During the last few live question and answer sessions with my Blog Mastermind students at least one person every call asks for help determining whether they have a good choice for a blog topic.
Given that new people join the program each week, it’s not surprising that question crops up over and over again. Everyone new to blogging faces the challenge of topic selection as the first big hurdle, and while I can never offer the “right” solution, as only the market can tell you that, I do my best to offer my suggestions and tips for conducting research to aide with topic selection.
What Topic Is Right?
Topic selection for a blog is similar to niche selection for a business. What you decide to write about determines what type of audience you attract and how you make money from that audience. In today’s e-commerce landscape, content is the driving force behind traffic and purchasing decisions online, so topic selection is a big deal.
Today I want to offer a simple answer to this problem, to help choose what topic and niche is right for you. I say simple because it’s possible to make this a very complicated choice, with in-depth keyword research, market analysis and other assessable factors weighing in on the decision process.
Unfortunately I find that many people who do extensive research become paralyzed. With more data comes more awareness of the different variables at play. Sometimes knowing less is a good thing because it gives you a clear next step - an action you can take that actually moves you closer to a result.
This is especially important for newbies and people with personalities that demand they know everything about everything before taking that first step into the big wide world. As someone new to Internet marketing, learning about all the different ways to research a potential topic may be so much work and such a big learning curve that it takes months before any action is taken to actually test the topic in the market.
You have to learn how to choose a niche before even choosing a niche!
I’m not saying you should bury your head in the sand and take a leap of faith when choosing a topic, but you can certainly make it easier on yourself.
Spotting Opportunities
Let me explain how I have selected topics for the businesses I have run in the past. In almost all circumstances the process has gone something like this -
- By virtue of my day-to-day activities I’m exposed to different markets (people) and observe first hand their needs and wants, or I personally am part of the market and experience needs and wants myself.
- After realizing the need or want, I brainstorm ideas on how to solve it (in recent years focusing solely on Internet based solutions) and then determine a basic business or blog concept in my head.
- I go online and create a website for it and begin the marketing process.
That’s basically it. Yes it lacks any in-depth research process prior to launch and probably would benefit from a little more analytical and competitive analysis, but there’s one fact you have to realize - the barriers to entry on the web are virtually non-existent.
Because it is so easy to test something online I find the best research tool available is putting something out there and giving it a real world trial. No amount of pre-launch research will ever tell you as much as actually attracting an audience and/or making a sale to a customer (or finding there is no audience or no people willing to spend money or that you hate what you are doing).
What’s especially great about my three step formula is that it simplifies the lead-in process so much that your first action step is actually testing the idea in the market.
This doesn’t mean that I don’t go in completely blind. The brainstorming process to cement my idea takes into account everything I have done online and may include looking at what sites already exist.
Having already done a lot online I can call on what I know from experience. This is not an advantage a beginner to Internet marketing has, however I still argue the best way to gain this experience is to action an idea rather than analyze it to death before it even has a chance. That’s what I did when I was a beginner.
What About Keyword Research?
I’ve used keywords to help come up with elements to tweak for the SEO of my websites, but I never use it as a decision making tool for choosing a topic or business idea. It’s good to know what words to use in the title of a blog post or in tags, but that’s about the extent of my keyword analysis.
Keyword research is great if you care a lot about the numbers. People who like the process of making money regardless of the niche that the money is made in will probably think what I do (or not do in this case), is crazy. How could you not find out where the money is and how many people are looking for something before starting a project?
For those of you who don’t like keyword analysis or number crunching the fact that I have achieved what I have online without focusing on analytical tools and data should give you hope. You can succeed without ever looking at keywords, if you are willing to take action.
My Favorite Online Research Tool
What I rely on to come up with ideas for topics, or businesses, or products or even just blog posts, is people.
People are the driving force behind the statistics. If you can assess what people are asking and isolate the emotional drive and the logical decision making process going on in their head, you can determine everything you need to know.
There Internet is made up of people so you don’t have to look far to find answers to your questions, provided you are able to form assumptions based on observable behavior (a little intuition and familiarity with your market helps).
My favorite place to observe behavior is in forums. The great thing about a forum is just because it exists (assuming it is popular), demonstrates there is a market of some size. For those who like numbers, forums also provide great statistics for free - things like total members, active members, number of posts and topics, and number of replies to a topic, which can tell you what’s hot and what’s not in a particular niche.
Fran’s Forum Offers The Answer
Fran, who you may remember as one of my students I talked about in the Conversion Blogging video and runs a blog called High On Health, was recently thinking about what information product to create next to sell from her blog. As a person with a lot of experience and education in her niche, she had too many ideas for what she could cover.
Although hesitant at first, Fran added a forum to her blog purely because she was sick of responding to email questions and thought having a permanent archive in a forum for all questions from her readers was a good idea. It also helped alleviate some of her workload as other people in the forum could start helping with responses to questions too.
Most forums start slowly (read my tips to grow a forum) and Fran’s was the same. It took several months to build an audience, but since she directed all questions she received to the forum, it eventually became popular. It’s not a big forum by any means, but it is popular enough that something amazing happened - her forum became the best source of intelligence about her audience she could ever ask for.
It didn’t dawn on her immediately, but I remember clearly the moment Fran realized she had the answer for what her next information product should be about within her forums (she skyped me when the light bulb went off in her mind).
Her next information product could address the top questions that were consistently asked in her forum. It was so clear because she didn’t need to guess what she needed to cover - her members were telling her. An 80/20 rule was evident as a majority of the people came to the forums asking the same few questions.
In Fran’s case she created the forum that led to the answers she needed, and it’s great she owns a growing forum, however that is certainly not something you need to replicate.
There are thousands of online forums that right now have the answers to your question of what topic you should cover, or what blog articles you need to write to answer the most popular questions, or what product you should create next or what business you can launch.
Look For Common Questions
The key when researching forums is to understand that you are looking for patterns of popularity. When a topic is started with a question and it evolves into a hot conversation thread, that thread alone offers a wealth of information. Even if the conversation leads to a conclusion and supposed answer to the question originally asked - that doesn’t mean you can’t take that question and address it yourself through an asset you control, like a blog or a product you create.
Even an extremely popular forum represents only a small portion of the overall population of a niche. No forum has the entire audience, and if you create your own resource that answers the common questions you can take a share of the audience.
Look for common questions, provide the answers and you have the formula for a successful blog.
It’s Not Quite That Easy
Obviously there is more to it than just what I outlined in this article. Just because someone asks something and it leads to a hot thread in a forum or there are many people all asking the same questions in a forum, doesn’t guarantee there is money to made in that topic.
What’s important is a forum can tell you about the behaviors, desires, goals, motivation and interests of a group of people and best of all, it’s very detailed, specific and - raw - real responses from real human beings.
This information alone is enough to guide you towards a topic you can develop into a blog or a business. I can promise you that the direction will change over time, but the important thing is that you take action in the first place and put something out there. If forum research can give you enough clarity to determine the next step, that’s a great result.
Yaro Starak
Mining Forums
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Great article, Yaro! Your points make me realizing that there are so many chances to be better and better day by day. Thanks a lot.
Although I agreed with Yaro about focus on people when building community, but I must stress that:
1. Keyword research is very important in tapping into “targeted” audience / prospect, but using SEO alone won’t grow your blog traffic exponentially! Only worth of mouth from people will make your blog successful (Successful and profitable is differnt thing!)
2. A profitable blog with targeted search traffic is nice, it will bring you nice income but not recursive income! Next step - Build community and list.
3. With list building and community site like forums and membership services will skyrocket your income, brand name and authority!
I still think SEO traffic is easy to jump start a blog, use combination of web 2.0 promotion like stumble upon and digg, we can easily hit 2,000 visitors / day in 3 months!
Hi Yaro, I find your posts very refreshing- because you always ensure you give the real picture, drawn by your experience and/or supported with facts.
Yes, you are really right about forums. I used to participate in Yahoo Answers (the point system gets a bit addictive) and found myself answering the same problem (but faced by different sufferers). So instead of repeating myself again, one day I wrote a complete article to address the same questions and the next time I saw the same question - I just post them the link. Sometimes when I got tired of blogging, I will go into forums and answer questions, then it will normally give me an inspiration to write my next article. It is sort of a niche because I address certain specific issues- and few months later, I found my blog being on the first or second page of Google when people put in those search words. But I have just migrated to my own domain name and guess, I have to be patient for the search engines to find my site again.
Thanks Yaro.
You leave out the part about something you are passionate about - but I guess you won’t be interested in that anyway, so that’s sort of handled in any case.
Any tips on finding fora (forums) in a particular niche? Do you just look at the more popular ones (I guess there will be a number in any significan’t niche).
You know I think passion is the most important ingredient Evan, but that isn’t a good enough answer for most people. They like a research process and that’s where things can get complicated, hence this article with a simple solution.
Finding forums should be easy using just google. Type in “Keyword Phrase + Forums” and assuming there is a popular enough forum it should show up on the first or second page of results.
If not, then you will need to think of the next category phrase above what you searched for (”drill up” to a broader category) and do the search again.
Like it - it’s great to hear that number crunching isn’t everything and sometimes it’s all about ‘giving it a go’.
I’ve done this with a number of ideas (some good, some bad) and don’t feel like any of it has been a waste of time or money - it’s been a great learning process and has been fun listening to the feedback.
Good luck to anyone brave enough to give something a shot. Thanks Yaro.
Thanks for the tips, Yaro!
Another important research, I think is keyword research. Most people use keyword tools to do SEO, but it also tell us what is the people actually look for, especially in those low count long tail keywords, these are gold mine…
I agreed that people is the most important research tool, survey and interaction with our blog visitors or lists is important.
Right on, Yaro. There’s nothing quite like mining a forum to get a feel for a market. Keyword analysis has its place to a point - but there’s nothing better than reading what real people are discussing about their problems/desires/needs/wants.
At the end of the day, mining forums has stood the test of time in product development.
Yarok,
I think most importantly when you are choosing a topic, it must be relevant to the taste of the reader plus of course the interest of oneself regarding the topic, so that the person can continue writing more and more blog. Myself personally is just a beginner in the blogging world, I am still finding a topic which I could enjoy to write and yet let a lot of audience enjoy reading it.
Your blog will be one of the brilliant blog I could get a lot of inspiration.
It is a good advice to test ideas in the real world. You can easily create a few blogs in different niches and test thoroughly in a month or two. Unless you use AdWords or other paid search engine ads, it takes time to gain organic traffic from the search engines like Google. If you can get some decent organic traffic within a month or two, you know it will be a profitable niche.
This has not been my problem but I do meet people with the same questions. I now know where to send them to.
Great post. I’m glad it’s something informational. I’ve been seeing alot of product reviews lately and it’s been turning me off of your blog.
This post renewed my drive to visit more often.
I agree with the contents of this article. In my opinion, the best way to know if something works is to try it out (unless there are really obvious signs that you shouldn’t). Starting a Blog (or website) has become so easy that there really isn’t a huge investment to get your average site started.
I found myself battling with the question of what topic to select, but then I listened to the Topic Selection audio in the Blog Mastermind course and just decided to get started. I’ve been through 3 different blogs already, because I figured out pretty soon on the first two that although the topic was interesting, I didn’t have what it takes to keep those 2 very active. It led me to my third blog and I’ve enjoyed it immensely. Articles have just been flowing ever since.
Thanks for this article Yaro.
Yes, it is very important to think about what your niche will be. Which niche interests you the most? This is something to consider as you will have to write blogs every day, which can be grueling if you have no interest in the topic. Finding the right niche can also be vital in how well you do in affiliate marketing if you choose to use these programs with your blog.
My dear Yaro, as always you are very wise and the experience talks without any doubt.
I´d like to add a little about my experience, although making keyword research refers to statistics, these statistics are generated by people and what those people are searching for and using 2 free online resources I have reach the 1st page of Google results more than once, for obvious reasons I won´t reveal which niches I have a reached those results in. Please take my word on it.
Using the procedure that I detailed in my Simple Keyword Research video tutorial: http://videos.cdanca.com/Simple-Keyword-Research/
anyone are able to find very relevant keywords related to the niche with which are envolved or hoping to work with.
I recommend to research several variations of the keyword and then start writing about the gotten results.
I hope this helps and thank you very much as usual my dear friend.
Best Regards,
Daniel Cajiga
Thanks again Yaro I’m a new reader of your Blog and I’ve found out already that your posts topics are solid, easy to digest information. I was one of those who over-analize and I knew it. Searching and analizing for months, I enjoyed it but I knew there was time a-wastin’ and I finally just had to jump in. Now I’ve found that it’s not that hard to lead my blog in almost any direction. I end up in the same place writing about (my passion) I could have just done that to start with.
Larry W
Excellent post! Already reevaluating my approach. This was definately helpful.
Well, In my niche people do not spend much time in forums. But they have not got used to it. Sometimes I email them asking them what they want out of my site and they answer it to the point.
Ask and it is given.
Instead of trying to guess the needs of people from forums, we can just email them asking what they want.
A server in the restaurant asks, ‘Sir, what do you like to have.’ And brings what they want. He does not give the food by trying to find out what they want by eaves dropping their conversations.
Deepak,
KISS (Keep it simple stupid)
an interesting take on this question. most of the posts i see on this focus on the numbers and keyword research tools. the idea of using forums in order to gauge what people want and what appears to be popular is something new to me. also, i like the idea of putting something out there, as opposed to allowing some paralysis to seep in.
Hi Deepak,
The customers are already in one particular kind of restaurant. The niche selection process is more like trying to decide which kind of restaurant to open.
nicely done Yaro,
its true how you say that most people like a research process. the knowledge of how something works isnt usually enough, because most of the information that people need is really out there, but instead they want it in a procedural form to follow.
in that sense you have written a fantastic article
cheers
kahthan
Great advice about focusing less on numbers and more on real world testing. Sometimes numbers (or our understanding of them) can be way off. For example, for one of my small mini-sites I wrote an article targeting a keyword that didn’t get many searches. I wasn’t sure if I should even waste my time on it, but I did. That one article gets way more traffic than the keyword research tools led me to believe and it converts better than any other articles for that site. Sometimes you just don’t know until you try.
Yeah, there a so many different markets out there to be discovered and catered for - finding it and promoting is where the trouble lies
I’m impressed with your blog aussie. I submitted it to Digg under your subtitle “How To Choose A Topic For Your Blog!” Hope that’s ok with you Yaro. Keep up the great work. Best regards, Ash Davison. (kiwi)
Hi Yaro…
I breathed a huge sigh of relief with your article — sometimes I think we do over complicate the whole process! Sometimes we can over research, over prepare, overanalyse when what we really need to do is just get out there and do it. And the beauty of the Internet is that it can all be changed or tweaked reasonably quickly and inexpensively. Sometimes you don’t know until you get out there… and test the waters!
Jeanne
yeah testing the waters is the key, now all we need is yaro to write up an article on how long we should be testing for and what metrics we can use determine if our efforts have been successful..
That’s a wonderful article Yaro, I believe totally in this, and practice the same. Hi, Kahthan, digging to much is too bad, you will land up only digging keep it simple and plain. It should be decided by you what you are going to offer and how much is enough. Always remember you are the first customer of your product if you feel you are satisfied, that’s it.
For me, the simplest path is either:
1. choose a topic that love you most, something that you want to share and not get bored with it.
2. if you want to earn money, choose a topic that people wants to know more about (yeah, even if you don’t have much knowledge about it), and find a pool of writers for it.
Great post Yaro, thanks…Keep up the great work..
By the way I really like your blog design & colors, who is the designer ?
My experience with determining a great (profitable) niche is much like you said. Go with your gut and give it a try. To that end, I like to set up social networks on Ning or Kick Apps and see if I can create a community around the topic.
If you can’t build a happy community with great free content, then there is no way that your new niche is going to create cash when the products hit the shelves.
When I started, I just picked the topic that I loved … scrapbooking.
It grows from there, I’ve done well but tend to over analyze as well. I need to take the lessons learned and add it to create more exposure for my sites.
My blog runs off wordpress and I find the UAW plug in invaluable for supplying material when I am busy. It downloads a free article each day which you can either moderate or just publish unchecked. I always check them because some of them have massive typos or the English is a bit strange. And those I do change. I owe it to my readers. I quite often add a comment up front as to why I am publishing this article, then publish it.
So my blog is a mixture of my stuff, Twitter (thank heavens for Twitter to keep it refreshed) and the PLR articles.
If you want to see it in action, you can check out either of my blogs http://www.magicalinternetmarketing.com/blog or http://www.linesofexperience.com/blog. Lines of expereince probably gives slightly better examples of ‘fronting’ these article.
Great blog YARO !!
I was really missing something not coming to your blog earlier..
Really informative stuff.
We have around 200 regular SEO clients, and for them intense keyword research is done by the core SEO team ..
I agree that on an individual level numbers are not that important … but when you have to compete for traffic with your competitors.. a lot of things are taken into account … can’t just go about it blindly…`
I love it man, you lay things out in such a simple way that anyone can take it and apply it! I agree that analyzing and analyzing and analyzing stops many from taking any action at all! Though the article covers nothing ground breaking or new, it shows how simple the process can be and that the most important step is to take action.
Thanks dude.
you got a lot of things there to think about. I really liked the “be observant” method. You have to look at what people are doing and what their needs are. If you see one person with a need then more than likely there will be others to. Remember Spanx underwear for women. This lady got fed up with cutting holes in her hose. She hit the pavement and next you know she is a millionaire.
Yaro,
“The barriers to entry on the web are virtually non-existent” - spot on! but I totally agree that it’s not easy.
“behaviors, desires, goals, motivation and interests” - they are golden keys!
Thanks for your insights
I like the idea of deriving ideas from forums … just as you say, the same questions keep bubbling up again and again.
Once you’ve identified both a question, and an answer to that question, you’re more than halfway there already.
yeah the problem is finding the question, the answer is so much easier to derive than the question itself.. discovering what your audience covets as a majority can be a tricky process, but at least you know when you get it right because the traffic numbers go up
Thanks Yaro for the call to action and a process to get started with. Much needed by myself and I’ll bet a lot of others out there.
Right on Yaro! Forums are one of my favorite places to do research, along with polling friends and associates. I do think that Keyword research, along with Adwords research and checking Amazon.com (related products, etc.) to see which niches have money in them is also a good idea. You do a great job empoweri