Having a blog with multiple niches is a great way to reach a broader audience and potentially earn more by diversifying revenue streams.
However multiple niches require more work. And it’s not completely risk-free either.
Let me show you how to grow a multi-niche blog, what are the pros and cons, and what is my blogging strategy.
Pros of Multi-Niche Blogging
#1 Wider Audience
Targeting new niches can broaden the audience.
If your blog just focuses on one niche, it might be restricted by the size of that niche.
But if you want to expand your blog to the next level, you can start targeting other niches.
Of course, this means a ton of hard work as you need to basically start from scratch with the new niche—even if your site isn’t new.
#2 More Revenue Potential
Naturally, more traffic means more monetization opportunities. It can even mean more revenue—if you’re working strategically.
For example, in some niches, there are tons of good affiliate marketing opportunities.
While in others there might be none.
Obviously, you need to choose the niches carefully. There are niches that earn 100x times than others.
For example, my first blog was in the programming niche.
But coding tutorials aren’t well monetizable. This is because busy coders just come for one line of code and go.
Thus, I had to mix in something else to make a full-time earning from my site.
Thus, I expanded to software reviews.
My coding posts only earned about $5-$10 per 1,000 views from ads.
But then some of my review posts earned $100-$500 per 1,000 views.
Of course, the software reviews are much more competitive and there’s less traffic.
But still, I was able to 3x my earnings by writing software reviews for just a couple of months.
So, by adding more niches to the table, you might be able to earn more.
#3 Flexibility
One of my favorite reasons to expand a blog to multiple niches is to introduce diversification to my workflow.
If you’re targeting just one niche and work 50-60 hours a week, the days will get boring.
But if you have two or three niches, there’s much more versatility.
If you don’t feel like writing about Niche A, you can go with Niche B.
Obviously, the benefits of focusing on multiple niches are subjective.
Some might feel that it’s too much to focus on many things at the same time.
But for others, it might be a nice stress reliever to not write about the same topic every day.
#4 An “Ideal” Way to Grow
One of my favorite reasons to target multiple niches on the same blog is that this is how those big blogging businesses are made.
They start with one niche. Once the site pays enough, the owners can start investing back into the site by hiring freelancers to write about different topics.
So far, having multiple niches on one blog probably sounds like a no-brainer.
But there are big problems with that as well.
As a matter of fact, those issues are so big that I still mostly focus on having multiple sites each with their own niche.
Cons of Multi-Niche Blogging
#1 Risky
Google’s ranking process is an ever-changing game. Google pushes out a ton of algorithm updates every year. Each of these updates can have a detrimental impact on your site.
If your blog posts rank high today, nothing guarantees that they’ll do tomorrow.
By the way, make sure to read my post about How to Recover from Google Updates.
In my opinion, having just one site is way too big of a risk.
This is simply because it’s pretty common to see Google updates shaking sites.
There are so many stories of websites going down in one day after a Google update.
By the way, this is not like a 1 in 1,000,000 chance. In my anecdotal experience, it’s more like 5-10% of the websites that will get slammed at some point.
So, the risk is just too big—if you asked me.
What I’d do instead of having just one site with multiple niches, I’d have a bunch of sites with different niches.
Then, perhaps try to expand one of those blogs to multiple niches when you make enough income.
#2 More Work
Many niches mean more work.
To get traffic to a blog with one niche, you need to write hundreds of quality posts.
To get traffic to a blog with multiple niches, you need to publish hundreds or even thousands of blog posts.
I’d say that it’s possible to run one blog with 2-3 niches alone.
But anything after that requires so much effort that it becomes impossible (Obviously, the same applies to having multiple sites with one niche each.)
That’s why I think it’s important to focus on growing one site with one niche at first, then expand to other niches.
It can easily take 6-12 months of full-time work to make even one blog with one niche successful.
#3 Slower Growth
By targeting multiple niches on one blog, the growth can be significantly slower.
Even with one niche, it can take a year or two of hard work to get traffic.
For example, this is a niche site I’ve been working on with my mate for about 1,000 hours in total.
Intuitively, the net effect should be the same regardless of how many niches you target.
But that’s not the case.
The more niches you juggle with, the longer it takes to monetize.
Let’s say you need about 100 quality posts before earning from a niche.
If you target 10 niches simultaneously, you need to write 1,000 posts before being able to monetize any of those.
This is what it could look like when comparing one site with one niche to a site with 10 different niches:
Thus, the more niches you work on, the longer it takes to find success.
In this sense, it makes much more sense to just target one niche with one site until you earn significantly from it.
#4 Stressful
Depending on what types of other projects you have going on, having multiple niches can be too stressful.
This is because you need to spend a long time on each niche to find success.
Remember, you need to write a ton of content—even if you just have one niche. By targeting many niches, you need to multiply the input.
Google Issues?
Google doesn’t really seem to care if a site has many niches or just one.
But one thing is for sure. Google wants to trust your site before ranking it high in the search results.
In my experience, in many niches, this means writing hundreds of quality posts.
You essentially need to cover your niche from A to Z and establish credibility and expertise in the eyes of Google.
With one niche, this is “easier” and can only take months or a year or two of hard work.
But with multiple niches, it’s just going to be a lot slower.
But in the eyes of Google, it really doesn’t seem to matter if your site is in one niche or multiple niches at the same time.
What Do I Do?
I have multiple blogs each with one niche.
The only exception is my oldest, inactive blog where I have posts about coding and software reviews.
The reason I’m doing it this way is to diversify risk.
There’s always a significant chance that a Google update hits.
To avoid having my business destroyed overnight, I want to diversify the risk to a couple of blogs
My Recommendation
I recommend having at least 2-3 profitable blogs before starting to expand one of those to multiple niches.
The way you could do this is as follows:
- Commit to your main blog until it makes a good income.
- Start a second blog while maintaining the main blog until it also earns decently.
- Start a third blog and hire freelancers to write posts about different topics.
This way, you’re “guaranteed” to have multiple sources of income while expanding the bigger site.
But remember that it’s much easier said than done to grow multiple successful blogs.
It can easily take years to make a living with one. But if you work really hard and strategically, you can surely pull it off.
Also, your strategy depends entirely on your situation. If your blog is just a hobby or side income, then you might want to expand it to multiple niches with no problem.
But if your life depends on your blog, I’d highly recommend starting a new blog in a different niche than expanding to multiple niches.
How to Grow Multi-Niche Blog
It’s exactly the same as running a blog with one niche.
#1 Write a Ton
The most important part is pushing out a ton of content and establishing topical authority in your niches.
To do this effectively, your blog’s domain should be something that doesn’t tie you into a particular niche.
But even if it did, that’s not a big issue.
Google considers so many other things when ranking websites that the URL doesn’t really matter that much.
For example, when I search for “Best tennis shoes” on Google, there’s a housekeeping website high in the search results.
Even though this site has nothing to do with tennis based on the name, it still has high topical authority in tennis and ranks high.
#2 Use a Content Calendar
One thing I’d do with multiple niches, though, is to have a content calendar.
It doesn’t have to be something you strictly follow. Instead, it can be more of a reminder to work on those niches.
Obviously, these numbers depend on the time you have to spend on writing as well as your goals.
Conclusion
Having a blog with many niches can be a lucrative business model.
All big blogs on the internet target a ton of different niches.
But if you’re working alone without freelancers, it can be simply too high risk to just have one site.
Instead, what I’d recommend doing is first having just one blog with one niche. Then expand to multiple sites each with a different niche.
Then, if you make some extra from those sites, allocate the budget to expanding one of the blogs to multiple niches.