Most Profitable Blog Niches

What are the most profitable blog niches and can anyone be profitable with a blog? Not all blogs are profitable and with over 600 million blogs on the internet, in a variety of difference niches, it can be tough competition.

niche blogging

Especially if you choose a popular niche. In a popular niche, it’s much more difficult to get traffic to your blog because there’s so many other bloggers writing similar content. Google, the most popular search engine, can only rank one piece of content at the top of the search engine results pages (SERPS). It is typically the blogger who has been around the longest and/or has built a huge amount of content and hundreds of thousands of back links to their blog posts, who ranks on top.

With a high Google ranking you can get a lot of free traffic. This is often the highest priority for bloggers. Without traffic they can’t sell anything from their blogs. Without sales they won’t be profitable. So to be profitable as a blogger, you need to consider two things:

  • The topic you will write about on your blog posts, and how that will attract traffic
  • How you monetise your blog – whether you use affiliate products and/or advertising and what affiliate products to choose to maximise profitability

Most Profitable Blog Niches: Traffic

Even with a top listing as a blogger, you are still sharing traffic for that particular keyword phrase. The #1 result in Google gets 34% of the organic traffic. (see also the value of Google result positioning).  

So even with a tonne of work building content and back links, you still only get 34%! Bloggers also build traffic in other ways of course. You can share content on social media, do guest posting, build an email list and even pay for traffic.

most profitable blog niches

But blogging is a strategy where the idea is to rank content on Google (and other search engines) and get free traffic. With enough quality content, and with some tenacity and determination, you can build hundreds if not thousands of blog posts on a website. This means even if many of your articles don’t rank at all, some will; especially if you find long tail keywords with low SEO difficulty, and target them with your content.

This can give you more chance of ranking your posts, because there’s a lot fewer posts competing for the longer tail keyword phrases. To write this much content takes a lot of time and effort, and even though you can outsource some of the writing, it’s a good idea to choose a topic you have a passion for, or at least an interest in. That way, you can sustain the necessary effort required much longer than your competition can.

Monetising A Blog

Monetising your blog can be done with a few strategies. Assuming you don’t have your own product or service to offer, these are the most popular:

  • Affiliate marketing products that suit your topic
  • Advertising platforms (Adsense & Adsense alternatives such as Mediavine, Ezoic, Adthrive etc.)

While there are affiliate products in most niches, many of the most profitable ones are in the top niches which are evergreen. That is, they sell all year round. Seasonal topics, such as Christmas, Easter and other seasonal/holiday related products only sell during a certain time of year. They are therefore typically less profitable.

most profitable blog niches

Here’s some of what are thought to be the most profitable blog niches. A study was conducted by RankIQ.com. They analysed data from 803 blogs that were making $2000+ per month and/or getting 50,000+ monthly sessions. The niches that had the highest percentage of blogs (with over 50,000 monthly sessions) were; food (42.8%), lifestyle (13.3%), and travel (10%). You can read the full article here.

Bloggers make the vast majority of their income from ads, affiliate products, sponsored product reviews, their own products, and online courses. The following were the highest earning blog niches:

  • Food
  • Personal finance
  • Lifestyle/Mommy
  • Travel

The study showed that the food bloggers made 42% of their income from ads and only 10% from affiliate products. However this wasn’t the norm, and the study also showed that Pro bloggers making between $7500 and $25000 per month get 33.3% of their income from ads and 42.2% from affiliate products.

Can Anyone Be Profitable With A Blog?

It’s worth mentioning too that not all blogs are going to be as successful as these bloggers are. Note that the study was conducted on only 803 blogs that were making $2000+ per month and/or getting 50,000+ monthly sessions. There’s over 600 million blogs on the internet and most of these make next to nothing! So just by starting a blog, don’t think you can easily make these kinds of figures without a lot of effort. Bloggers income varies wildly and those who have just started blogging will likely make nothing for some time.

blog traffic
blog traffic uptick

As your blog grows, so does your traffic, but it can take some time before your traffic explodes to the levels needed to make regular sales, or advertising fees. When using ads on your blog content, you’ll usually only receive tiny commissions on each ad click. So you’ll need a high value of traffic in order to make advertising work well from a blog.

With affiliate products you can increase the likelihood of your visitors making purchases (or repeat purchases) from your blog in a number of ways:

  • Use an email list – offer a giveaway product in exchange for your visitors email address – such as an ebook lead magnet
  • Use push engage – which alerts subscribers to new posts you publish
  • Run retargeting from your blog – target people who have been on your posts with an advert, bringing them back to your site
  • Use subscription affiliate products – where each sale gives you a recurring income, rather than a one off commission

Most Profitable Niche For Blogging

What is the most profitable niche for blogging? While top niches such as money making, dating and relationships and health and fitness are super profitable, blogging is a slow and lengthy process. There’s a tonne of competition on Google and other search engines. This means if you choose blogging for your marketing strategy, it can take months or even years to get traction; particularly in a competitive niche such as money making online.

niche blogging

“Evergreen” niches are those which make money all year round. Some of the best ones for monetising are:

  • Money making online
  • Financial advice
  • Dating and relationships
  • Technology
  • Pets
  • Hobbies and interests
  • Travel

Lesser known topics which have less competition are often also more difficult to monetise. So this can leave you wondering what to write about as a blogger. So what do you do? Should you write in a less competitive topic, or aim for the niche which is easier to monetise?

Most Profitable Niche For Blogging: Traffic & Sales

There’s two main components in making profit as a blogger: traffic and sales. While the most competitive topics are the best for monetisation purposes, they are hugely sought after and there’s a lot of competing content. This means it can take much longer to get traction in that particular topic. So all your hard work blogging might come to nothing if you don’t actually get any traffic.

On the other hand, if you focus on a less competitive topic, such as DIY or hobbies, for example, you may get traffic more easily, but struggle to turn that traffic into sales. So what’s the answer?

Since it can take a very long time to break through and start generating traffic as a blogger, it’s wise to pick a topic you can sustain an interest in over the longer term. Choosing a topic you don’t enjoy writing about makes your life much more difficult. For one thing you need to research each blog post you write which means it take much longer to write. And the other thing is that over a course of several months you’re much more likely to burn out in a topic you have no interest in.

Most Profitable Niche For Blogging: One You Can Sustain For Years

Most bloggers make nothing from their blogs and even those who turn a profit have typically been at it for years before they break through and start generating sales in larger numbers. So it’s good advice to choose a topic you can develop a long term interest in and passion for. Otherwise you’re more likely to quit before anything happens.

Even in a less competitive topic, it can take months of hard work to make a blog pay! So this is a good place to start.

most profitable niche for blogging
Ikigai and choosing your niche

The other thing you can do is to pick a niche within a niche. So although for example “money making online” is a super competitive topic, it’s a good one for monetisation purposes. To get your content ranking in such a competitive industry can take years of hard work. So instead of aiming at such a competitive topic, find the longer tail derivatives which stem from the main topic: find a micro niche.

Most Profitable Niche For Blogging: What’s A Micro Niche?

A micro niche is a niche within a niche. So for the example above with “money making online” niche, you might focus on “blogging for a living” as your key topic. Or you could aim for “traffic generation methods for website owners” instead. By finding a niche within a niche, you can focus on a topic which you’re more likely to find traffic for in among all the noise.

A micro niche in the health and fitness niche might be focused on “mental self care for men”, for example. This is a smaller niche which will have less competition, but still very popular and easier to monetise than an uncompetitive niche. Earning online could be niched down to “affiliate marketing for seniors”, for example.

The two main benefits of niching down are:

  • Less competition on the SERPS – search engine results pages
  • A more focused (and laser targeted) audience

Why Micro Niches Work

Micro niches are great for both traffic and sales because it’s easier to rank content in a micro niche in a good profitable topic. Less competitive niches are notoriously difficult to monetise. So the answer is to find a sub-niche to focus your blog on.

An example of a micro niche might be “thebloggingexpert.com”. Although there’s many websites which offer advice on blogging, who would you go to for advice if you had the choice of “The Blogging Expert”, or “How To Earn Online”.

Well if you’re looking for advice on blogging, the answer is obvious. You’re much more likely to find your answer from The Blogging Expert than from a more generalised website on earning money online.

The same is true from sites which get very specific about what they offer their readers. 70% of all searches online consist of long tail keywords. This means people want more specific answers. If you can give them that in your content, you’re more likely to rank for the search terms with your content.

See also short and long tail keywords.

Summary

While there’s many profitable niches for blogging, you will need to pursue your blog for a long time in order to become profitable. Many blogs don’t make money at all, so to be successful you’ll need more than most to make it happen. Choosing a topic you have an interest in or passion for can help massively here. If you love your topic, you’ll be much more likely to stick with it for the months and years it takes.

A micro niche is a niche within a niche and is a good idea for a profitable niche because it lets you find a topic which can be easily monetised. Topics which are “evergreen” make money all year round. But these topics are largely very competitive which means there’s a huge about of work needed to make them profitable. With a sub-niche, or micro niche, you find the low hanging fruit within the competitive topics. You attract a very targeted audience too, so it’s better for both monetisation and for traffic.