity Workout niche. Their whole website was about the workout schedule for the “Insanity” workout program. A popular workout program from Beachbody.
There was potential here to build out an affiliate in the workout and nutrition niche. Unfortunately, I was outbid, but I still see the potential here to build a niche website about the Insanity Workout Schedule.
Idea #9: Best Pocket Knives
Spencer Haws proved that there is potential in the outdoor and knife niche with his case study on BestSurvivalKnifeGuide.com. His niche website was generating over $1,000 per month in passive income (this site was later sold).
There is still opportunity in this space. In particular, looking at pocket knives. You could create a whole blog writing about the different types of pocket knives. In a quick glance, I see that there are a number of affiliate programs that you could utilize to monetize the blog immediately, just like Spencer did with his website on survival knives.
Idea #10: Tropical Fish Aquariums
Tropical fish is a niche. How about a niche within a niche, like focusing on tropical fish aquariums? That is a true niche blog idea.
In fact, I nearly purchased a website in this niche. Through my research, I found that a small website in this niche was generating over $1,000 in affiliate revenue per month by reviewing and recommending tropical fish aquariums and accessories. The website had over 15,000 visitors per month, and a small email list, that helped to bring recurring passive income. There is still potential in this niche. You can come in and own the tropical fish aquarium niche.
Conclusion – Niche Blog Ideas
There are ten niche blog ideas for you. Take one of these ideas and run with it. As a recap, here are ten blog niches that make money:
- Great Dane (or any dog/pet)
- Vegan soup (or any niche food)
- Fantasy football
- Golf photography
- Keto (or any diet)
- Pontoon boats (or any boating topic)
- Pickup trucks
- Insanity workout
- Pocket knives
- Tropical fish aquariums
To learn more, check out our online business resources section.
More Niche Blog Ideas
The above-mentioned niche site ideas are just a few that I’ve researched. There are a TON more out there.
One of my strategies to find blog niche site ideas is to see what’s selling on Flippa. This is one of the major strategies that I break down in Step One and in this part of the Online Business Mini-Series. Flippa is a website where you can buy and sell websites. I like to go to Flippa for research. I go to Flippa, apply a couple of filters to make sure I’m only looking at websites that generate substantial traffic, and I analyze the websites that have been selling recently. There are a lot of sites still in their early stages on Flippa, where people find a niche and create a basic website then sell the website to other entrepreneurs. This is a great way to find niche site ideas. The sites that are being sold on Flippa are still in their early stages. Most of them never amount to anything, so you can find a niche or keyword on Flippa and then go create your own site in that niche (or buy the website on Flippa).
There are thousands of niche opportunities out there. If you are still wondering how you can find your niche product idea, then I recommend you download my list of the top 5 niche sites that I would create today (if I had time).
Ready to Start Your Business?
If you find yourself saying “I want to start a business, but I don’t know what to do,” this is the book for you. In Step One you will research, validate, and choose the perfect online business idea. By the end of this book, you will come away with a business idea list, one validated business idea, and a plan to launch your first business.
Step One is all about taking action. With this book, you will come up with over one hundred and fifty business ideas, you will conduct market research to narrow your list of ideas down to one viable idea, and you will validate the idea so you can hit the ground running and launch your business.
Ready to start your business? Pick up your copy of Step One today, and get started today. By the end of this book, you will come away with the perfect idea–and plan–to launch your online business.
