If you want to start a profitable blog, you’re going to want to pick a profitable niche. Now, you don’t HAVE to write about the blog topics that make the most money…but your path to profitability will be a long and arduous one if you simply write based on “something you’re passionate about.”

What is a topic or niche?

First, let’s get definitions out of the way. You’ll hear a LOT of talk about “niches” and “niching down.” A niche is simply a focused area or topic that your blog will write about. “Topic” and “niche” are used interchangeably, though I would say a niche is more specific than a topic.

Example:

Topic: Travel

Niche: Solo female travel

“Niching down” refers to narrowing your focus so you target a specific target audience that wants to buy what you’re selling. It’s a lot easier to gain loyal customers when your audience is solo female travelers rather than just ALL travelers in general.

For now, let’s not worry too much about the nitty-gritty details of definitions and focus more on what you’re interested in: making money blogging.

Your Burning Question: What are the blog topics that make the MOST money?

The general saying is that the blogging topics that make money are any that fall under the category of Health, Wealth, or Happiness—everybody wants to attain these things. Here’s what I’ve witnessed from my own experience and watching my fellow bloggers: It’s really the Wealth category that is king, followed by Health.

Profitable Blog Niche #1: Wealth AKA “How to Make Money” Niches

Broad Niche: Personal Finance, Budgeting/Saving Money

More specific sub-niches: How to Make Money ________

• How to make money blogging
• How to make money online
• How to make money freelance writing
• How to make money managing social media accounts
• How to make money as a virtual assistant
• How to make money side hustling

All these are excellent and profitable blog niches. So if you’re looking for blog topics that make the most money, it helps to choose one that helps OTHERS make money too.

Blog Income Reports From the How to Make Money Niche:

• Breaking the One Percent: $11,946 in December 2017 (from 3 different blogs)
  What they blog about: Finance, ways to make extra money, and how to make money blogging
  Jeff Proctor at Breaking the One Percent writes killer income reports. Here’s one of his best, which includes a breakdown of how much money he makes teaching others about blogging versus how much money he makes teaching others about finance.
• Create and Go: $76,317 in November 2017
  What they blog about: How to make money blogging
• The Busy Budgeter: $86,438.83 in January 2017
  What she blogs about: Budgeting, making money blogging, cheap meals, saving money
• Believe in a Budget: $68,856.02 in October 2017
  What she blogs about: Freelancing, side hustles, budgeting, making money blogging

I want to point out that I’m not calling this the “How to make money” niche in a derogatory way. The above bloggers are ones whom I look up to, and they consistently provide solid tips for free on their site. They’re an inspiration!

People get all up in arms when they realize someone is making money by teaching others how to make money. This is just a fact of life. It’s business. In fact, in the business world, it can be termed as B2B (business to business). And business-to-business, erm, businesses always tend to make more money. Need an example? Let’s say I’m a web developer, and I build websites for investment firms. I could feasibly sell a website for $20K or more. But let’s say I’m a personal trainer who helps local moms get into shape post-pregnancy. Now, is your average mom going to pay $20K or more for a service? No! Businesses have more capital to invest, plus, they know it’s a business expense (a tax write-off). On top of that, businesses typically spend because they believe their investment will serve to make them more money. An investment firm might drop $20K on a website if they believe it will win them big clients. Personal purchases don’t have that advantage.

Profitable Blog Niche #2: Health Niches

Broad niche: Health & Fitness

More specific sub-niches:

• Weight loss tips for moms
• Yoga for beginners
• Clean eating for college students
• Keto diet for women
• Natural treatments for eczema
• Treatments for adult acne

Health & Fitness is a VERY profitable niche because many people with health problems are desperate for a solution. I know this from personal experience. Last year, I was (incorrectly) diagnosed with cholinergic urticaria (heat hives), and I Googled LIKE CRAZY trying to find a cure. I came across a website dedicated to heat hives, and I ended up buying the blog owner’s book on Amazon! Now, I have no idea if he’s making a full-time income from his health blog, but he has clearly found a way to monetize his blog by finding a solution to a very specific health problem.

Blog Income Reports From the Health & Fitness Niche

• Root + Revel: $13,560.73 in June 2018
  What she blogs about: Healthy eating, holistic health
• Avocadu: $­­­­­­­14,392 in November 2017
  What they blog about: Weight loss, yoga, and healthy living for women

Is Blogging About Making Money Blogging the Most Profitable Blog Niche?

As much as most bloggers don’t want to hear this, blogging about how to make money blogging is a very profitable niche. I know, I know. It’s annoying, but it’s true. To give you proof of this, I’d like to bring in Lauren and Alex of Avocadu again. What I left out earlier is that Lauren and Alex also own a blog called Create and Go, which is about how to make money blogging. I want to point out that they FIRST achieved success with Avocadu (a health blog) and THEN started blogging about how to make money blogging on Create and Go. https://createandgo.co/blog-income-report-november-2017/

However, what’s really interesting is to see the stark contrast between Avocadu’s income and Create and Go’s income:

Avocadu (health blog) income for November 2017: $14,392

Create and Go (how to make money blogging blog) income for November 2017: $76,317 (!!)

That’s right, even though Avocadu is older, Create and Go now makes more than 5 TIMES the amount of income for the duo. Told ya. Blogging about how to make money blogging is a very profitable niche, and not just that, it becomes very profitable very fast.

Blog Niches I Would Avoid

Just because I list the following blog niches as ones I’d avoid does NOT mean you shouldn’t go with them or that you’ll never be profitable. Just read my caveats if you choose to go this route.

• Travel – As a travel blogger, I can tell you this a VERY hard blogging topic to make money from. The main reason for this is that you have a lower “customer lifetime value.” What this means is that when someone lands on your travel blog, 99% of the time they are planning a one-time vacation. So for example, if someone lands on your site because they were Googling “best things to do in Morocco,” it is HIGHLY unlikely they will be interested in your Morocco tips or products one year from now. They’re likely just planning a trip for a very specific date, and then after that, you won’t retain them. Plus, as a travel blogger, you’re going to have a hundred different destinations on your blog. Trying to create sales funnels or targeted content for EVERY destination becomes tedious and time-consuming.
  Exception to the Rule: Adventure in You – $23,120 in May 2018
• Recipes – Food bloggers have it rough for two major reasons: One, their photos have to be amazing, and it’s hard enough cooking a meal let alone taking an Instagram-worthy photo of it. And two, if you decide to be a recipe blogger, you’ve got another problem headed your way: People steal your recipes! Plus, you have to be uber original to come up with new recipes all the time.
  Exception to the rule: Pinch of Yum – $95,197.34 in November 2016
• Lifestyle – Lifestyle here meaning “blog about all the things.” So if you want to write about recipes, health and fitness, and personal finance, it becomes difficult to create enough content on all three topics AND target an audience for each and/or all those topics. Your path to profitability becomes long and winding. Avoid going the lifestyle route if you want to earn income from your blog faster.
  Exception to the rule: Chasing Foxes – $19,889.04 in August

Recap: How to Pick a Profitable Blog Niche

1. Don’t pick something ONLY because you’re passionate about it, but DO pick something you KNOW about. Though it’s not required, I highly, highly encourage you to pick a blogging topic that you have personal experience with and sufficient knowledge about. As many business experts will tell you: When you are GOOD at something, AND it’s making you good money—it’s amazing how quickly you will become passionate about it.
2. Don’t box yourself in early on. It’s OKAY to go broad. For example, this blog started out as a very general travel blog; I wrote about road trips, international trips, food, and solo travel. I also sometimes wrote about my personal life. I was all over the place. But here’s what NOT niching down early on gave me: Very valuable data on what performed well in terms of money and what I enjoyed writing about. I think when you’re just starting out you should go wide so you can explore and learn. Worry about niching down later. For now, just get started.
3. Research what paid offers are available in that niche BEFORE you decide. From a purely logical standpoint, it makes sense to blog in a niche that has a high ROI. For example, if you decide you want to start a travel blog that focuses on budget hotels, and you plan on monetizing it with links to hotel affiliates, you will discover that you get a percentage of a percentage of that hotel booking fee. What that actually will look like is something like 25 cents for every hotel booking.Now, let’s look at a different example and say you decide to start a blog about how to make money as a social media manager, and you decide to monetize it with affiliate links to social media courses. As an example, the if a Pinterest course offers a 50% commission on its $397 list price—that means you will make $198.50 per sale, instead of just 25 cents per sale if you went the budget hotel blogging route.That’s why it helps for you to explore what paid offers are available in a niche before you decide to pursue it. It helps you to see which would have the highest ROI in the shortest amount of time.
4. Remember, there’s always an exception (or several exceptions) to the rule. As you can see from what I wrote above, even though people will say Lifestyle blogs aren’t profitable, you will find many that are. You will always find bloggers who are exceptions to the rule. I just wouldn’t bank on being one of them.
5. Ignore what the gurus say and do what you want. In the end, this is your blog and your business. It makes zero sense to start something you know you will only hate. Additionally, there’s an important distinction to make in this blog post: Just because we don’t SEE income reports from people making money in other niches, doesn’t mean there aren’t people out there making good money from them. So it could be the case that we all think the “how to make money” niche is profitable only because those in that niche share income reports from them. Who knows? There might be a slew of bloggers out there who write about pet costumes and are making tons of money that we just don’t know about. :) Or, you could be the first to pave the way!

These are the blog topics that make the most money, in my opinion. You don’t have to listen to my opinion (or anyone’s for that matter), but failing to heed advice from those have gone before you can make things a lot more difficult than they have to be (I’m speaking from experience). If you choose a niche in one of these categories, you should have no problem monetizing your blog fast, as long as you have a plan, create quality content, and stick with it (that means for more than a few months!).

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