Is there a general rule on niches being too small?

[Breen]

I'm looking to start my first site, and I don't even have a niche yet. Probably the subject I'm most interested in and knowledgeable about, according to ahrefs, the top/main keyword gets like 21K searches a month. Then there's a few that get between 1K and 1.8K, and all the rest are under 1K. So is that a niche that's generally way to small to be profitable?

 

[voLdie]

Based on data no.

Use your gut. My biggest site shows very little search volume and across my niche websites does the most traffic and revenue.

If you know a niche better than other people and there is an absence of information on the internet about it, you can build a gold mine.

Easier said than done, but if you find yourself on the cutting edge of a newer topic, hobby, or niche you can print money.

Go as niche as possible and have a rough plan for monetization. I've built sites with tons of traffic that were hard to monetize vs a niche that wants a product where I'm getting avg. $2 per visitor.

 

[DoItNow]

I'd start by asking myself 3 types of questions:

1) Since you're knowledgeable about the subject, are there topics and/or keywords that you know others are interested in but that are covered by what Ahrefs pulled up? Related to that, are there other related topics or a "parent" topic that you might also rank for?

2) How are you planning to monetize? If you get just the traffic that Ahrefs predicts, can you earn enough to make your effort worthwhile?

3) Finally, check out the competition. How well do they cover the niche, or the topics within it? What are they missing? How are they monetizing? Can you do better?

Finally - this isn't a question, but even though you're interested in/knowledgeable about your subject, will you like writing about it? (assuming you're going to write at least some of the content yourself) Write a couple of sample pages and see how it feels. If you get bored (this has happened to me when I get/test ideas for new websites), save yourself some grief and find another niche.

 

[Ryuzaki]

@Breen, you haven't given us enough information to help you in any specific manner. Here's why, echoing some of what's been said above.

Let's say your keyword is "How to Make Paper Airplanes" and it gets 20,000 searches per month. Let's say with the modern miracle of header bidding you can get $15 RPMs on display ads for that. That's worth $300 per month or 1.5¢ per viewer at a 100% conversion rate.

Then there's another keyword "Sell My Annuity" and it gets 250 search per month with a 5% conversion rate at a value of $300 per lead generated. So 250 * 0.05 * 300 = $3,000.

Would you rather make $300 on 20,000 viewers or $3,000 on 250 viewers? This is the kind of questions you're asking, because there's so much more info that goes into it. How much does it cost me to rank for the 20k keyword versus the 250 keyword? How stable are the SERPs. Which is viable to add pay-per-click advertisement costs on top? How much EAT, links, supporting content, age do I need? Is one YMYL? Will competitors try to sabotage me?

It's the same with your initial question. Knowing search volume alone doesn't tell us anything if we don't have a general idea of the value of a conversion, the monetization possibilities, the general conversion rates, the time frame to make it happen, the costs to get there, and so forth.

 

[Breen]

I'd start by asking myself 3 types of questions:

1) Since you're knowledgeable about the subject, are there topics and/or keywords that you know others are interested in but that are covered by what Ahrefs pulled up? Related to that, are there other related topics or a "parent" topic that you might also rank for?

2) How are you planning to monetize? If you get just the traffic that Ahrefs predicts, can you earn enough to make your effort worthwhile?

3) Finally, check out the competition. How well do they cover the niche, or the topics within it? What are they missing? How are they monetizing? Can you do better?

Finally - this isn't a question, but even though you're interested in/knowledgeable about your subject, will you like writing about it? (assuming you're going to write at least some of the content yourself) Write a couple of sample pages and see how it feels. If you get bored (this has happened to me when I get/test ideas for new websites), save yourself some grief and find another niche.

Thanks to you and also to voLdie and Ryuzaki for the thoughtful replies. These are good questions you have given me to work with. I'm not sure what it's called, but I'm interested in doing the type of thing that MrMedia did in his AMA thread where you publish a huge number of articles and monetize with display ads. I've seen it talked about elsewhere too, like in fatstacks blog. So looking at it that way, there is no way this would be a good niche. A ton of the search terms would just be looking for a very specific YT video, that matches that individual term. If I revealed the niche, you would understand what I mean. So it may be a fun hobby site, and something that I could possibly squeeze a few dollars from, but that's not why I'm here.