I'm always on the lookout for great topics to launch new blogs for. There's a method I use for this madness, and that's the subject of this post.

The Best Audience

The best audience for blogs, are of course, people who tend to read blogs. So, when deciding to start a new blog, pick a niche that tends to attract blog readers.

You gotta figure that blog readers are those who get much of their news online, and devote an hour or more of their day checking to see what's new on their favorite blogs. Shuffleboard is probably not a good topic, as shuffleboard players seem to consist of retirees who live in retirement communities, many of these people have difficulty using a computer.

Mortgages is probably not a good topic either, because let's face it, what consumer is going to read that on a daily basis?

Focus on people in the 18-49 years of age demographic, and find topics that are hobby-centric, or topics that cross all demographics. Hobbies like scrapbooking, card games, or gardening are great topics. Others that cross all demographics like cooking, parenting, or "cool website of the day", are good ideas.

Abundant Content Supply

In order for you to write several blog articles a day on a particular subject, there has to be plenty of new content ideas available on a daily basis.

Gadgets make for great blogs because there's an abundance of new gadgets coming out everyday. You'll never run out of things to blog about. On the other hand, a blog about pet hamsters may not be a good idea, since there isn't much news in the world of hamsters, and only a limited amount of topics in the field of "caring for your hamster".

Highly Competitive Market

Look for topics that will generate a lot of advertising revenue for you. One way to figure this out is by entering a search term on Google, and taking a look to see how many AdWords appear on the side. If there are eight ads, then it suggests there is a fierce bidding war going on, since Google only shows a maximum of eight ads per page.

Another way is to use Overture's bid tool to see how much advertisers are paying per keyword. While the bids on Overture do not correlate to how much you might earn on Google AdSense, it does give you an idea of how competitive a specific niche is.

Putting It All Together

So, think of a niche market, and then see if it meets all of the three criterias I've presented above. If it does, you might have a great blog idea!