What are the top blogging niches that make money in 2020?

Making money from a blog depends upon a number of factors. But the niche [or area/ subject of blogging] comes on top because unless the niche is an 'earning' niche, other efforts do not yield good results. So, on this post I share a list of blog niches that make money in 2020.

Please note that COVID-19 has changed the online behavior of people altogether. It has also changed people's priorities. It has posed restrictions on hobbies and recreations. So, if before the coronavirus pandemic, travel was one of the top earning blog niches, it has become nearly the worst. 

Within a particular niche, some activities are getting better traction after COVID-19, while some others have tanked miserably. For example, more and more people are posting on social networks their experiments with cooking food. People are also looking for healthsome foods and recipes. On the other hand, some bloggers who had started food chain or cooking classes after becoming popular through blogging have suffered badly as their real-world ventures had to close down.

Corona too will pass. So, corona or no corona, let us look at some ground realities before we check the list of blogging niches that deliver:

• People search for products and services all the time on the web. Out of millions of products that are being sold on the internet, there are just a few thousand products that are in high demand. If an advertisement of such products appears while someone is surfing the web, the propensity to click on the advertisements and also buy the product is high. If there are discount and additional benefits available, the chance of a buy increases that much. So, when a blog has ads for such a product, its visitors are more likely to click on the ads.
• Even when people search for information and advice only (no buying intent), there are higher chances of their looking for topics that are trendy. And then, if a blog has information or advice on that subject and links for further reading, the chances are much higher as compared to blogs that do not deal with a trendy subject.
• The earning niches change over time. Yesterday's money making blogging niches have become less-paying because either too many people already are selling products or services in those niches or buyers' tastes/ choices have changed.
• One blogging niche that earns well in one location might not do so in another. There are only a few type of things that sell well throughout the globe, but even then there are local flavors and local preferences.
• In some niches, searches are not with buying intent while in others, searches are mostly made with the intent to buy.
• There is a lot of competition in every niche. There are alert companies, marketers, market researchers and bloggers who know how to grab an opportunity before others and how to hook potential buyers. Most bloggers do not have research backup, time, money and patience to compete with them. At the same time, there are numerous opportunities in almost all niches and in all locations for those who study the market, discover hidden opportunities and harness them. Don't we see small shops in big malls, which do business as good or better than the big branded stores?
• Even after you have chosen the right niche for your blog, how much money you make from blogging depends on many factors. Some of these may not look too relevant but they influence how much time visitors stay on the blog and how seriously they take your advice/ recommendations. These factors include quality of posts, expertise, SEO and promotion, engaging with others, regularity of blogging, efforts made for monetization, and integration with other activities such as selling ebooks or courses online.

    

    

Blog topics that make the most money

The following 8 blog topics are among the most searched on Google. Many brands are ready to pay to bloggers in these niches, in different ways (affiliation, direct promotion, reviews, PPC ads, blog tours, etc). Moreover, the niches given in the list are almost universal, i.e. these niches are presently working in most geographical areas. 

At this link, you can visit all posts on ITB on the subject of earning from blogs.

  

'Making money' itself is the best niche for blogging! 

Interestingly, making money itself is among the top paying niches in many geographies. Financial services are among the best PPC payers on AdSense. You can, depending upon your expertise and experience, focus on the best solutions you can offer for making money.

The focus area need not be limited to online money-making. You can expand it to earning offline, start ups, making small businesses successful and so on. 

Search for 'making money from blogging' or some other similar keyword and look at the content on the searched web pages. You will find that except for some with original content - which they keep on updating- most others will have copy-pasted content. Even when it is not a direct copy (It will not be direct copy, at least on the first 20-30 results because Google will filter out such content), there is nothing that is different from others. 

So, to succeed in 'money making from the blog' niche, avoid creating such mediocre content. Blog in this niche only if you are a keen observer and practitioner of blogging. You should also have been reading and writing on the subjects of blogging and money making.

Health and wellness: niche with less competition but good potential to make money

[Includes alternative medicine and weight loss] 

Many people who suffer from ailments try to diagnose it on the web before they visit the doctor. Once they are prescribed a medicine, they look for its details on the web. When the disease becomes chronic, they try to find alternative treatments.

There are many lifestyle related issues such as blood pressure, diabetes and weight gain, which affect millions of people. Increase in longevity has also led to many diseases such as heart problems, bone and muscle decay and various types of cancer. Since there are no easy and guaranteed cures for these, people look for new ways to deal with them and don't mind experimenting. 

People's overall interest in health and wellness has also increased over years, and a large number of people of all ages look to the web to find tips.

Bloggers in this niche cannot compete with big diagnostic or pharmaceutical websites. However, bloggers can choose a narrow topic and carry detailed information and genuine tips on the blog. 

Local information, alternative systems of medicine (e.g. yoga and alternative systems of medicine such as homoeopathy, Unani, Chinese, Ayurveda, naturopathy, acupuncture) and solutions to specific ailments (e.g. male pattern baldness, menstrual bleeding, migraine, high blood pressure, children's runny nose, pregnancy issues) can get the blogger the required attention from people. 

Monetization of this niche is easier than others. Pharma brands are ready to put ads on websites that purvey information on health matters. A very strong point of health niche - which is of special interest to bloggers - is that narrow sub-niches within the health and well being niche too get attention of paying brands.

Millions of posts on blogs and social networking and video sharing apps are published and shared daily on health and well-being. A big proportion of them are recycled ones and some are outright crap or fake. They are created by those wanting to make quick bucks by fooling the gullible in the name of sure-shot cures. While such posts crowd the health niche, they also indirectly help genuine bloggers because once genuine posts start circulating, they prevail over fake ones and get good traffic.

Technology blogging niche pays well

[especially with trouble-shooting and tips]

Technology is a very crowded niche, and yet there is scope for very focused writing, news and advice in many areas. These include a narrow coding topic (e.g. a series on a new web language), tips of professional use of commonly available software, specialized science/ technology topics and troubleshooting in different tech areas.

Have you noticed that those who started with giving tips on use of languages (e.g. HTML, CSS, other computer/ web languages), popular software (e.g. Word, Exel, Power Point, Photoshop, Gimp, Wordpress) or popular subjects (e.g. image editing, resume writing, blogging) are today bloggers with big income? Many of them now run online classes and do side-business with these technologies.

Review of new gadgets receives a very high traffic. However, a small blogger can't think of competing with big review sites and established bloggers. In compiling blog directories, I have witnessed many technology review bloggers starting with a bang and then losing traction. Yet, we also see some new  review blogs appearing and establishing themselves. 

Technical and technological subjects are evergreen because a big majority of people are not tech-savvy and also because new technologies keep emerging and these need hand-holding and trouble-shooting. But you need to look different and keep serving users before you can think of earning money.

Parenting and child health articles are in high demand and their blogs do make money

Parenting blogs attract new parents, and there are millions of curious and anxious moms out there all the time!  Moms (and pops) are perpetually worried about the health of their newborn, toddler and school-going kid, and it does not stop till the child is quite grown up. 

First-time parents are especially drawn towards parenting blogs, and would try to read anything that looks logical and doable for well-being of their kid. They also engage with bloggers to find answers to their doubts.

Parenting blogs ideally should have a mix of personal experience and professional advice. Patenting also fits well as part of health and lifestyle blogs. If you want to open a blog on child health, make sure that (if you are not a qualified pediatrician/ gynaecologist/ nurse/ health worker) your team has a qualified child health specialist: this will help you to keep giving expert advice on the subject. If you yourself are not a mom, get advice from a mom of two or more children before you publish an advice on pregnancy or child birth or early child care. What I am emphasizing here is that your advice should not be copy-pasted or common-sensical or too general, but tested and proven.

  

Food blogging makes good money, does not need big investment

Cooking is one of the evergreen blogging subjects as it fascinates all, especially women, and makes good money for bloggers. 

People look for authentic cuisine, especially ethnic or exotic. There are those looking for special dishes for a party, participating in cooking competitions, making quick meals. Inexperienced cooks and those wanting to experiment with cooking keep checking ingredients and tricks. Searches are made about diets and nutrition. People also look for special diets for patients. pregnant mothers, babies. The list goes on.

Brands want to associate with a cooking/ food blogger. These include restaurants and hotels, bars, airlines, and sellers of ingredients, kitchen equipment and white goods. They offer advertisements, paid reviews, press trips and other considerations for promoting the brand and/ or being seen on the blog.

Once established, food bloggers can write on magazines. They can appear on cooking shows, restaurant endorsement events and so on. Many food bloggers have written books grown out of their blog posts.

Because so much has been written on almost every recipe that a new blogger dealing with cooking may find it difficult to compete unless one comes out with a fresh idea. Of late, people share cooking posts through videos rather than text and images. That is easy for blogger as well as visitor.

If you want to succeed as blogger in this niche, use the blog as hub of all social media activity. You must open a channel on YouTube or other video sharing platform and post those links on the main blog. Give supplementary information on the main blog and speak about that in the video. Use social networks to amplify your brand.

  

Blogs that review products and services make money, but there is very high competition

This blogging niche gets results more easily than many other niches, but the money that you make may not be that high. Like other paying niches, there is a lot of competition from established comparison sites and blogs. 

Review blogging is in fact not a niche but a type of blogging; you can review an unlimited range of products and services and on any blog. But to earn from review blogging, you must focus on a narrow range and keep publishing authentic reviews of similar products or services. (Big comparison sites and established blogs, of course, can think of having comparisons/ reviews of a variety of products and services.)

If you want to start as a product review blogger, I will recommend that you visit this article on review blogging. 

In good times, beauty and fashion is a high paying niche

Beauty, fashion and lifestyle is an evergreen blogging category that earns well in most regions of the globe. But COVID-19 has played a big spoilsport for this blogging niche because of restrictions on public gatherings, malls, hotels and travel due to social distancing norms. For fear of contacting the virus, people's visits to beauty parlors and fashion streets have lessened, and their enthusiam for looking beautiful and showing off has withered away. This is not likely to drastically improve any time soon. 

Generally speaking, fashion/ beauty/ lifestyle bloggers in established markets (e.g. USA, Europe) draw attention of buyers as well as brands, and those in new markets (e.g. India, Philippines) have a new opportunity unfolding.

Beauty and fashion often go together, and now bloggers add other lifestyle areas to make a well-sounding 'lifestyle' blog. While the first two are broad enough, lifestyle allows bloggers to add other related topics including parenting, travel, hobbies, home decor and so on. Many related narrow niches join this broad niche, including textiles, leather technology (goes well with shoes, bags and other leather dresses/ accessories), fashion photography, special event photography (e.g. wedding), plastic surgery, dermatology, chemistry of beauty products, etc.

  

Indulging in the hobby and blogging mix very well in beauty and fashion blogging niche. So, it can become exhausting if the blogger himself/ herself is not deeply interested in looking beautiful/ handsome and fashionable. But being flamboyant and posting pics of fashion events or celebrities does not make a fashion/ beuty blogger successful. He/ she needs to know basics of the business, do a lot of research on fashion/ beauty trends and products, and be alert. 

Bloggers of this niche face much competition from celebrities and good looking / fashionable persons on visual social networks such as Instagram. However, as said above, this niche is also the best paying because there are so many brands selling related products and services. It helps a lot to focus on local affiliations; being on Instagram and Pinterest; and having presence on video sharing sites such as YouTube. Doing regular reviews helps in catching attention of brands.

Travel blogging: a highly profitable blog niche that is seeing bad times due to COVID

This niche has been unbeatable for years before COVID's curse demolished it. There are hundreds of travel bloggers who have made handsome money: they earned from blogging and enjoyed their life to the hilt at the same time. 

Let me add here that even the millionaire travel bloggers have shared that they had to work hard to get established, and that even after achieving big, they continued to work hard. While blogging helped them get attention and fame, the money actually flowed from the extra streams the bloggers were able to exploit, e.g. affiliate commission, writing for magazines and agency work. So, enjoyment, hard work and proper monetization have worked together to earn them big money from travel blogging.

Hotels, travel agencies, tourism departments of governments, owners of luxury ships and yachts, airlines - a dozen related businesses are willing to pay to travel bloggers, and in many ways. 

If you have interest in taking photos, that complements travel blogging very well. In addition to putting fascinating photographs on your own travel blog, you can sell the photos to reputed magazines, advertising agencies and others interested in good quality photos. You can also post photos on photo-sharing sites and earn extra bucks.

So, if you want to go for travel blogging niche, this is not the right time. But if you are really passionate about traveling (and photography), you should prepare your ground so that you are there in full force when travel and hotel businesses bloom again.