Are you feeling the itch to create? Are you looking to cement your place in the world? Do you want to demonstrate your knowledge and authority? Perhaps you just want to connect with others, share your story, or let your voice be heard. Or maybe you’re looking for a way to earn extra money.
There are endless reasons to create a website. A site of your own shows commitment, professionalism, authority, and skill. It sets you apart from all the masses of people who talk but don’t do.
Whether you want a website for your business, hobby, or blog, the first and most crucial step is to choose a website niche. What should it be about?
Why you must, must, must pick a website niche
A niche is a smaller, focused segment of a larger market. Without a niche, you’ll have trouble finding an audience.
For instance, suppose you’re considering making a website about flowers. All flowers. All kinds. Flowers everywhere. Do you see the problem? It’s far too general. People rarely search for just plain “flowers” online. Plus, there are already dozens of sites dominating the general topic of flowers.
But if you create a site around exotic flower arrangements for special occasions, now you have an instant audience. Without a niche, you’re going after billions of people, many of whom aren’t looking for you. Although it’s tempting to create a site for everyone, in reality, that only ends up creating a site for no one. With a niche, you’re going after a much smaller number of people — but those people specifically want to find a site just like yours.
A niche site will attract more targeted traffic, establish you as an authority and an ally in your industry, and make the journey more fun for you. A niche should be centered around something you enjoy, something that aligns with your passion. If you enjoy it, that passion will show and visitors will feel that connection.
Picking a website niche begins with you
Begin to narrow down your niche using the following process:
1. What are your top five interests?
These may be broad, and that’s okay for now. We’ll narrow it down later. It could be sports, shoes, hiking, knitting, sales, fiction writing — any of the thousands of things people like doing. Here’s a list of 50 ‘hot’ niches from a couple of years ago, just to give a glimpse of the many topics that are out there.
2. What are your top five knowledge areas?
Next, consider the things you know more about than the average person knows. These could relate to your workplace, hobbies, courses you’ve taken, content you’ve read, places you’ve volunteered at or traveled to, skills you’ve acquired, or projects you’ve completed. Again, there are thousands of possibilities here.
3. Narrow it down
Your goal here is to fine-tune the items on your lists to develop a true specialty that you can own. You’re looking for something broad enough that there will be an audience but narrow enough that you can carve out your own little community of enthusiasts, customers, followers, readers, or whoever your site ends up attracting.
Narrowing it down takes some research, which we’ll get to in a moment.
Let’s consider the ‘hiking’ interest.
Hiking: Where?
You could focus on hikes in a particular region.
Hiking: How?
You could focus on hiking tips, clothing, and gear.
Hiking: Who?
You could make a site devoted to hiking for retirees, great hikes for kids and families, or hikes that appeal to college students.
Or, for an uber-niche site, you could combine several of these. Create a website about ‘great hikes for families within 100 miles of a nearby city.’ By fine-tuning your interests and skill areas, you can create a website that doesn’t yet exist, even though there are about two billion websites in existence right now. Yes — that’s billion, with a b.
Research your niche
Research will help you get a sense of your competition and the untapped potential within specific niches. It will also help you avoid mistakes like spending five hours choosing a website URL, only to realize someone else already owns it.
Begin with keyword research
You want to be able to answer some essential questions about your site.
- What is your site about?
- What makes it unique?
- Who is it for?
- What problems does it solve?
- What questions does it answer?
With your initial attempt at niche research, start with a search engine. For example, search for ‘great hikes for families near me.’ Analyze the sites that pop up in the search results. You might discover a better way to position your site or an angle you hadn’t considered. You might stumble upon a whole new swath of micro-niches and specialties.
The point is, see what’s already out there. This will help you discover missing gaps that your site can fill.
Explore the income potential
If you hope to monetize your website someday, look at other sites in your niche and make notes.
Advertising
Do the existing niche websites have advertisements on them? Ads are sometimes, but not always, an indication that the site receives a lot of traffic or that this revenue model is successful. This might also present an opportunity for you to do something different, like offer an ad-free site that’s supported by paid subscriptions.
Comments
Do blog articles get a lot of comments? That means this is a passionate interest for a particular group of people.
Authorities
Does a well-known guru or authority have a site in your chosen niche or a related one? Look for books, presentations, eCommerce businesses, links, and quotes. That person has figured out how to monetize this niche. If they can do it, you can too.
Courses and Products
Do any of the sites offer online courses? Do they sell products?
There are dozens of ways to monetize a site, but these questions help reveal the potential for revenue to be made in this niche.
Acquire advanced online research tools
Some good keyword research tools include Keyword Tool and Ubersuggest. On these sites, you enter keywords to receive a list of related phrases people search for.
A similar tool that uses a different approach is Answer the Public. Use this tool to see what questions real people have asked online in relation to your niche topic.
These tools can help tailor your niche to a broader and more active audience. You’ll also get ideas for articles you can write once your site is live — questions people need answers to.
All of these tools have free and paid versions. With the paid versions, you can see much more data, such as how many people search for a particular word or phrase each month and the level of competition you’ll face.
This information is particularly valuable as you narrow down your decision. You want to find a niche that has appeal but doesn’t have heavy competition.
Here are some more website tools, most from Google.
Before you jump into the website creation pool…
When learning to swim, you don’t jump into the deep end of the pool. Well, the art of creating a website is a really big pool, or more precisely, a vast ocean.
And while TV commercials or slick promo Facebook ads might make it sound like you can set up your new website “in minutes,” that’s not realistic.
Before going any further, consider a few reality checks:
How much time does it take to create a website?
You will not create a site in minutes. Even an ugly site takes a little time to create, much less one you’ll be proud to share with others.
- First, you need to choose a platform. Obviously, WordPress.com is an excellent choice for so many reasons.
- Next, you need to choose and pay for a domain name.
- Then, you need to select a site design theme.
- From there, you need to write your initial content, create a basic menu for your pages, and probably implement a contact form.
- And of course, you’ll take time to tweak it, add more content, refine based on your users’ needs, monetize it, and more.
There is a learning curve for all of this, but we have faith that you can do it. Millions already have. Experience informs us that it will take a little time, however. And the less you know about websites, the internet, and technology, the more time it will take. Don’t let that stop you, though. Just understand the reality of the time requirements, and then begin.
How do you promote a site and start ranking on search engines?
This question has spawned entire industries in search engine optimization (SEO), web marketing, content marketing, and online advertising.
Again, it’s not simple, nor is it instant. It takes commitment, strategy, and consistent effort. You’ll want to create a content schedule. Don’t expect to just launch a new website up and walk away. No, at that point, you’ve just begun. But it wouldn’t be fun if it ended so quickly anyway. So again, don’t let fear cause you to abandon your idea. Recognize the effort involved and just begin.
It all starts with choosing your website niche
One more time. Just begin. It’s that simple, and it all starts with choosing the primary topic and focus for your website, and then building everything else from that foundation. We’ll fill out some of these ‘deep end’ aspects of owning and running a website in future articles.
For now, get excited about owning a digital asset that you’re passionate about. Once you create a website, it’s yours. From there, the sky’s the limit.
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