Blogging can be a great way to make passive income, but do you know there are blogging niches that make money more than others?
If your end goal is to make money from the blog, whether it’s your 1st blog, 2nd or 3rd, picking a niche that is easier to make money, can set you off on the right foot.
In this post, I will be sharing with you
- How to choose blogging niches that make money?
- Statistic ranking the blogging niches that make money
- Discuss the details of each blogging niche, what does it entail, pros vs. cons, and an example of a profitable blog from that niche.
At the end, be sure to grab your FREE cheat sheet of 62 Profitable Blogging Niche Ideas, to get your creative juice flowing TODAY.
So let’s get to it…
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How to choose blogging niches that make money?
There are 3 elements to consider when it comes to choosing blogging niches that make money:
- Value creation
- Passion and/or expertise
- Monetisation
1. Value creation:
The reason I start with value creation is that I am speaking to those of you who have profitability as the end goal for your blog.
In order for a blog to make money, you need to choose a niche that has market demand, and you can provide solutions for it. This is called value creation.
Choosing blogging niches that make money is a key foundation to the blogging business you are going to build. Once you decided on the niche, it is difficult to course-correct later down the road.
So are there certain blogging niches that make money more than others?
The answer is, YES. 
In the “Blog Income report research study by The Blog Millionaire”, it categorised all blogging niches in the following 6 buckets:
- Personal finance
- Marketing
- Travel
- Mommy
- Lifestyle
- Food
The study then produced a score ranking these 6 blogging niches based on the combination of median income and the percentage of bloggers making over $2000/month for each niche.
The magic number of $2000/month…
$2000/month is seen as the first tipping point for blogging success. In the study, bloggers who make less than $2000/month are considered as hobby bloggers. The ones who make over $2000/month, are having a significant mindset shift. The bloggers are starting to treat their blogs as businesses, and invest more time and resources. As a result, the monthly income grows exponentially.
The data shows that Personal Finance and Food are the top 2 niches when it comes to making the most money, because there is a huge demand in the market. If you can provide solutions to these audiences through your blog, you can make money.
This is not to say that you should make your decision ONLY based on profitable ranking, which leads to my next point.
2. Passion and expertise:
To make an informative decision on your next blogging niche makes money, it’s important to have the data, however that is not the ONLY part of the decision-making process. The next step is to ask yourself which niche(s) you are passionate about and/or have extensive expertise on.
If there is a niche that you are both passionate and have a lot of experience on, you might have just hit a jackpot.
…But not everybody is that lucky.
For many of us, there might be topics that we have a lot of experience in, but we might not be that passionate about. On the other hand, we might be very passionate on something, but yet not have a lot of experience. If that’s the case, I would go with passion rather than experience.
Why?
Building a profitable blog takes time and hard work. When it comes to considering your next blogging niche, ask yourself, “can I see myself writing 50+ articles on this niche in a year and beyond?”
If the answer is yes, you have chosen the right blogging niche for you.
It may not be the most profitable niche. However, understanding the pros and cons of the specific niche during the decision-making process, will help you to overcome the disadvantage much faster.
Your passion for the chosen niche is what will propel you forward on your blogging journey, especially when things get hard and gritty.
3. Monetisation:
So you can create value with a niche you are passionate and ideally experienced in, but how do you make money?
Here are the 5 main ways to make money from each of the niche, i.e Monetization.
- Ads
- Affiliates
- Sponsored posts
- Services/consulting
- Online courses
According to the “Blog Income report research study by The Blog Millionaire”, the distribution of income source are different by the blogger income brackets.
For the lower-income bracket, making between $2,000-$7,500/month, heavily relies on Ads and Affiliate, making close to 62% combined of the overall income source. Check out how to start a blog for beginners and make money through affiliate HERE.
Bloggers making between $7,500-$25,000/month are considered middle income bracket. While the Ads and Affiliate are still the top 2 income sources, Affiliate becomes the leading source of income taking over from Ads.
By this point, the bloggers have accumulated a healthy email list, and are able to sell their own products via email marketing without heavily relying on advertising.
Finally, the upper income bracket are for bloggers who make $25,000+/month. Interestingly, the Online courses become the dominant source of income. Most of these bloggers offer several course related products.
As the bloggers make more money, the trend is moving from promoting others products through advertisement and affiliate programs to building a readership and an email list to sell their own products.
This pretty much paints the picture for your blog journey on ways to monetize your blog as you grow the business.
Need some inspirations? here are my top 5 inspiring bloggers and their income report that will make you want to start a blog today!
To conclude how to choose blogging niches that make money, there are 3 elements to consider: value creation, passion and monetization.
You may already have a few ideas in mind out of the 6 main blogging niches…
Next, let’s take a closer look at each niche, to help you understand:
- What each niche is all about
- Pros and cons
- An example of a profitable blog from this niche
Pros and cons for the 6 blogging niches that make money:
#1 Personal finance:
What is it?
Out of the 6 blogging niches that make money, the Personal finance niche has the highest combination score when it comes to median income and the percentage of bloggers achieving over £2000/month.
Here is why…
This is a niche that helps people to spend, save and make money. Frugal living, investment, saving money, and money making side hustles, just to name a few topics within this category. There is a huge demand for this niche.
Pros:
- High market demand, therefore plenty of opportunity for value creation.
- Plenty of affiliate tools and services to promote.
- Statistics have proven, this is the #1 blogging niche where bloggers make the most and fastest.
Cons:
- Takes time, experience and sometimes education to build the credibility on the topic.
- Crowded space for SEO (Search engine optimization). You will be fighting for traffic with many larger publishers.
A profitable example from this niche:
#2 Food (Drinks are included too)
What is it?
This one is pretty self-explanatory, although it does include drinks in this category =) This niche includes a wide range of gourmet interest in cooking and drinking. The majority of blogs share recipes and pictures.
According to Brandon Gaille’s report, Food niche has the highest median monthly income with a whopping $9,169/month.
What makes this blogging niche unique is that, advertisement is the single biggest attribute to the income stream. However, in order to qualify for top Ads networks such as AdThrive, you need to have minimum traffic of 100,000 sessions per month. This means you need to generate a lot of page views in order to be profitable. Up until that point, it can be a long and slow burn.
Pros:
- A very visual niche. Relatively easy to gain traction with a good Pinterest strategy.
- There are plenty of opportunities for sponsored posts as there are a lot of brands within this space.
- There is room for expansion, such as cookbooks, YouTube channels and TV shows.
Cons:
- It takes time to build up a readership to become profitable.
- Labour-intensive to create high-quality recipes and photographs.
- Relatively limited products to sell, as most people are just interested in free recipes.
A profitable example from this niche:
#3 Marketing:
What is it?
Anything related to Blogging, SEO, social media and small businesses are part of this blogging niche.
The reason it ranked 3rd on the 6 blogging niches that make money, is that of the relatively easy path to the $2000/month tipping point in the combination of its competitiveness.
Marketing niche ranked #2 in the percentage of all bloggers that make over $2000/month. This is because most of the people are willing to pay a premium for a marketing course or service. These courses and services usually run from $200-$2000. By selling a few products per month, you can easily get over $2000 of income.
This is also one of the most competitive and saturated niches. You will be competing with some top marketers out there. While it is relatively easy to make up to $2000/month, it becomes tough sailing beyond that.
The key to success here is to find your customers who are willing to pay a premium but marketing isn’t their strength. One example could be, helping engineering firms boost their social media engagement on recruiting.
Pros:
- A relatively easy path to $2000/month income.
- Potential to sell high-priced products and services through affiliate programs.
Cons:
- This is a very competitive field.
- Tough sailing beyond $2000/month mark.
A profitable example from this niche:
#4 Lifestyle:
What is it?
This niche includes a variety of interests that make up everyday lives. It can also have sub-niches such as fitness, fashion, sewing, pets etc.
Most blogs are based on a specific niche, however, in this category, the bloggers are focused on multiple niches.
To be successful in this category, the blog needs to focus on solving problems for a specific demographic. As an example, a GEN X lifestyle blogger might be focusing on raising family, work-life balance, mental health, midlife crisis etc.
Don’t know what Gen X is? – it’s a generation between Baby Boomers and Millennial. They typically range birth year from 1965 to 1980.
Pros:
- You have a wide range of sub-niches to choose from based on what is trending.
- More sub-niches equals more opportunities to monetize.
Cons:
- Because of the wide range of sub-niches, it can be challenging ranking on Google.
- More difficult to be recognized as a subject matter expert.
A profitable example from this niche:
#5 Mommy:
What is it?
Although this niche can be part of lifestyle, it has a clear focus on motherhood. The niche including topics like homeschooling, breastfeeding, single moms etc. To qualify for a mommy blog, the blog title has the word “mom” in it.
Mommy niche ranked 4th from the 6 blogging niches that make money study. This could be a combination of the number of blogs in this space, and the time required to invest on the blog from already busy moms.
Pros:
- Easy entry. If you are a mom, the chances are that you have something to say about motherhood.
- Similar to lifestyle niche, you can cover a wide range of sub-niches, therefore, more opportunities to monetize.
Cons:
- With having so many moms bloggers out there, it is difficult to stand out.
- If you are already a busy mom, investing time on your blog can be very challenging.
A profitable example from this niche:
#6 Travel:
I come across a lot of people (mostly before they have children) who love to have a way to make passive income while travelling around the world.
While this is a dream for so many people, statistics show that this is one of the most difficult niches to make money. Taking the last place, Travel niche is the 6th place when it comes to blogging niches that make money.
The reality is that in order to be a travel blogger, you will need to have a budget to travel first. This is also a lifestyle commitment. While it works great for people who don’t have children, it will become more challenging if circumstances changes and you can’t travel anymore.
Pros:
- If you love to travel and want to make money while doing it, this can be a lot of fun!
- It has the potential to link with other niches such as making money while travelling, exotic cuisines etc.
Cons:
- This is almost a lifestyle choice. You will need to commit to travelling short and long term.
- This is probably the niche that has the highest upfront investment as you will be paying for travel expenses.
A profitable example from this niche:
My final thoughts on blogging niches that make money:
If your end goal is to create a blog that makes money, you need to know your data by first understanding the niches that have higher market demand. Value creation is by solving problems to meet the demand. The more value you create, the more money you can make in return.
Do what you love, you can make any blogging niche profitable. Some are easier to make money than others. To make blogging successful, it takes handwork and time. Passion is what will propel you forward, especially when things get hard.
If you are passionate about more than one blogging niche, the statistics will help you to decide which blogging niches that make money easier.
Finally, the ways of making money changes as your blog grows. Most of the bloggers start with heavily relying on ads and affiliate to eventually selling their own courses. Having a long term vision of your blog will help you progress your blogging journey with a sense of direction.
Ready to BrainStorm Your Next Profitable Blogging Niche Ideas?
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Got a niche idea and ready to kick start your profitable blog in 2020?
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Well my friends, I know you got big dreams in the new year. If one of them is to launch your new blog to make passive income, I hope this post was helpful when it comes to choosing blogging niches that make money.
Remember you are one decision away from unleashing your profitable blogging business in 2020.
All the best,
Chloe
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Great question! I’m always on the lookout for the latest and greatest niches and here’s to hoping for a great upcoming year. Definitely when writing posts I always try to add value for the reader so I definitely agree with your #1 choice here. $2000/month is a good bar the set and one that we all are looking to achieve. Online courses are something I’ve been interested in and I’m not surprised to see they are some of the biggest income producers. I am currently almost done with a current project and looking for a new one, so from your choices I like the personal finance niche, and I will definitely look more into this heading into the new year. Thanks for a great post and best luck in the 2020!
Glad to hear that you found this post came in a good timing for you, when it comes to decide on your next project.
Cheers to your success in 2020!
Chloe
Hello there this is a nice and very informative article it would be of great help to the public as it has been of help to me.i love blogging and been enjoying it for sometime and I think food and drinks would be the best as food is something people cannot do without,and as more recipes are been discovered many people would want to search for them on the internet,and if one has a blog on food recipes or types of drink he or she would gain alot of visitors.And if he/she happens to have some affiliate links on the blog then he/she could make some sales.
Hi Feji,
Food niche is a lucrative one to go for, but also very competitive. Just keep in mind that it will take time and hard work for the blog to pick up the momentum. Let the passion propel you forward!
All the best,
Chloe
Hello Chloe;
I am very happy to come across your article, there is a moment that I wonder about the profitability of my blog, if the income could be substantial and that they were the methods and tips to achieve it. Many give us testimonies of success of buisness by affiliation on their blogs but that does not prove to be true or easy as it seems. otherwise your article saves me research time thank you.
I wish I knew all about this when I started by blogging journey. Not sure if I would change my decision on which blogging niche to go to, but at least I would have gone in with eyes wide open =)
So glad to hear that you found this helpful!
This is a fantastic read! Everyone should take some time to read this one. Such an excellent article! Thank you!
I’m pleased to hear that you find it helpful.