Like many of my blog posts, they start with a question that I've read on a discussion board. As you probably guessed, this post is about how to discover a new niche to start a website about. Of course I make it easy by saying it only takes 3-steps, but remember it's up to you ultimately to create the content (and if it's a blog a continual stream of fresh content) for your website to succeed. This point leads me to step one:

1.) Brainstorm a list of broad topics that you are interested in. I start with this step because if you're going to start a website, especially one you're going to be managing for fun or in your spare time, you're going to want to select a topic you're already interested in or wouldn't mind learning about. Your website visitors are going to appreciate the passion that comes through in your writing. You could probably fake the passion, but why not pick something you're already interested in?

2.) Check both the popularity and the competition for that keyword. Anyone that reads this blog knows that I absolutely love free tools, and I'm more than happy to recommend the best and most useful ones. In this case, I would use WordTracker.

Start plugging your keywords into WordTracker's search. As an example, I searched one of my favorite topics which is "basketball". As you can see, it will spit out a list of keywords based on search volume. Scroll down further and you'll see an even more useful report, showing the search volume AND competition for those keywords. On my "basketball" search, WordTracker just so happened to have 3 fairly popular keywords, with no competition. These are the keywords I'm interested in researching further. These keywords are:

best basketball quotes
top 10 basketball players
basketball shoe technology

These are 3 niche topics that I could fairly easily start a website around. Which leads me to the next step.

3.) Check the growth potential of these keywords. For this bit of research, I recommend using Google Trends. Plug your searches into Google Trends. In this instance we'll plug "best basketball quotes". The graph shows you how many searches have been done for the keywords you've entered, versus the total number of searches on Google over time. Ideally you want to find a keyword that is on an upward trajectory (up-and-coming). After all, you want to get in on the ground floor.

Looking at the peaks and valleys for "best basketball quotes", this may not be the best keyword. However, if you look at Google's "Rising" terms, it recommends looking at "best sports quotes" because it's a breakout term. A breakout term is one with a change in growth greater than 5000%. Now that sure sounds like a great potential up-and-coming niche.

4.) I'll even throw in a bonus step for you. We should really check out the popularity and competition for "best sports quotes". You'll want to go back to Wordtracker for that. According to Wordtracker, it has a fairly decent volume and low competition.

So there you have it. Don't say you never get something for free because I just gave you the next, great upcoming niche!

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