How to Choose a Topic For Your Blog or Information Product by Analyzing Passions, Demand and Competition

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At one time or another, we have all presented a gift to a friend or a loved one on a special occasion. Thinking back, you will likely remember that making such selections is not always easy. We usually think long and hard about the recipient before we choose the gift.

If so much time and energy is spent choosing a gift for a loved one, imagine the importance and toil involved in the process of choosing the right niche for your online business or blog! After all, the products and services that your business creates are not about you. The bottom line is to deliver value to the customer.

Choosing the right niche is the most important and perhaps the most difficult step in building your online business. You must consider numerous factors, such as the market demand, your passions and strengths, and, most importantly, the competition.

Thousands of new blogs are created every hour, yet most bloggers miss out on success because they neglect the importance of the niche selection process. If a blogger is sure to get this part of the process right, he or she will be ahead of the game and all the other factors will fall into place.

Discover Your Passions

I am sure you have heard a million times that if you do not have passion for what you do, money and joy will escape you. Many bloggers wrongly assume that they have a passion for a particular topic, so they start blogging on that topic. Then, after several months, they end up realizing that their real passion is for something else.

I made this very mistake a year ago. I was interested in riding motorcycles with friends, and I assumed that since I liked to ride motorcycles, I could start a successful blog about motorcycles. After a few months of blogging, I realized that even though I did like to ride them, staying up to date on motorcycle news and sharing that information with readers was not something that I loved to do. Anyway, I did not let the blog die. I was fortunate to find someone who had a passion for motorcycles and also loved writing about it.

Being passionate about a particular topic does not guarantee that your blog on that topic will be a success. You need to find a topic about which you love to teach and share information with others. Think about situations in which you have found yourself talking endlessly about a particular topic with friends or colleagues without expecting anything in return. Also, make a list of the books and magazines that you read often. Blogging is just one form of communication, and it is not much different than talking to people. If you love to talk about a topic, chances are that you will also love blogging about it.

In addition to the joy you will get from sharing your knowledge with others, money is the extrinsic reward you will receive for your blogging efforts. Once you start writing in your blog, you will still need to wait several months, or perhaps even years in some cases, to realize the handsome profits blogging can bring. If earning money is your primary motivation for blogging, you may quickly get disappointed and abandon your blog. The driving force keeping you on track should be the pleasure you gain through sharing information with like-minded people.

After I discovered that writing about motorcycles wasn’t as enjoyable as I thought it would be, I did some serious thinking and realized that I frequently talk to my friends about business, blogging, and marketing. I have given guest lectures at many universities about blogging and Internet marketing without expecting any monetary benefits. Since I love to talk about these subjects, I knew blogging about them would be no different. That day I decided to start my blog at BusinessAttitude.com. I found my blogging passion.

Analyze the Market Demand and Competition

Once you have discovered your potential blog topics, the next obvious step is to measure the market demand within those niches. Remember that you need to first and foremost give people what they want, not simply what you like. Some of your topics may be well received in the market, and some of them may fail. You need to be sure to select the topic from your list which will garner the maximum results in terms of readership and profit.

There are certain websites from which you can gather valuable information about the market. Here, I have explained the websites and tools which I use on a regular basis:

Yahoo Answers: Yahoo Answers is a community where questions and answers are exchanged constantly. If you are a long-time Internet user, you may have used it before, or at least heard of it. Questions are posted in a wide range of categories. Find the category which is closest to your topic and look at the posted questions. These questions provide valuable insight into what people really want and need in your niche.

For example, prior to starting my motorcycle blog, I browsed through Yahoo Answers. I noticed that many people asked questions regarding where they could find good pictures of their favorite motorcycles. I came to the conclusion that even though there are a lot of websites publishing information about bikes, there are very few places where one can find high quality photos.

I thus invested a great deal of energy into producing quality photos of the motorcycles in addition to publishing great content. My investigation of Yahoo Answers ultimately led my blog to grow faster than other similar blogs.

As you browse through various questions, you should look at the resolved questions in addition to the open questions. The answers to resolved questions can provide details regarding the competition in your niche. You can “spy” on your competition and analyze any possible deficiencies they have. Try to overcome these shortcomings in your own product.

Google Keyword Tool: Google owns the lion’s share of the search engine market. Almost everyone uses Google to find information on the Web. The Google AdWords Keyword Tool is a free feature which gives you insights into the keywords people type in the Google search engine. It also provides the monthly search volume of those keywords.

For example, when you type in the keyword “motorcycles,” then click “Get Keyword Ideas,” the tool will generate a list of keywords related to motorcycles. The list might include words such as Harley Davidson, Yamaha, Honda, and so on. Try this tool with different keywords to become familiar with how it works.

You can also enter a website’s URL into this tool to obtain a large list of keywords related to that website, along with their monthly search volume. The higher the search volume, the higher the demand for information. You can use this tool not only to select the topic for your blog, but also to brainstorm ideas for possible articles you will consider publishing in your blog.

To analyze the magnitude of the competition in your niche, take the keywords from this tool and search for them in Google within quotes. For example, if you want a rough estimate of the competition in the “weight loss” niche, search Google for the keywords “weight loss.” This particular search will produce 90.1 million results, which means this exact phrase is repeated in 90.1 million pages across the Web.

So, as you might have guessed, the weight loss niche has incredibly high competition. If the same is true for your topic, try to sub-divide your niche. For example, you might search for “weight loss for teenagers.” This phrase brings up only 20 thousand search results, meaning there is relatively low competition in this niche. It will be much easier to attract prospective readers and buyers if you create a blog or an information product in a smaller niche (a sub-division of a larger niche).

The sponsored links which appear on the right-hand side of the search results also provide valuable data about the competition in your niche. The higher the number of sponsored links, the greater the competition.

ClickBank Marketplace: Clickbank.com is an online payment gateway which enables people to sell digital products online without any hassle. Authors who write small books which cannot be published traditionally rely on ClickBank to sell their books in the form of e-books.

The ClickBank marketplace lists their digital products according to categories. Across each listing of a digital product, they also publish a variable called “gravity.” The higher the gravity, the higher the damand and sales for that product. You can compare various products within your niche, and thus gain valuable insight into the types of products that sell well.

Avoid a Head-on Collision with Your Competition

Many people believe that one can be successful in business only if they can discover a niche where there is no competition. Contrary to popular belief, competition is actually a good thing. If you find a niche where there is no competition, chances are that people are not willing to spend money within that niche. Competition proves that there are profits to be made. Selecting a niche and beating your competition is much better than trying to discover a niche where there is no competition at all.

Another mistake people make when trying to beat the competition is that they try to market a higher quality product for a cheaper price with lower profit margins. Selling cheap is not good marketing. Lowering the price of your product and providing higher quality does not prompt consumers to ditch the competitor’s product and buy yours. You may wonder why this is so. The answer to this question lies in consumer psychology.

When an average consumer buys a product for a particular price, and is then offered a better quality product for a cheaper price, the consumer is not convinced to instantly switch products. By choosing the latter product, the consumer admits that the original decision to buy the former product was a mistake. Consumers hate to admit that they were wrong. You need to give consumers a better reason to buy your product besides just a cheap price.

For example, before I started my motorcycle blog, I observed that automotive blogs received heavy traffic. There were more than five blogs competing with each other. If I too entered that niche and started a general automotive blog – writing about both cars and bikes – readers would have to choose between me and the competitors because they cannot read more than five blogs at a time. Even if I published content of much higher quality, it wouldn’t suffice.

I knew I needed to provide a reason for people to come to my blog. If my blog was just about motorcycles, people interested in automobiles would read the general blogs and those with a special interest in motorcycles would read my blog. In this case I sub-divided the niche and provided a unique reason for readers to visit my blog.

By sub-dividing the niche, you are creating your own category. Edwards Deming, the famous philosopher, said: “It is better to be first, than it is to be better.” It is good to compete as long as you do not end up doing exactly the same thing as your competitors.