A niche is a clearly defined topic covered by your blog.  It is written with a specific audience in mind.
When researching your niche, you will need to find, what I call, the “Goldilocks Niche”. Â The niche cannot be broad where it does not appeal to any one particular group of viewers. Â However, if you choose a niche that is too focused, then you may not generate enough traffic for visitors.
“The Goldilocks Niche will be just the right combination where it allows you to focus your topic that appeals to a particular group of viewers, and at the same time is not too narrowed where your traffic will suffer.”
Passion
You need to make sure that you will be passionate about your niche or you will soon find that this is going to become boring and you will burn out. Â If you are not passionate about it, it will no longer be enjoyable and the readers will pick up on this. Â Your credibility will be at stake and eventually, your blog will fail.
Brainstorming
When choosing your niche, you will want to brainstorm. Â Write down your interests, skills & passions.
When you have free time in your life, what do you like to do?  When you are around family and friends, what is the topic of conversation that excites you?
Remember, whatever topic you choose, you must make sure that you are willing to write consistently about it. Â Take your time and think about it over a few days. Â Don’t try and finalize your choice in one hour. Â You will be amazed at how many times you change your mind.
Research & Testing
After you choose your niche topic, you will now have to put it to the test.  You will need to make sure it is a topic of interest to others and that it has room for sub-topics.  For instance, here at BlogGeek.com, the main niche is Blogs.  Our sub-topics would include Building blogs, Blog SEO, Blog Writing, Blog Monetization, Blog Customization.
You will find that over time you will end up focusing on just a few of the sub-topics based upon your audience. Â Now I will show you one way to research to see if your topic is of interest to others.
When researching your selected niche, you will want to check the monthly search volume and competition.
There are some free online tools which can help with your niche research such as Google Adwords Keyword Planner and Google Trends.
You can conduct a keyword search in the Google Adwords Keyword Planner.  You will need to create a Google Adwords account which is free.  After gaining access to the Google AdWords keyword planner, you will select “search for new keywords using a phrase, website or category“.  Then, enter your keyword that you would like to search.
The results of this search will reveal the average monthly searches along with the competition for that word or phrase.
Another way to research your niche is to use Google Trends. Â This will show the interest in your topic keyword over time. Â After typing in your keyword, a graph will reveal the popularity of the keyword over the last few years. Â A graph with a downward trend reveals a decreasing interest, whereas, a graph with an upward trend is gaining popularity.
I recommend narrowing your view to show the previous 12 months.
When you are done and have chosen your niche, make sure you can see yourself writing on this topic for the next few years.
Stay Alert
Remember, once you find your niche and meet a need, you will need to differentiate your business and stay on top of the recent trends and changes within that niche.  Don’t get complacent.  Stay alert and be the best at what you do.
And most of all, have fun!.
Good luck in finding your niche.
