There are blogs for every niche online so you must do some blog market research on what your competitors are saying to keep up with the times.

Now that you have defined your purpose for starting a blog you must be clear on what the market is saying. This is where blog market research is important to gain clarity on several things.

You don’t want to start to put hours and hours into creating your blog and content if there is no interest or demand. Also, you must pinpoint who your competitors are and just what they are saying in their message. By doing this you can filter out all the rubbish people are saying and model all the good content that is being published.

I emphasis model other people who are creating engagement and a conversation and not copy. You are unique and have your own story that should be the resource for the content that you create. I will cover content and the creation of content in further posts.

What you must do is be your own person and not follow the herd so to speak. Competition is high and there is a lot of the same that is being published so you must stand out. You must look at other people in your niche and do a better job to provide more value than what they are.

So, you first port of call would be to search online to see what the competition is up to and who they are. To do that head over to good old Google because this is the playing field you will take part on.

Blog Market research On Google 

Google is thee biggest search engine online and the process I am going to show you is the same on other search engines. You will have a niche for your business, so this is what you look under first. Go to Goole and type in what your niche is and then blogs as illustrated in the image below.

As you can see, I have chosen the golf niche and there is a lot of information just by doing this one action. First is that Google are listing different blogs and websites related to the term “golf blogs”. The first few listings are articles that are summarising the best golf blogs online but further down the page are independent blogs as well.

What I would do is open the first 5 search results and explore the content inside of each article. You can see that if this was your niche then the third result down has an article on the Top 100 Golf Blogs. This is more than enough data for your research.

I have an extension in my browser called Keywords Everywhere and this gives me more data around my search. Under the search box you can see volume which is the amount of times this keyword is searched per month. Also, it gives me the cost per click if I targeted this keyword for paid advertising and the level of competition.

Also, the boxes on the right-hand side gives me data on related keywords and what other people have searched for. Go into Google and do this exercise for your own niche and then study the data provided.

Look At Magazines In Your Niche 

By starting your own blog, you become a publisher of information, so you need to look at other publishing platforms. One of the best ways to gain information on the demand for your niche is to look at magazines both online and offline.

Go to your local newsagent, convenience store of dedicated book shop and look at the shelves. Look for publications in your niche and buy some of the publications for research purposes. This is a good blog market research exercise because if there are printed publications in your niche then there is a demand.

Even in today’s world where printing has evolved to the digital age it is still an expensive way of publishing. If it wasn’t worth the publishers while do create their magazines, then they wouldn’t. They must be making money out of their publications to go to the effort.

Then when you look inside of the magazines it can give you a true indication of the information people want. Magazines are also a great resource because they will have advertisers promoting their products and services. At some point in the future you may have your own or promote these products on your blog as an affiliate. More about revenue generating strategies in the future so look out for them.

Another thing to remember is that these magazines will also have an online presence. Look on their websites because some of them may have subscription payments for their online version. This is another great indicator of a niche that is potentially profitable.

Amazon Bestsellers Is Another Blog Market Research Tool 

Amazon started out as a book shop back in the late 1990’s and has since grown to become one of the biggest retailers. Their book section is a wealth of knowledge for researching your blog’s niche. Like Google it is a search engine and if you type a search term in their search box, they will show what people are looking for.

Start of typing in your niche and see all the products they have on their platform. These products will give you limitless ideas on topics to create content around potential income streams for yourself. Again, more on this strategy in a further post.

Once you have done a general search it is time to get more specific and look at the book section. Type in your niche and see what books are being published around that niche. Then take it another step and search for magazine subscriptions and you will see what information people are paying for. They will range from monthly, 6 monthly or yearly subscriptions which is a model you may incorporate into your blog at a future time.

Take The Time To Do Your Research 

Blog market research is a time-consuming process, but it is one you must do because you are at the planning stage. There is a saying that if you “fail to plan, then you plan to fail”. What is the point of creating something if no one wants to read it or learn from it?

Do this work once by following the steps I have shared with you in this post and there are other resources. Once you have done this it then time to start putting things together on screen through constructing your next blog. Look out my next post where I will share some tips on how to build your blog. Also, I will look at some barriers that may be stopping you starting and how to overcome them. For now get your blog market research done and check out a webinar that I hosted with some business owners. In it I cover the exact 9 step process to creating a business blog. Register here for the webinar and choose a time that is convenient with you.

As always, I wish you every success.

Pete Harris

Professional Blogger & Information Publisher