Strength Training vs Trading - Which Niche to Choose?

[Rob Stone]

Hey Guys
I am 45 and literally just cannot decide on a niche, it's my nemesis to building something online that I can use to at least invest in and grow while i get older.. pants!

My only two interests are strength training and trading, which I have only been learning a couple of year's so was thinking of blogging one or both as I continue to grow in both and see what brings the best ROI

Am I just kidding myself or look to change to something I literally don't know anything about yet.. without having to resort to a Dog Training website - that was a joke.

Seriously, anyone able to shed your professional views on?

I would very very grateful.. tick tock tick tock and life is passing by way to quick

Rob

 

[CCarter]

Both subjects have a lot of interest. Strength Training, especially as an older gent as your metabolism slowdown and you are more prone to injury and recover slower - a gold mine in terms of potential.

Trading - as long as it's not buttcoin, actually real trading - people love pretending the next trade is going to make them a millionaire, even though 80% of trades are losses.

What did you do in your last successful project that you can bring to the table as a strength? Example if you go the strength training route - that ain't no written content arena, that's straight a video play. No one is reading long form word content about how to lift-weights, they are watching videos so they can mimic the movements. Are you comfortable in-front of a camera?

If you are doing trading - same scenario are you comfortable with video walk-thrus on how you think? If you go the long-form written content route, you'll need a ton of screenshot images to have the audience keep up.

At the end you should play off your strengths. So what are your strength?

 

[Rob Stone]

Thanks Carter, I am honored it was you who replied first (no offense guys) lol

You hit the nail on the head with the content with strength training that people (including myself) have little interest in reading an article, they want to see action. I have a pretty good range of video's of my deadlifting, squats ,shoulderpress but never progressed it into a channel.

My thinking was also what you said, that many over 40 do not exercise let alone keep their strength up. It was funny this week for a range of us back in the gym, those you lift may know what I mean. Our strength gains for a year literally wiped out in 4 months of social distancing in the UK.

They won't take long to come back but if we lost that strength, how weak are the general population. It's shocking.

Trade wise, I pretty much just trade the DOW. I don't touch BTC. I would find video's and progression more fun than writing content that's for sure but I have seen the price of CPC for trading and to SEO a site seems like it would be great to have some of that pie but at the same time, I expect many people would blame myself if they lost trade's when it wasn't my fault.

Could lead to some dodgy scenario's

I will go for strength training I'd say, totally and utterly respect your feedback Carter. Legend

 

[thisishatred]

No joke:
"I have a pretty good range of video's of my deadlifting, squats ,shoulderpress but never progressed it into a channel. "

You're already like 100 miles ahead of every single person who blogs about strength training then.

"[H]ave little interest in reading an article, they want to see action..."

So I wouldn't say this is necessarily true. When I got started with lifting, I was big into power-lifting and wanted to get super strong so I basically scoured the net for trustworthy resources. I basically religiously read the stuff on T-Nation's website and the posts on their forum. Along the way I even bought physical copies of books like Mark Rippetoe's Starting Strength. I also read information on various websites like Stronglifts and others.

So to quote CCarter:
"that ain't no written content arena, that's straight a video play"

I personally don't subscribe to the idea that people don't read resources about strength training online. I agree that videos definitely help in order to visualize how to perform a specific lift but people actively have still screenshots/gifs as explainers and it works quite well. A number of the sites I outline below do just that. That's also how I got started so I likely have bias.

Just from experience, people who do powerlifting as apposed to "bodybuilding" seem more apt to listen, learn and understand the ins and outs of why a certain lift or movement is being performed. Their goal is to lift as much weight as possible so having a full understanding of various kinetic chains and how certain accessory movements improve certain lifts is important. Where-as someone who is "bodybuilding" just wants to know how to reach hypertrophy in the quickest way possible in order to build muscle.

The problem is that the people you actually want to hear from don't make decent enough videos to help understand the how and why of what they do. Channels like Pete Rubish's and even Eric Lilliebridges' to an extent shared information on an elite level without actually sharing it. Their PR videos help you see them perform lifts in a certain way (Pete's Grip and Rip technique that he adopted and why he stopped) or even accessory lifts that the Lilliebridge family use to make them one of the strongest families to exist.

Like CCarter said, it's basically a gold-mine in terms of potential. While "strength training" may be health related, from analysis, it doesn't really seem to require EAT-based factors.

I was recently doing analysis for this niche and pretty much the only people who dive deep with their content are: https://powerliftingtechnique.com/ and https://stronglifts.com/

Power Lifting Techniques articles are the setup taught by Income School for response and pillar content posts. I personally approach content generation with Income School's method, however I don't like to use a conversational tone and basically stick to providing raw facts and information. The main reason being you end up using phrases and entities that Google likes as apposed to laymen interpretations of concepts.

For example:
https://powerliftingtechnique.com/bench-press-with-legs-up/

In that article he basically does a full-breakdown of the how's and why's for performing the movement that way. Also what do you know, still screenshots of him performing those lifts

Or another example, in this case a pillar article on Strong Lifts:
https://stronglifts.com/bench-press/

Again, still screenshots of the person performing the lift to help explain form, kinetic chains, etc.

----------------------------------------

Just to play devil's advocate too with the video angle. We could look at someone like Scot Mendelson who was the Bench Press world record holder at one point.

This video has a fuck ton of information but only has 187k views in a year. Bodybuilding.com is obviously a huge brand.

If this is was "general weightlifting" or "bodybuilding" niche, a normal person is apt to look up "how to bicep curl." Where-as a powerlifter may not even do a bicep curl in their training because they perform compound movements that involve those muscles.

4.2m views in 8 years.

I think it might be best to think about what you want to target. Based on what you listed as your background information, If your goal is to target powerlifters, I'd keep the above stuff in mind. If you're talking about general "weightlifting" then maybe the video route could be a better use of your time.

---------------------------------------------

To touch on the gold-mine bit. There are lots of ways to monetize the site. You can actively see the two sites doing stuff from:

• Mobile Apps (Stronglifts 5x5 has an app)
• Info products like Strength Programs
  • Back in the day I bought programming from George Leeman because I really wanted to get my deadlift up. My dad always told me to listen to people who are where I want to be since George knows how to pull a lot of weight I said fuck it. A lot of the stuff I learned in his e-book I've used to this day. Granted a number of the concepts were outlined back in the day on Bodybuilding.com but having a physical write-up tells you exactly what he did.
• Videos
  • Easy way to diversify your income stream. I disagree with CCarter on the content bit but I do agree that people actively watch videos. Like I said, I think the Power Lifting community is a curious one and the people who do it (ME) want to be able to find accurate and honest information from someone who actively powerlifts (YOU).
• Physical products
  • T-shirts
  • Supplements
  • etc?

There is likely a lot more i'm not thinking about but I know that's how the above sites monetize.

------------------------------------------

Something CCarter didn't really touch on is competition. Depending on what you plan to target, "trading" could obviously be a bit hard as I know most finance stuff is. Whether it be trading, investing, etc. Usually if it involves money directly in some way, you're bound to have more competition.

Granted I haven't done any sort of analysis in this field to be able to fully comprehend what it takes to rank.

Hopefully the above helps in some way Rob. Personally I'd opt to go the strength training route

 

[digixfzu]

Strength training would be good in terms of audience coverage. It is a global subject with a lot of options to expand the content. Finance is limited to the country. We cannot have content freedom to target global audience when it comes to banking/finance specific topics.

 

[elite99]

I would go with the topic that you have the most confidence and mastery. Bodybuilding has a pretty good ecosystem and an pretty involved fanbase and plenty of sellable items and advertising. Trading is definately a hot topic especially for right now and has some potential for for high end products and advertising. I would say why make a choice? You could do both just pick One-at-a-Time.

 

[bopeep]

Strenght training is a bit weird in that in order to make the Big Bucks, you will need to sell out your soul a bit.
Hear me out.
I have been a strength nerd for a while now. It all started back in Wickedfire and I went so deep into the rabbithole, I even ignored my online business for a long time.
I did courses, read up reams and reams of research papers, have been subscribed to MASS by Greg Nuckols since he started, very active with Starting strength community, that if I were in the US, I would have been a SS coach 3-4 years back. Many of my "online friends" are coaches now with SS. And then I grew out of it, because of their more and more unscientific stance.

I have pretty much been with the Evidence based fitness crowd for a while now.
And that is the thing, evidence based fitness is very unsexy. You will not find any of the Evidence based folks doing extremely well, even though a few of treat them like God.

The more you dig into it, the more you you will realize that unless you actually bullshit about a lot of things, people don't want to buy into you. Kind of creates a moral dilemma. I mean I know CBD is hot and Keto is hot, but I can't bring myself to sell them without being dishonest.

Suffice to say I live two lives. If my friends learn that I sold keto pills just check the conversion my reputation will be gone.
I mean you will need lie with a straight face about a lot of things if you want to do well in strength and fitness.

Think Athlean X, That IF copy cat who copied Martin Berkhan.. etc.. Think carefully..

There are a lot half truths and pseudoscience in fitness and they are the ones that sell. I have sold penis extenders and colon cleanse in my past life so I won't judge you, but think carefully before you make a move.

It is the same as what @CCarter said about about shitcoin and trading.

Only shitcoins make money.
Only the pseudo scientific fitness that will lie to you with a straight face about one weird trick makes money.

Because nobody wants to hear that they need to count macros and be in a caloric deficit to lose fat.