Cultivating a Distinctive Presence in the Marketplace

How to Find Your Niche and Style - a Starter’s Guide

Richard Bennett

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

With over 300 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute, it’s no longer enough just to make a great video. If you want to be found and to be able to monetize your YouTube channel, you’re going to need to find your niche.

If you’re serious about turning your YouTube hobby into a lucrative career, you’re going to need a niche that not only lets you do the things you’re passionate about but which also gets you the views you need. The perfect niche will be something that your audience is already looking for, not ridiculously competitive, and which still allows you to demonstrate your passion and knowledge.

It’s not easy finding a perfect niche on YouTube. You’re going to need some creativity, self-awareness, directed intention, and a good deal of thought, so be prepared to invest some time and energy into this process. If you don’t get it right the first time, take a moment to figure out where you went wrong and just try again. Or you can try some influencer marketing platform such as InflueNex to help you find your niche. You’ll also be able to use the platform to learn more about the niche of your similar channels. Let’s take a look at how you can start looking for your ideal niche on YouTube.

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Quick Jump Menu:

• How to Find Your YouTube Niche [5 Tips]
• Best 14 Trending Niches on YouTube [High CPM Niches]

Is There an Audience for This Niche?

If you’re ready to start hunting down your niche, there are a few ways to go about it. You could start by listing your hobbies and looking for trends with those, or by thinking about what types of videos you like to make the most. How could what you do for a living inspire your channel or your knowledge of a particular topic?

The key is to discover where you can bring something unique or interesting to YouTube, hopefully by combining your passions, hobbies, and knowledge into one big ball of brilliance. For example, if you’re keen to do cooking tutorials but spent a year traveling Asia, why not do Asian-inspired cooking? Or if you have a passion for fashion but work as a recruitment consultant, why not offer content about dressing for work and interviews?

This sweet spot where your passion and talents meet with your video genre is where you’ll find your ultimate niche lurking.

Why Is It Important to Find Your Niche?

Finding a niche is all about giving your viewers what they want to see. Imagine you travel and upload vlogs about your travels every day. Almost all of your content is about travel, but then one day, randomly, you upload a video about cooking food. Your video was popular, you got more than 30k views, but only five people subscribed to your channel; why?

The answer is simple. If those who viewed the cooking video considered subscribing, they would have clicked onto your channel and seen that none of your other videos were about this topic. Despite uploading a good video, you seemed irrelevant to them, so they didn’t bother.

From the point of view of your subscribers, they want to know what you’re all about. They need to feel confident that, when they subscribe to you, they’ll be getting lots of quality content about the things they are most interested in. Having a clear and focused niche will allow you to do this for them.

Narrowing Down Your YouTube Niche

The smaller and more specific your focus, the easier you’ll find it to get and hold onto subscribers. For example, if you’re niche is about dog training, why not focus on even more about doing it about training pugs? If you’re doing a parenting vlog, make it more specific by doing a parenting vlog for mums of boys, or twins, or toddlers.

By narrowing down your focus, your audience will be much easier to market to and to appeal to. When someone from your target audience finds your channel, they’re going to think ‘wow, this is just what I’ve been looking for’, and they’ll watch, like, share and interact with your videos way more than someone who is just a little bit interested.

How to Find Your Niche [5 Tips]

If you’re still at a loss of how to identify the best niche for your YouTube channel, let us help. Here are some key things to think about when looking for your niche which will help you get where you need to be:

• What are you good at? What are you passionate about?

Make a list of things you’re good at. Don’t be modest now, this isn’t the time. Think about what other people would ask for your help with, and what you’re most confident with. Getting to grips with what you have a talent for is a great place to start.

An example of this is PONY Syndrome, a makeup artist renowned for her Taylor Swift transformation. She found that people would often come to her for makeup advice, so she started making videos of her techniques. Fast forward a couple of years and she’s got four million subscribers and a profitable YouTube channel.

You might not think you’re an ‘expert’ in an area, but often it’s the interesting combination of your talents and passions that makes you unique. Coach Tulin is a wonderful lady who is of a plus size but who is also passionate about fitness. She’s made a popular channel that demonstrates how to modify popular exercises to make them accessible for plus-size people, as well as showing just how to fit plus-size people can be! Her fan base is smaller, at 89k subscribers, but she’s still a big influencer in her field.

Subscribers who get help from you are more likely to come back to you time and again. Although we all have a good laugh watching cat videos and other entertaining clips, the YouTube channels that tend to make the most money are those which genuinely help people.

• Is there an audience for your potential niche?

Once you’ve got an idea about your potential niche, you’ll need to make sure there are actually people out there who want to watch it. To test this out, think about a video you could make for your niche and try looking it up on YouTube. If there are a ton of results, your niche is probably not focused enough. If there are zero results, probably nobody is looking for that type of video.

You’re looking for somewhere in between the two extremes. If a couple of well-established channels have made a video or two on your topic, but haven’t really focused on it, you can be confident that there is an audience out there but not too much competition. You could also look for something that there are a lot of blog posts or websites about and be the first to migrate the content to YouTube.

For example, if you were to search ‘makeup tutorial’, you’ll find around 23 million results. Most of these are from established influencers who have already pretty much cornered the market, so getting a foot in the door as a new YouTuber here is going to be tough. That’s not to say you shouldn’t do it, but you’ll have to work hard to make your channel stand out. Be original, put your own spin on the genre and you’ll get there eventually.

If you were to start drilling down into that niche, you’ll start to see where the opportunities exist. For example, if you narrow down your makeup search for ‘makeup tutorial for Asian male’, the results are in the region of 496k videos, a good deal less than the high-level outcome. If this was your passion, your talent and you could make great videos about it, you stand a good chance of breaking into this niche relatively easily.

• What will you do differently to other channels?

With so much content out there to view, you’re not going to make your millions on YouTube if you’re boring. Viewers know that fun, quality content is out there, and will seek to find someone better than you if you’re too ‘run of the mill’ for their taste. People come to YouTube for information, but stick around for personality, so inject some of yours into everything you do.

There are loads of ways you can bring excitement and engagement to your YouTube channel. Think about the way you look, the way you talk, how your introduction is made, the effects used in your video, the overall concept, the direction of the camera work… the possibilities for making unique and exciting videos are pretty much limitless, but you’ll need to get creative if you want to stand out from the crowd.

• Can you make money in this niche?

The majority of people start YouTube channels with big dreams of making millions from their work. However, if you’re in the wrong niche to start with, you could fall flat on your face before you even start. Researching whether it’s possible to monetize your YouTube niche is crucial; here’s how to find out:

1. Will a company be likely to sponsor you to use their products?
2. Can you create a ‘side business’ alongside your channel?

Sponsorship can be super lucrative, but very difficult to secure. Is there a company out there that has products you could use in your videos? If so, do they already have preferred YouTubers that they sponsor? As for a side business, you could look to doing anything from offering one-to-one consultancy to selling products via Amazon on an affiliate deal. The important thing is that you need to have a plan from the start.

Check out the most profitable niches for monetizing your YouTube channel below.

• Can you generate enough content in this niche?

How many topics can you think of to make videos about for your channel? If you can’t think of at least 10 off the top of your head, that’s not a good sign. You’re going to need lots of ideas and inspiration for your YouTube videos, and if you’re already struggling to think of things to do, imagine how much you’ll be struggling two, three or four years down the line.

You need to absolutely love and be inspired by your niche because chances are you’ll be making videos on this topic for many years to come. Are you completely sure that you’ll be as enthusiastic about this topic next year? Will your passion for the content stand the test of time? Try to project how your life will change over the coming years and whether your niche will be suited to you as time goes on.

Best 14 Trending Niches on YouTube [High CPM Niches]

There are some YouTube niches that are easier to monetize than others. That’s not to say you should restrict yourself to only these niches, but if you’re stuck for inspiration, you’ll find these focused areas are a good place to start your search.

#1 Makeup

By far and away one of the most popular YouTube niches, makeup can be a great place to start. Although you’ll find lots of competition here, there is a massive audience too.

#2 Gaming

Gaming YouTubers are probably the most well-known; who hasn’t heard of PewDiePie? And they’re making money doing the thing they love most: gaming. It’s tough to stand out in this crowded niche, but if you can be fresh and different, you could start building your own fan base.

#3 Food

If you love to cook (or even just to eat!) food channels can be fab. Showing off recipes is a tried and tested moneymaker, as is showing how to use gadgets and tools in the kitchen.

#4 Tech review

We’re all using technology at home, at work, and in our pockets, and want to know that we’re buying the right stuff and using it the right way. People are hungry for this type of content, whether it’s apps and software or physical hardware.

#5 Travel

Travel channels have some of the sexiest content on the web, and people love to see what the world is like out there. Invest in a good action camera and find an angle to the places your visit, such as the best places to eat, hidden gems, etc.

#6 Fashion

Fashion can be great for YouTube, from reviewing clothing items to keeping your audience updated on the latest trends. It’s a great niche for getting sponsors and earning from affiliate marketing too.

#7 Sports

You’ll never run out of content if you’re busy keeping people up to date with their favorite sports teams. Just be careful not to show copyrighted material as you could find your hard work being taken down.

#8 Animals

It was cat video’s that birthed the notion of a viral video, and even today hilarious animal clips can garner a huge audience. As well as animals doing funny things, you could also make videos about animal care, training, and reviews of pet products.

#9 Photography

Thousands of budding photographers look to YouTube for good advice on how to take better shots. Photography channels can also review equipment and can benefit from affiliate links for these.

#10 Movies

If you’re a movie buff, why not take your opinions of the big screen to the small (and often tiny) screen? Post reviews, do top tens, or even create parodies of movies yourself. Just watch out for that copyright issue again.

#11 How-to tutorials

Everyone needs to know something in their life, whether it’s how to tie their shoelaces or how to change a spark plug on a car. Answering these ‘how to…’ questions could get you ranking highly and gathering millions of views.

# 12 Music

You have to be careful when doing a music channel, as you’re unlikely to get permission to play actual tracks. However, you could do commentaries on music news, give advice on instrument care or even teach people how to play. If you’re a musician yourself, this is a great way to get more exposure for your band.

#13 ASMR

One of the fastest-growing niches on YouTube, ASMR, or Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response to give it its full name, is all about the experience. Using soothing sounds and imagery to relax viewers, ASMR YouTubers look to create a physical response in the viewer to something happening in the video.

#14 Lifestyle

Lifestyle vloggers are those who don’t really fit into a particular niche. They tend to be highly immersed in the YouTube community, disclosing personal information about themselves and sharing their interests with their audience.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

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