With more than 2 billion users on the platform, YouTube is one of the go-to websites for streaming. YouTube has given many people fame and success who would have remained anonymous if the platform did not exist. YouTube success stories include Justin Bieber, PewDiePie, BlueXephos, Smosh and many others who have mesmerized their audience with their great content quality.
Whether it’s writing, business, fashion, gaming, cooking, or any other field, you’ll find a piece of content on it on YouTube. However, the ones that stand out from the rest are those who target a niche.
If you want to be a YouTuber and are wondering where to start, beginning with a profitable YouTube niche is a good idea. There are several niches you can pursue, depending on your passion, expertise, and demand. However, the first step is to identify a YouTube niche.
Below you’ll find all about YouTube niches and everything you need to be a good YouTuber.
A niche is a portion of a larger market that has its own identity and is characterized by its unique preferences and needs, which makes it different from the market in general.
A YouTube niche is a subset of a topic, or subject, or genre, on which videos are made.
Your YouTube niche can be broad, such as a channel on hair-care videos. Or perhaps, more focused, such as a hair-care channel for curly-haired women. And even hyper focused, such as a hair-care channel for 2B-2C curly-haired women. This narrowing down on a particular area is called a 'niching down’ or niche down process.
Choosing the right YouTube channel niche becomes the very foundation of your YouTube career. Finding a niche and making content on it is all about giving people with similar interests what they want to see.
For instance, imagine you start a gaming channel on YouTube and upload videos on the latest game releases and their reviews. All of your content is focused on gaming; however, one day, you upload a video about your experience at a local cultural show. Maybe you get more than 40k views on the video, and people like it, but you hardly get any subscribers or even start losing several of them; why?
Because the people who would have wanted to subscribe to your channel would have explored other videos on there as well and seen that none of them were related to cultural shows, or your subscribers would have watched your latest upload and felt that it was completely irrelevant to what they had subscribed for.
This brings us to an extremely important reason for finding a niche on YouTube:
With a niche channel, your content will be coherent for your subscribers. A YouTube channel that focuses on different topics will be confusing for existing and potential subscribers.
Therefore, focus on one niche to be consistent in terms of your content on YouTube.
It can often happen that you start out the channel with lots of different ideas about how to create content. As time moves on, you might find yourself in a position where you have run out of ideas and feel discontent about the content you put out. This is known as creator burnout faced by many YouTubers in the past.
It is important to sustain a manageable level of content production to avoid creator burnout which leaves content creators feeling drained and fatigued. Many YouTubers have disappeared due to creator burnout after which they do not feel like the reward for creating content is not equal to the efforts they are putting in.
When you share content on a specific niche, over time, you can become an expert on it. Focusing on your niche is the finest way to build credibility in your community and gain trust from your subscribers. Your final goal as a creator is to make your channel an authority within your chosen niche.
When you focus on a particular niche, you increase your chances of attracting people with similar interests. With time, you can form a community of like-minded individuals. Moreover, you’ll also be able to work with brands that follow similar mindsets and principles by making your channel focused on a specific niche on YouTube.
Following a specific niche helps in creating your brand -
A brand refers to a term, name, feature, or symbol that distinguishes one business’s services or goods from the other.
Creating content on a specific niche will help you in forming a brand out of your channel. Take, for example, Lily Singh, a YouTuber who started her channel ‘Superwoman’ in 2010. With her comedic videos showcasing cultural differences, she has gained over 7.5 million subscribers and more than 1 billion views across her channel. She has her own merchandise, including hoodies, shirts, and accessories, and did a branded tour called ‘A Trip To Unicorn Island’.
If you’re not sure about how to find a niche on YouTube for your channel, here are a few ways you can get started.
The first thing you can do to find your YouTube niche is to explore subjects you’re passionate about.
What are the things you’re good at? What are your hobbies? Starting a channel about what you have a talent for is an excellent place to start.
One of the reasons why starting a channel on something you're passionate about is that people will sense the excitement in your content. There is a visible difference between someone who talks about their passion and someone who talks about something just for the sake of it, and people are quick to catch up on that.
Another reason for creating a channel about one of your passions is that it’ll be more sustainable for you to continue: As a content creator, you’ll have to come up with content regularly for a long period of time. If you’re genuinely interested in a subject and enjoy creating content for it, you’ll be able to dive into research and keep content up and running on your channel. On the other hand, it’ll be highly difficult for you to come up with content ideas on a topic that doesn’t interest you much.
What are the subjects you're an expert at? Is there something you can teach others? Utilize your knowledge and skills to add value to other people's lives. Make others think, learn, and have fun with your content.
Let’s take the example of NUSensei who had an interest in archery: Archery is not a very common sport which makes it a good niche to enter into -
This guy provides details about how to choose the right bow size, helps in improving archery skills and also gives compelling reasons to enjoy the sport of archery. He has successfully selected a niche in which he had knowledge and expertise and now he is creating quality content.
Another factor to consider while finding your niche on YouTube is to look at the demand for the topics you’re thinking about covering.
If you want to make money on YouTube, you’d have to research the market to see if the niches and topics you’re thinking about covering are even searched for by people: You can check demand with various keyword niche finder tools.
One way to check demand is to utilize Google AdWords Keyword Planner. This tool shows you how many searches there have been for a particular query in a month. You can get started with it by signing up for a free account and adding the keywords there. With the tool, you’ll be able to find the average number of searches per month, as well as the competition levels -
Another great tool to search demand is Google Trends. This tool lets you know how popular certain topics are over a period of time. The tool will also let you know whether particular subject trends during a certain season or the demand increases or decreases for a niche with time.
Your competition is the YouTubers who are active in the niche you’re about to target. Suppose it has been your dream to create a channel where you unbox new gadgets or explain its features to the audience. The first step would be to search for competitors on google to get accurate results.
Then, we go to one of the videos from the suggested channels of Marques Brownlee, and carefully observe the suggested content in the video page sidebar -
If there is a large number of active YouTubers creating content on the niche, it’ll be hard for you to become acknowledged. However, don’t panic; this doesn’t mean that it’s impossible to be successful in that niche.
When you're faced with an oversaturated niche, tweak your strategy a bit, and create content for keywords with a high monthly search volume, but with low competition.
If you have an idea regarding the niche you want to base your channel on, start researching established YouTubers within that niche -
What is different about their content? How do they interact with their audience? How many times in the week do they upload videos? What do people like about them?
Reading the comments will give you insights into what the audience wants and will help you in finding out:
Researching established YouTubers’ content will help you in identifying the gaps in the market that you can fill. By coming up with new approaches to a subject, you can be unique and stand out from the crowd by creating outstanding video content for your channel.
Let’s talk a bit about YouTube channel monetization and what impacts your AdSense Revenue. The ad revenue that is collected from a video is split 55/45 between the content creator and YouTube, with the content creator getting 55% of the ad revenue.
A CPM rate (Cost Per Mille) is what an advertiser is willing to pay for content for every thousand impressions. This cost is dependent on various factors, such as the type of niche, the kind of audience, the amount of available advertising inventory for those monetized views, the content itself, the country you’re in, the language of your content, and many more factors.
According to Roberto Blake, a content creator on YouTube who gives his audience tips and tricks to grow on YouTube, the following 5 niches are the most lucrative niches on YouTube in terms of AdSense revenue as well as brand deals and affiliate marketing -
Hence, the niche mentioned above and others should be priority to increase the profitability from your YouTube channel by providing the right content to the right audience.
Another way of finding your niche on YouTube is to check the ones that are already popular among the masses and see if you have expertise in any of these subjects.
Here is the list of best YouTube niches you can get channel ideas from updated to 2021 -
Do you love playing video games and get excited about new game releases? You're not alone!
Gaming channels have a separate fan base on YouTube. From game reviews to tips and tricks, compilation videos, and top 10 lists, there is a plethora of gaming content you can find on YouTube.
Another cult-favorite on YouTube is tech videos.
From the latest tech news to gadget reviews, discussing the top 10 mobile phones, apps, and laptops, and even exploring the inside of a laptop, the possibilities are endless when it comes to YouTube content.
Take, for example, Marques Brownlee, more commonly known as MKBHD, who has the most-subscribed tech channel on YouTube. He is only 21 years old and was called one of the best technology reviewers in the world by one of the Google VPs.
A video log or a video blog, often shortened to ‘vlog,' is basically a blog in a video format.
Content creators post all sorts of vlogs on YouTube, including ‘Day In The Life,' morning/night routines, moving to a new place, experience with a particular diet or lifestyle change, and much more.
A vlog shares experiences and thoughts with the audience to connect with them on a personal level. If you think this content style suits you, where you can be yourself, perform your daily activities, and document them, you should go for it.
Casey Neistat is an American YouTuber who shares vlog style videos about his experiences and has over 12 million subscribers.
Fashion is another niche that is popular on YouTube.
From beauty routines to makeup looks, dressing styles, to accessorizing, the world of fashion is vast.
Fashion Mumblr is one such fashion and lifestyle YouTuber sharing her thoughts on makeup routines, fashion trends, wardrobe styling, and much more.
Lifestyle vlogs are all about a person's daily activities, experiences, funny stories, life lessons, and much more.
One such lifestyle YouTuber is Zoe Sugg. With 4.8 million views, Zoe shares her daily life experiences with her boyfriend and a fellow YouTuber, Alfie Deyes.
Travel channels have one of the most attractive contents on YouTube. You would only need to invest in a good camera to document your travels and present content, including hidden gems, best places to visit, best hotels to stay, best places to eat, and much more.
People love how-to tutorials, handyman activities, and general life hacks on YouTube. If you’re looking for a niche on YouTube, you can start by answering the ‘how to..’ questions and gather a high ranking.
One niche that is taking center stage these days is reaction videos. This is a video where a person watches something, like a music video, and shows their reaction, sharing their thoughts as they go.
Do you have a favorite genre of music? Why not make reaction videos of the latest music releases of that genre?
Another niche idea is to make humorous videos, including fail compilations, funny animals/babies videos, makeup disasters, and much more.
You can share your thoughts on each clip and give your audience something to laugh at!
In this article, we discussed the ways to find your niche on YouTube. We talked about what a niche is and why it is important to focus on one when starting a YouTube channel. We also talked about the steps to find your niche on YouTube, including exploring your passion, considering your knowledge and expertise, considering the demand, looking at the competition, researching established YouTubers, and considering the niche profitability. Furthermore, we talked about some of the most popular niches on YouTube that you can get started with.
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