Whether you’re a professional marketer or someone looking to blog as a hobby, starting a blog is a great way to promote yourself, your products, or your business — and to make money with your passion.

But what type of blog will you start? With over 600 million blogs on the web, there’s a blog type for just about any topic.

When starting a blog, the first step is choosing a topic that will make you stand out (and that you can monetize easily). To help you choose, we’ve compiled a comprehensive list of 40 different types of blogs on the web today.

For each type of blog, we’ll cover:

• Common topics
• What makes it successful
• Examples of successful blogs
• How to make money from it

Additionally, you’ll find the components of a successful blog, the best ways to monetize a blog, and a step-by-step guide on choosing the best type of blog for your goals.

1. Personal Blog

Individuals use personal blogs to share their thoughts, knowledge, and experiences. Starting a personal blog can be a great way to promote yourself, your cause, or even your business. Because personal blogs can be about any topic, you’ll find some crossover with other types of blogs in this list, like travel and personal finance.

However, personal blogs are different from other types of blogs because the focus is on you (the author), sharing personal stories and experiences — while other types of blogs are created to solve problems or give advice.

How to Create a Personal Blog That Makes Money

To succeed, you must show authenticity. The best way to succeed is by sharing a true story that your readers can relate to.

It’s also important that you create a personal brand. Once you gain relevance among your audience, you’ll be able to make money by selling products or services.

Example of a Successful Personal Blog

David Lebovitz uses his blog to share recipes and stories with an audience interested in food, recipes, and travel. How does his blog differ from blogs in the food niche? David doesn’t simply share recipes. He makes the articles personal, sharing fun stories in each.

So, how does David make money with this blog? While most of his blog posts provide some revenue through affiliate links, the blog’s primary monetization method is the promotion of his books.

2. Food Blogs

Food blogs present a perfect opportunity to make money by sharing your passion for food. The main sub-categories within the food blog category are:

• Recipes: This is where you share ingredients and instructions for specific dishes. These blogs often look like recipe books.
• Food and restaurant reviews: Where you try different dishes and restaurants, and give detailed reviews and recommendations.
• Food and travel: Here, you’ll travel and try out local dishes, and share your best recommendations to people visiting these places.
• Food photography: With image-heavy content, this is a great choice if you’re good at taking awesome pictures and prefer not to rely too much on text.

Within each of these categories, these are specific niches you can consider focusing on:

• Meals: Will you focus on breakfast, brunch, snacks, lunch, tea, supper, or dinner?
• Diet type: Do you have great cooking tips for vegans? Maybe you follow a paleo diet and you can suggest the best restaurants. If you have a food allergy, you can share top cooking recommendations like food substitutes to use.
• Location: If you choose to start a food and travel blog, keep in mind there’s a lot of competition. Plus, you probably won’t try restaurants all over the world (or maybe you will). You can start with a specific location, and combine it with another niche. For example, you can review the top keto-friendly restaurants in Southern California.

How to Create a Food Blog That Makes Money

In addition to what you need to launch any website successfully, the key to a successful food blog is having great pictures.

You might also consider creating a YouTube channel since many users prefer watching recipe videos (for example, the average watch time of recipe videos increased 2.5x in only two years). If you gather a following, starting a food blog can be your starting point for selling cookbooks, appliances kits, and more!

Example of a Successful Food Blog

Wondering if you can actually make money by posting recipes? A Sassy Spoon is one of many successful food blogs, sharing great recipes and organizing them by course, ingredient, and type. Founder Jamie Silva made more than $100,000 in 2019 from her blog.

How? In addition to ads, sponsored content, business coaching, and affiliate marketing, her blog has a “shop” section where readers can buy kitchen essentials through the Amazon Influencer Program (she earns affiliate commissions from every purchase).

3. Travel Blogs

If your dream is to make money by sharing travel stories and advice, you’ve come to the right place. While this is a very crowded market, the reality is that most travel blogs out there aren’t great. They don’t provide sufficient value and they only focus on making money from ads.

When it comes to travel blogs, there are many types of content you can share. Here are some examples:

• X hours in (Location)
• X days in (Location)
• 1 weekend in (Location)
• (Activity) near (Location) — e.g. best hiking trails in Arkansas
• Best day trips from (Location A) to (Location B)
• Best road trips from (Location)
• The ultimate guide to (Location)
• Where to stay in (Location)

Many people looking at travel blogs are more interested in reading fun stories to find travel inspiration than studying strictly informational guides. So consider writing posts like:

• My first time in (Location)
• My complete itinerary in (Location)
• How I traveled from (Location A) to (Location B)
• My favorite travel moments in (Location)
• Why I love (Location)
• Why I hate (Location)
• How I packed for (Location)

How to Create a Travel Blog That Makes Money

To succeed in this blog category, offer helpful travel tips as go-to resources for travelers. You can focus on a specific type of travel, like solo travel, budget travel, or luxury travel. Great photos and videos can be a great additional form of content to share your travel stories.

In the beginning, you can start making money through affiliate links. Send your visitors to hotel booking or travel insurance websites that you use and would recommend. Or share your favorite travel gear and receive a commission for every purchase. When your audience grows, you might be able to partner with travel brands or create your own products to sell!

Example of a Successful Travel Blog

Dan Flying Solo is a great travel blog that has a simple design and is organized by destinations. Readers can quickly look for places they want to visit or find new travel destination ideas. On top of that, Dan’s amazing photos and videos make the content more engaging.

4. Fashion Blogs

Fashion is a very broad blog category that contains many sub-categories. A good starting point is writing posts about your style. You can choose a specific style, like the bohemian style, or you can go even more niche: bohemian-style clothes bought in flea markets.

Consider connecting your fashion blog with Instagram, where the visual and community aspects play an important role and influencers drive fashion product sales.

The trend is so impressive that Instagram released a set of shopping features to make it easier to purchase through the app. And this trend is set to grow.

Can you use only Instagram instead of building an entire blog related to fashion?

Short answer: no. While Instagram can be a great way to build an online presence and audience, remember that you don’t own that channel, so it can be more difficult to monetize.

How to Create a Successful Fashion Blog That Makes Money

An easy way to start making money with a fashion blog is to include ads related to the niche you choose. After growing your audience, you will also be able to partner with brands and share paid sponsored content.

Other ways to make money include becoming a fashion consultant and selling your own brand in an online shop.

Example of Successful Fashion Blog

A great example of a successful fashion blog is The Blonde Salad. Covering several topics (like beauty and lifestyle), The Blonde Salad is one of the most popular fashion blogs in the world.

The owner, Chiara Ferragni, turned this blog into a $30 million business, partly coming from advertising and brand partnerships. But a major part of her income comes from the Chiara Ferragni Collection, a brand that she created after building an engaged audience.

5. Fitness Blogs

Fitness blogs share content like workout or diet plans to reach certain body goals, as well as supplements that can help readers get the most out of their workout or diet.

Some also share scientific studies related to workout or nutrition (like researcher James Krieger does on the Weightology blog). If you’re planning to focus on workout tips, adding videos to your blog is a great way to stand out.

How to Create a Fitness Blog That Makes Money

To succeed with a fitness blog, you need to target a specific niche. Instead of a blog about workout plans, you could start with “home workout plans using dumbells.”

You also should choose a specific target audience. Will your blog be for bodybuilders, football players, or people that just want to stay fit? Maybe you can provide dieting tips for vegans as well.

To make money, you can start by sharing affiliate links for gym equipment, supplements, and more, or try partnering with fitness brands.

Another popular way to monetize a fitness blog is by selling services like online personal training or diet coaching, or by selling resources like books or ebooks. Consider creating your own fitness software or app, or selling your own gym equipment.

Example of a Successful Fitness Blog

Nerd Fitness is a perfect example of a fitness blog with a very specific target audience: “nerds” that enjoy chatting about gaming but also want to learn about fitness.

Nerd Fitness has become a seven-figure revenue business, with most of the money coming from the online courses, sold at a $99 flat fee.

Owner Steve Kamb also runs Camp Nerd Fitness, where hundreds of people gather for a weekend fitness retreat, paying between $849 and $1,049. On top of that, Kamb has also used his brand to write a successful book.

6. Healthy Living and Wellness Blogs

As a healthy living and wellness blogger, you’re about to bridge the gap between science and your audience. There are many types of content you can share, but consider the following:

• Share your routine: This can be your exercise, sleep, or meal preparation routine.
• Review products (or services) that improve your wellness: This is also a good opportunity to provide affiliate links.
• Address timely wellness topics: For example, with the COVID-19 outbreak, many wellness blogs started posting more content related to emotional wellness (you can also look at a calendar for upcoming holidays and events related to health and nutrition).

Consider addressing a specific wellness topic or issue, like emotional, environmental, financial, intellectual, occupational, physical, social, or spiritual wellness (take a look at the wellness wheel for a complete overview).

How to Create a Wellness Blog That Makes Money

While you don’t need to be a healthcare professional or a respected medical school to blog about healthy living, you must be aware that readers will make decisions related to their health based on the content you publish.

If you’re considering opening a healthy living blog, you must be socially responsible.

To make social responsibility part of your wellness blog, you need to do extensive research using reliable sources (.gov, .edu, and .org sites are usually the most trustworthy for health information) and, if possible, interviewing medical experts. For some topics, consider having your articles reviewed by health professionals.

Example of Successful Wellness Blog

The Calm Blog is a business blog that focuses on healthy living. In particular, the blog shares content related to meditation, yoga, mindfulness, and sleep — all topics related to the company’s core product.

In addition to promoting the Calm App, this blog makes money by selling products like a soothing elixir of essential oils called “Sleep Mist,” and a book called Calm the mind. Change the world.

7. DIY Blogs

Do-it-yourself blogs are opportunities to turn hobbies into profitable businesses, and to help people save money and be more sustainable.

Examples of content include instructional guides on house remodeling or gardening, equipment review, and tips and tricks to keep in mind when creating or fixing something.

You don’t need to be an expert here. The goal is to provide readers with inspiration and ideas to create their own things. Trust yourself. The goal of starting a DIY blog is to share your experiences, no matter if they are successful or not.

How To Create a DIY Blog That Makes Money

To succeed with a DIY blog, you must be original. It’s okay to get inspired from other blogs, but make every idea your own by adding a personal touch to it.

A good tip is to use great visual assets that you can also share on social media platforms like Instagram and Pinterest. These can be highly engaging, and if you invest in creating some high-quality assets, they could go viral, ultimately boosting your blog’s traffic and brand awareness.

To monetize your DIY blog, we suggest starting with affiliate programs, ad networks, and selling advertising space.Try reaching out to small businesses in the same niche as you.

You can look for potential partnerships on eCommerce sites like Etsy. You can also consider selling some of the products you create and talk about in your blog. Additionally, you could write and sell books or e-courses.

Example of Successful DIY Blog

Remodelaholic is an example of a successful DIY blog with a wide range of readers and social media followers, from interior design enthusiasts to crafters.

Cassity, the woman behind this blog, helps her readers remodel their houses on a budget by sharing DIY projects to reuse and recycle common objects.

This blog makes money through sponsored content, affiliate links, the Amazon associate program, and advertising.

Her website also has a shop section, where users can buy easy woodworking plans and beautiful decor printables.

Yes, that’s right. She doesn’t sell any physical products…just digital downloads! Inspired yet?

8. Lifestyle Blog

Sometimes similar to personal blogs, lifestyle blogs are where you’d share your interests and activities. However, a lifestyle blog isn’t about yourself. It’s about your interests.

Successful lifestyle blogs are inspirational. They’re full of high-quality pictures. In a way, they’re the modern-day, online version of old print magazines.

Because lifestyle blogs can be about different topics, the types of content you can share are endless. Start from your interests and what you’re good at, and share useful tips with your audience.

To stand out, include a part of your personal life: your family activities, trips, and recipes. Make sure the content is fun to read and useful at the same time.

How to Create a Lifestyle Blog That Makes Money

When it comes to making money with a lifestyle blog, a popular method is adding a shop section to the blog to sell your products, which will vary depending on the niche you choose.

If you focus on a very specific topic, you’ll be able to find a lot of great partnership opportunities as well.

Example of a Successful Lifestyle Blog

The popular Barefoot Blonde Blog, now renamed with the owner’s name Amber Fillerup Clark, is an example of a blog making money by selling products related to lifestyle. Mainly about hair care, this blog covers several topics including beauty, motherhood, fashion, and travel.

After her success with the blog, Amber founded two brands, a haircare line, and a hair extensions brand. The blog has three “shop” sections (haircare, extensions, and looks), where users can shop the two brands she owns or explore her clothing and accessories and buy them through affiliate links.

9. Photography Blogs

Photography blogs share tips and guides for photographers, collections of pictures, and more. If you’re a photographer, having a “photoblog” is a must. It’s a great way to market yourself, showcase your testimonials, and earn loyal customers and fans.

Setting up a photoblog can even help you improve your skills by making you more accountable for your work. It’s also a great way to receive feedback and to track your progress.

How to Create a Photography Blog That Makes Money

To succeed, focus on quality over quantity. A blog is a place to show your best work, not all of your work. Is there a specific type of customer you want to reach? If yes, make sure you write with that audience in mind.

As a final tip, be creative with the content you share. You can share your photos, and also post photography tips to engage and grow your audience.

Example of a Successful Photography Blog

Chase Jarvis is an award-winning photographer director who uses his website to show his best projects and to grow his audience.

His blog is very interesting because it targets not only photographers but all artists and people interested in creativity. Chase also uses the blog to promote his podcast and YouTube channel, his book Creative Calling, and CreativeLive, a website offering live classes to students, professionals, and artists.

10. Beauty Blogs

Among the most popular types of blogs on the web, beauty blogs mostly share tips about hairstyles, makeup, skincare, and fashion. Examples of content include product reviews, product hauls, tutorials, and guides.

Keep in mind that If you’re planning to take photos of hair and makeup or if you want to create video tutorials, some knowledge of photography or videography can be helpful.

How to Create a Beauty Blog That Makes Money

Because this is a crowded blog category, you must create unique branding and choose a niche and type of content.

First, pick a target audience, like beauty beginners or moms. Then, choose a specific type of beauty, like affordable beauty or luxury/high-end beauty. Finally, focus on one of a few categories, like hair, skincare, makeup, or nails. Or better, choose a sub-category, like makeup for eyes or eyebrows.

One of the best ways to make money with a beauty blog is to share sponsored posts, where you talk about a brand or one of its products. This can be better than advertisements as it feels more like an organic post.

Example of a Successful Beauty Blog

Covering beauty, fashion, family, and house topics, A Model Recommends is a popular beauty blog focusing on body care, fragrance, haircare, makeup, and skincare. The main way this blog makes revenue is by reviewing products in sponsored posts or providing affiliate links.

11. Business Blogs

A business blog is a section of a company’s domain, covering topics related to its industry. Business blogs are very important parts of digital marketing strategies, as they help businesses engage customers and build authority for SEO purposes.

If you’re already running a business or an eCommerce store, consider creating a business blog to share product updates, industry news, and more. A business blog should only be part of your brand’s marketing strategy. Different from other types of blogs, it is not the primary way you will make money.

Instead, it is a channel to attract potential customers, just like social media, direct mail, and email marketing. The main benefits of a business blog include attracting new leads, building trust with potential customers, and improving brand awareness and reputation.

How to Create a Business Blog That Makes Money

To create a successful business blog, choose topics that are relevant to your business and target customers. It’s usually not a good idea to have ads in your business blog. The goal is to keep users on your site, not send them somewhere else.

Instead, send users to a “money page,” which is a page on your website where they can buy a product or service that will benefit them (like a shop section) or a page where they can learn more about your business.

Example of a Successful Business Blog

The Grammarly Blog covers topics that are related to the business’s target audience (from students to professional writers looking for a writing assistance tool).

The key to its success is that it provides useful information but it also manages to establish a clear connection between its articles and the product. A student might be reading a blog post about how to write a conclusion for an essay and end up installing Grammarly to give it a try.

12. Technology Blogs

If you’re skilled in one or more aspects of tech, starting a blog can be a great way to share your knowledge and skills with an audience that needs expert advice.

Types of content in this category include tech product reviews and recommendations, tutorials and guides, technology news and trends, and opinions about the future of tech.

How to Create a Technology Blog That Makes Money

While some of the most popular tech blogs cover a massive amount of topics and news related to technology (Wired, TechCrunch, Mashable, The Verge, etc.), it’s important to choose a specific niche. Some examples of what you can focus on are mobile, desktop, programming languages, and CRM.

What type of content will you create? If you’re planning to help users set up, troubleshoot, and repair tech products, you might consider creating how-to videos.

A good way to make money with a technology blog is by selling a service. Many users are willing to pay to learn how to use a technology product, so consider this if you’re particularly skilled at something.

Example of a Successful Tech Blog

An example of a niche tech blog is AppleInsider. This blog covers news, rumors, updates, and more about Apple products. The primary way this blog makes money is through affiliate partnerships (earning commissions on products that readers buy through affiliate links).

13. Music Blogs

If you’re a musician, starting a music blog is one of the best ways to promote your music. Starting a music blog is also a great option if you know a lot about music in general and enjoy writing about it — whether that’s reviewing your favorite artists or sharing your opinion about newly released music.

Music blogs can share the meanings of songs, information about specific bands, concert venues, news in the music world, how to play an instrument, interviews with artists, and more.

How to Create a Music Blog That Makes Money

To succeed with a music blog, you need quality and creativity. Choose the niche you’re interested in writing about. That could be a specific music genre (like rock or hip-hop), an instrument, or your favorite artist.

A good way to make money with a music blog is by opening an online shop. If you’re an artist, you can sell your music. Otherwise, you can help other artists sell their music. Other things you can sell include concert tickets, your blog’s merchandise, or artist merchandise including t-shirts, posters, and more.

Example of a Successful Music Blog

In 2011, Jason Grishkoff founded a music blog, Indie Shuffle, where he shares and reviews top songs and playlists.

Artists started asking him to feature them on his blog, so he created SubmitHub, a website where artists pay $1 to be considered for his blog. In less than one year, he managed to make more than $10,000 per week.

14. Sports Blog

Blogs are one of the most popular mediums to share information about sports. They represent a great opportunity to make money through advertisements.

Sports blogs are all about sharing your own opinion. Readers don’t go to sports blogs to see a game’s final score, there are websites dedicated to that. Readers go to sports blogs to read opinions and share their thoughts.

Pro tip: include a comment section, allowing readers to share their opinion and feelings.

How to Create a Sports Blog That Makes Money

To differentiate yourself from other sports blogs and websites, show an angle that popular sports news outlets don’t.

When it comes to choosing the right niche, you can blog about a local sports team or sports league, a specific athlete, or even a stadium. Or you can blog about sports equipment and gear, and create review articles.

Example of a Successful Sports Blog

While most sports blogs focus on team and athlete news, the GearWeAre Blog publishes reviews about gear for specific sports, as well as guides and advice on how to get started with those sports.

The blog makes money by providing affiliate links to the reviewed products. In particular, the blog is part of the Amazon Associates Program.

15. Personal Finance Blogs

You can use a personal finance blog to share your personal finance journey and provide actionable tips to your readers. If you show what you’ve been able to accomplish, readers will see you as an inspiration and trust your money-related advice.

Differentiate yourself from other blogs by choosing a specific niche, like “money hacks for college students.” Examples of niches related to money-saving include frugal living, minimalism, reaching financial independence, budgeting, debt management, and credit card reviews.

How to Create a Personal Finance Blog That Makes Money

To succeed, you need to establish yourself as a credible source among your audience. You don’t have to be a millionaire to build an engaged audience, but you must show the steps you’ve taken and the results you’ve been able to create. Unless you’re uncomfortable doing it, share how much money you managed to save or make by doing something.

You can generate revenue through affiliate marketing (reviewing and suggesting a product like credit cards), generating leads for a company (like an accounting business), or selling a service yourself.

Example of a Successful Personal Finance Blog

Clever Girl Finance is a great example to understand how you can make money with a personal finance blog.

While the blog makes money through partnerships and affiliate marketing (for example, linking to Amazon pages for recommended books about personal finance), the site also has a shop section selling merchandise like mugs and t-shirts, books, and financial planners.

16. Outdoor Blogs

Outdoor blogs share content about adventure and outdoor activities. They’re a great opportunity to make money with what you love.

An example of content is how-to guides, where you can share all your knowledge about an outdoor topic (for example, take a look at this complete guide to hiking the Mont Blanc from The Hiking Club). Videos can be another great way to show outdoor activities in an engaging way.

How to Create an Outdoor Blog That Makes Money

Start with a niche to differentiate yourself. You can focus on a specific demographic, outdoor activity, location, or a combination of these (for example, best hiking activities for students in California).

To make money, you can offer seminars or group classes, teaching skills related to your niche activity.

Example of a Successful Outdoor Blog

Modern Hiker is a blog sharing several types of content, including trail guides and outdoor news. While it offers many different outdoor activities, this blog focuses on the hiking niche.

How does it make money? Along with an online shop for merchandise, they created an app providing in-depth trail guides.

17. Financial Blogs

Financial blogs provide information related to the finance industry. They are not as formal as traditional financial websites, as blogs reflect the writer’s opinion.

Examples of content you can share include insights, recommendations, and tips on building long-term wealth, explanation of investment concepts and strategies, and finance news.

Some also share in-depth stock analysis and stock picks (most of these are membership sites where users pay a subscription, like Motley Fool’s Stock Advisor).

To stand out, you can focus on a specific topic like in-depth analyses of dividend stocks. If you’re more interested in sharing your experience and success in this field, consider starting a personal finance blog instead.

How to Create a Financial Blog That Makes Money

You don’t need to be a financial analyst to start a blog about finance, but it’s a good idea to prove your knowledge if you expect readers to come back to your blog (and keep in mind that your readers will make financial decisions based on what you write).

When it comes to making money with a financial blog focused on news content, the most popular methods are ads and selling finance courses.

Example of a Successful Financial Blog

The Calculated Risk blog is an economics and finance blog with a focus on the housing market. It became successful because of the informative and in-depth articles that the author, Bill McBride (who holds an MBA and has a background in management, finance, and economics), publishes. This blog is monetized mainly through on-page ads.

18. Political Blogs

Political blogs allow readers to learn about politics and share personal views. Not everyone can (or should) create a political blog. You need to be knowledgeable about politics.

You can use a political blog to share political news and recommendations, criticize political policies, and share election overviews. If you’re a political candidate, you can use a blog to boost your campaign.

How to Create a Political Blog That Makes Money

First, choose a niche you are knowledgeable about. That way, you will attract an audience that trusts your opinion. You can focus on a political party or on a location (local politics is often less competitive). You can choose to tackle a specific angle, like controversial political policies.

The method to make money with a political blog depends on the type of content and niche you choose. A popular tactic in this category is to ask for donations. Some bloggers write sponsored articles to talk about certain campaigns and politicians. You can also consider selling political merchandise.

Example of a Successful Political Blog

Voterly (part of the technology solutions company Vidaloop) is a political database designed to help Americans make informed voting decisions. Politicians can use Voterly to display their values and top priorities, start dialogues with voters and collect donations.

The reason this blog is so successful is that it has a strong mission — to make political information accessible and actionable — that a large audience shares.

19. Self-Help and Personal Growth Blogs

Do you have a passion for helping people live more purposeful lives?

Maybe you have specific tips that you can share. If that is the case, there’s a huge audience you can target with this type of content.

Examples of topics you can cover include enjoying life, boosting productivity, life hacking, and achieving goals. A content format you can use consists of presenting a real-life issue and providing a solution with actionable tips.

How to Create a Self-Help Blog That Makes Money

While this is a competitive topic, as long as this is your passion, you have a success story to share, and you’re committed to delivering high-quality content, it’s 100% doable.

A good way to start is to use your blog as your portfolio and get paid to write guest posts on other blogs as a freelance writer. Then, once you’ve established your brand, consider writing a book (or e-book) that you can sell through your website or on Amazon.

Example of a Successful Self-Help and Personal Growth Blog

Arvind Devalia is committed to helping people do more with their lives — from health and fitness to career and relationship success — through his blog.

He monetizes the blog by offering coaching in the form of one-month, three-month, or twelve-month plans to help his clients find purpose in life and achieve success.

20. Gaming Blogs

Gaming is a huge market, with millions of users looking for useful information and tutorials. Gaming blogs can come in many different forms, like video game reviews, hardware reviews, gaming streaming, and gaming repair.

Videos work especially well with gaming blogs — in fact, two of the top five YouTube channels with the most subscribers worldwide are gaming-related.

How to Create a Gaming Blog That Makes Money

To differentiate yourself from competing blogs with a broad audience, you can focus on a specific console brand (like PlayStation, Xbox, or Nintendo). Then, choose an angle or content type, like gaming news.

If you’re wondering how you can monetize a gaming blog, there are many ways, given the large market. After establishing your brand, game companies — particularly indie game companies — will pay you to review or advertise new games, or to share sponsored posts. Lots of opportunities there!

Example of a Successful Gaming Blog

The Stone Age Gamer blog focuses on retro gaming and provides shopping guides, retrospectives, and podcasts. The website has an online shop section, where users can buy video games, accessories, merchandising, and more.

21. Car Blogs

Starting up a car blog can be a great idea if you’re a mechanic, a car brand loyalist, or a car expert and enthusiast. You can blog about certain brands, models, or car parts.

Examples of content you can share include car tests and reviews, repair or maintenance guides and tips, and car news and announcements. Depending on the type of content, it might be good to include lots of images or videos in your blog.

How to Create a Car Blog That Makes Money

To choose your niche, start by thinking about the type of car you’d like to cover (like racing cars or family cars). To ensure your blog will be successful, decide on the type of content you’ll be sharing. Will you create how-to guides to help readers repair their car? Or will you share your test drive experience?

How can you make money with a car blog? That depends on the niche you choose. For example, if you review car parts, manufacturers will be willing to pay you to share sponsored posts.

Example of a Successful Car Blog

Hemmings is a blog that publishes content focused on classic cars. For example, they find a vintage vehicle and make an informative blog post about it.

On the website, they have a shop section where they sell replicas, accessories, gadgets, books, prints, and more. Also, they make money by selling advertising space for people that want to sell their vintage cars.

22. Art Blogs

Art blogs can share any topic related to art, but the most common type is where artists show their work.

Examples of content you can create include sharing your creation process, and specific tips for becoming an artist. With an art blog, a great idea is to include lots of high-quality images.

How to Create an Art Blog That Makes Money

To choose a niche, start with your art style or technique. This is where you’re an expert and you’ll be able to gain credibility.

To monetize your art blog, consider promoting upcoming art galleries or events. If there are certain brands or tools you use for your work, you can start promoting them through affiliate links. Once your audience grows, you may even be able to partner with these brands.

Example of a Successful Art Blog

Austin Kleon is a famous artist blogger, defining himself as a “writer who draws.” His blog shares very informative content, and uses a lot of visual content like videos and images, to make the blog posts more engaging.

Instead of having a separate shop section, the blog features items for sales on the sidebar (but not in an obtrusive way!), including Austin’s books, audiobooks, and t-shirts.

Additional Niche Blog Types

• Philosophy blogs can be a great way to share your knowledge and opinions and to meet like-minded people.
• Satire blogs are dedicated to writing about funny stories. Although they can be just about any niche or topic, most of these blogs focus on political satire.
• Inspirational blogs help readers by stimulating them emotionally and mentally to do something great.
• Religion blogs explore spiritual topics and allow people to find others sharing the same beliefs.
• Parenting blogs (also known as mom blogs and dad blogs) provide help, motivation, and advice to parents on raising their children.
• Animal blogs share educational and informative articles about animals, often covering news and advice about protected species.
• Pet blogs provide information about domestic animals (often focusing on a specific breed as a niche), sharing guides on how to handle a specific situation.
• Digital nomad blogs share advice to people who want to learn how to use technology to earn a living while traveling.
• Natural living blogs teach readers how to live in harmony with the earth by using traditional medicine and ancient techniques.
• Homesteading blogs share advice on how to start a self-sufficient lifestyle, like how to produce food, clothes, and more at home.
• Off-grid living blogs educate people who want to live without the use of remote infrastructures, without relying on public utilities.
• Health blogs (often confused with healthy living or fitness blogs) are usually from very reliable sources since being an expert is a requirement to start a health blog.
• Movie blogs review or share thoughts about movies, or give movie recommendations based on genre. It’s a great way to create a community of people sharing a passion for movies (or for a specific type of movie).
• Book blogs share book advice, reviews, and sometimes even buy and sell books, making great use of the community of people with the same passion.
• History blogs usually share content related to a specific historical event or period, often sharing anecdotes and quirky or unknown stories, or a new way to look at a past event.
• Family blogs, sometimes similar to personal blogs, share a family’s daily lives, stories, and adventures.
• News blogs are a way for aspiring journalists to become independent journalists and cover a specific news type that they’re interested in.
• Entrepreneur blogs share inspiration, success stories, and practical advice for people who want to jumpstart their dream of starting a business.

10 Components of a Successful Blog

In this list, we focus on the content, marketing, and business aspects that are fundamental for a successful blog. Keep in mind that there are additional components — especially technical ones — that you need to consider as part of your blog’s successful launch.

1. Important pages: Apart from blog posts and category pages you might have, work on your “About” and “Contact” pages to show the blog’s goals and facts, and to give readers the possibility to interact with you and share their thoughts.
2. Consistent branding: Create a custom email address, brand colors, a logo, an avatar, and a favicon (the 16 by 16-pixel illustration in the top left corner of a browser tab).
3. Engaging and useful visual assets: This will break up the text and make articles more fun to read. Make sure you include photos, infographics, and interactives throughout each blog post.
4. Reliable website hosting: Having the best speed and strong security features will improve both user experience and search engine optimization. Make sure you choose the right hosting solution for you.
5. Mobile responsive design: You want to make sure users can navigate your site, read blog posts, and see images without problems on any device.
6. Multiple income streams: Especially at the beginning, including a few affiliate links in your articles won’t provide enough income for you to quit your job and dedicate yourself 100% to the blog. Focus on the long-term and on building more than one revenue source. More info on this in the next section!
7. Social sharing buttons: Give readers the ability to easily share your articles with their friends and followers on social media. Why put so much effort into creating content if you don’t make it easy for readers to do the hard work (promotion) for you?
8. Content planning: Start by defining your goals, then do some research to find topic and keyword ideas. Stay organized by using the blog post planner below.
9. Solid writing: Once you have a topic, craft an outline, do your research, and…start writing. Make sure you have someone else read it and provide feedback before you publish it.
10. Publish content regularly: One of the main reasons why blogs fail is irregular posting. For efficient content planning and posting, you need a blog post planner.

Before implementing these, you need to make sure you’ll be able to dedicate time to them. Creating email newsletters, comment sections or social media accounts won’t help your blog unless you can commit to sharing content regularly and interacting with your readers.

So, we created a printable blog post planner for your blog to help you stay on track.

9 Ways Your Blog Can Make Money

You’ve seen some examples of how you can make money with a blog in your niche. But what are all the ways you can monetize your blog?

People have become creative with blog monetization methods in all types of blogs. Here are the most common ways to make money with your website:

Ads

You can use this method even at the start of your blog, but keep in mind that you need a lot of traffic to make a serious amount of money. These are some of the type of ads you can use:

• Affiliate marketing consists of recommending a product or service on your blog or email list by providing an affiliate link. You’ll get a commission for each purchase.
• “Pay per click” advertising (Google Adsense) consists of having other websites advertise on your blog. Google chooses topically relevant websites, so these ads won’t be too annoying to your readers (and in some cases, they can be helpful). With Adsense, you get paid each time a reader clicks on the ad.
• Selling ad space is a more manual way of promoting another business on your blog. You can choose your price, which is based on your blog’s traffic. This is a great option if your blog gets a lot of traffic.

Sponsored Content

Once you have an established and engaged audience, consider creating sponsored posts, where you promote brands by sharing content that is relevant to your blog.

This is a great opportunity to make money while at the same time being helpful to your audience — if you choose brands that would truly benefit your readers.

Sell Your Products or Services

Did you know that in 2020, retail eCommerce sales worldwide amounted to $4.28 trillion and e-retail revenues are projected to grow to $5.4 trillion in 2024? There are a few ways you can use your blog to sell something:

• The first one (which is easiest for most people) is selling digital products. Examples of digital products you can create and sell are e-books and online courses.
• Another option is setting up an e-commerce website or online store, where you sell products related to your niche.
• Finally, you have the option to sell your services online. Examples include online coaching, group classes, or consulting services.

More Ways to Monetize Your Blog

• Generate leads for other companies
• Accept donations
• Sell your blog
• Use content lockers
• Create a membership site
• Create a business directory

These are some of the most common methods bloggers use to monetize. You must understand that not all industries or topics can easily be monetized. For some of them, you need a huge amount of traffic to make some revenue. Also, some have more monetization methods than others.

What Types of Blogs Make The Most Money?

While all types of blogs can be monetized, some topics make more money on average:

• Personal finance blogs
• Business blogs
• Technology blogs
• Fitness blogs

Having said that, when choosing a blog topic, the key is to focus on what you’re an expert in and what you love doing. If done right, all types of blogs can be profitable.

How To Choose a Blog Topic and Find Your Niche

Blogging is a form of creativity and, in a way, a form of art. This means you can essentially blog about any topic. But if you want to be successful, follow these tips to choose a blog topic and find your niche.

Step 1: Pick a Topic

To choose a blog topic, start with what you enjoy and what you’re an expert in. If you blog about your passions, you’ll have a lot of ideas, and you’re much more likely to commit to it. If you’re not sure about your passions, ask yourself a few questions:

• What’s your favorite hobby?
• What’s a topic you could talk about for hours?
• What do you like learning about?

Do you have enough ideas? Try listing at least 10.

Would you enjoy writing posts about this topic regularly (weekly or monthly)? If yes, that’s probably the right topic. Now it’s time to narrow it down.

Step 2: Confirm Market Demand

A common mistake blog beginners make is choosing a topic they’re passionate about but very few people are interested in. On the flip side, if you choose a topic many people like, you’ll probably find that the market is crowded and there’s too much competition.

So, you need to find a topic that many people are interested in but not many bloggers specialize in. Once you find a topic you’re passionate about, you need to understand if this niche monetizes well.

Use Google Keyword Planner to do this — if the keywords related to your niche get a lot of clicks and their cost is high, then that’s a good opportunity. You can also use Google Trends to evaluate the popularity of these keywords.

You can also run surveys or find online forums related to your industry and see if many people are interested in those topics. With millions of blogs on the internet — and hundreds of thousands of blogs in each category — your blog must have a focus.

For that, you need to choose a very specific niche.

Step 3: Determine Your Niche

Once you determine there’s a need in the market for your general topic, you can determine your niche. That could be a combination of the following:

• A very specific target audience (like college students in California)
• A specific type of content (like image-heavy how-to guides)
• A subcategory of your topic (like horror movies)

Choosing a focus for your blog is very important. By specializing in what you know best, you’ll be able to beat the larger competitors — and win your reader’s attention.

To Sum Up: Choose a Topic Your Passionate About

With millions of blogs on the web, you can find one about any topic imaginable. To stand out, choose a type of blog that you’re passionate about and that you can easily monetize.

Once you’ve determined your niche by following our step-by-step process, the hardest part of creating a blog is out of the way. Now it’s time to launch your blog.

Here are some additional resources to help you start a blog:

• How to Create a Website
• How to Start a Blog
• How to Monetize a Website

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