How to use the Japanese Concept of Ikigai to Find Your Blog Niche

Last updated on 12 March 2024

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So you wanna start a blog but you’re not quite sure how to find your blog niche? I get it. It can be tricky. You’re a multi-passionate person. Perhaps you love running and fitness, but you also love crocheting and knitting. Or perhaps you’ve obsessed with your house plants or you’re a homesteader. How do you just pick one niche for your blog?

In this blog post, I want to give you just one way of finding your blog niche. This could be super helpful for you, or it might not be your jam, and that’s okay. If you’d like to talk more about how to figure out your blog niche with someone who has been doing this for over a decade (oh hey, that’s me!), flick me a message on Instagram or get in touch. I’d love to chat with you!

But let’s back it up a little bit.

What is a ‘blog niche’ anyway?

Great question.

It’s basically just the area you’re writing in. For example, Books might be your topic, but you specifically write your posts for young adult readers. ‘Books’ are your broad niche, but then perhaps ‘books for ya readers’ is your more narrowed down niche.

‘Travel’ might be a broad niche, but perhaps you focus on ‘travel as a solo woman’.

‘Education’ – broad niche. ‘Homeschooling your kids’ – narrowed down a bit more.

Figuring out your blogging niche can take a little while, but it’s good to think about some things before you dive in, especially if you’re just starting a blog.

What is Ikigai?

If you’re unfamiliar with the Japanese concept of Ikigai, it’s the concept of finding your passion or purpose. It’s great if you’re looking at swapping jobs, or you’re just out of school and wondering what to do next. Or perhaps you want to start a side hustle to help you pay your bills, or just for the sheer joy of it.

“Ikigai is a Japanese term that blends two words: “iki” meaning “to live,” and “gai” meaning “reason,” which translates to “a reason to live.” It’s a concept that encourages people to discover what truly matters to them and to live a life filled with purpose and joy.” – Calm

Working through the Ikigai Venn diagram can really help you solidify some of your thoughts and thinking, as well as draw out of you the things that you are really good at, and enable you to recognise what the world might be missing.

Here’s what Ikigai looks like.

As you can see, all the interconnecting circles come together to help you find your Ikigai, your passion or purpose. For someone looking to figure out what they might like to do after high school, for example, they would:

Think about what they love: Identify their passions, hobbies, and activities that bring them joy. This could include subjects they enjoy, creative things, or personal interests that they have and love.

Jot down what they’re good at: Think about their skills and strengths, which could be their best subjects at school, or extracurricular things they’ve been up to (music, sport, speech and drama etc)

Ask what the world needs: Are they things that they can see a need for in the world? Or in their world? Perhaps there’s a gap that they can see.

And what they could be paid for: If there were things that they could do and be paid for, they would write those down, too.

You can also see that where they start to overlap, on the inner four links, this can be used to find your Passion, Mission, Vocation and Profession. But then somewhere in the middle, where all those things begin to overlap, they would find something that they could look into further or pursue.

Ikigai and Blogging

Okay, so what’s the deal with Ikigai and blogging? How could you use it to figure out your blogging niche? Now, just a note: this isn’t foolproof. It’s just one way that might help you write down and brainstorm a niche for your blog.

We’ll use a similar process.

As you can see in the graph above, it’s pretty similar, I’ve just made some adjustments to it, namely taking out those inner rings. When we think about it in terms of blogging, here are a few things to think about, very similar to that of our high-school-leaver example above.

Grab a pen and paper and draw some large circles, and see if you can fill in these questions: 

1. What are some things that you love?
2. What do you see as something the world needs?
3. What skills do you have that you could be paid for?
4. What are you good at doing?

When you’ve got a few ideas under each question, you should be able to find some connections.

Here’s an example:

👉🏻 I love being out in nature

👉🏻 I see the world needing to get off their phones more

👉🏻 I could be paid to garden

👉🏻 I’m good at explaining new things to people

I’m not a gardener, clearly, but … out of this, I can see someone start a blog about growing their own food and teaching others how to do it, too. While the irony is they’d be reading it on their phones or computers … you hopefully get the idea.

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By using the idea of Ikigai and the different questions and interconnecting/interlocking circles like this, we can bring to paint a picture of what our blogging niche might look like.

You might need to fine-tweak this a bit, but I think it’s a good start, especially if you know you want to start a blog but you have too many ideas and too many passions to narrow it down even a little bit.

So tell me: what do you think of this way of using Ikigai to find your blog niche? Helpful? Not so much? I’d love to hear from you!