Welcome to Write Bites, an audio series where we discuss writing, marketing, and freelancing during one of my daily walks around the neighborhood.

Audio Recording

In Episode #7, I talk about something that is somehow every new freelance writer’s favorite topic – niche – and why it’s both wildly overhyped and a bit underrated. If that’s not the most effective curiosity hook of your week, I don’t know what is.

 

 

Transcript: Why Choosing A Freelance Writing Niche Is Wildly Overrated

Hey guys. Welcome to Write Bites, an audio series where we discuss writing, marketing and freelancing during one of my daily walks around the neighborhood.

So today, I wanted to talk about NICHE. Niche seems to be a favorite topic among freelance writers. I get asked about it all the time. And I see somewhat conflicting advice on it.

And because of that, I would say that choosing a niche as a freelancer is both wildly over-hyped and a bit underrated.

So to explain that, what it really comes down to is the stage of your career. When you are early in your career, niche is moderately helpful, and that’s about it.

I would say it is moderately helpful if you can choose it relatively quickly and then stop worrying about it. If it’s something that you worry about, if it’s something you’re constantly re-evaluating, if it’s something that feels confusing to you, then it is going to be a net negative for you, and I would recommend that you ignore it altogether.

On the other end of the equation, when we’re talking about a more advanced freelance writer, and by that, I mean you have freelanced a minimum of five years and really invested a lot of time in mastery. Five years. Completely full-time. For most people, we’re talking closer to 10+ years of being a freelance writer to kind of be in that more advanced category.

When you’re there, or close to there, that’s where having a niche that you’ve been focused on for a period of years can really start to pay off for you.

To dig into both of those things, let’s talk about what niche does for you and what it doesn’t do for you.

What niche does for you is it adds a level of specificity to your pitch, to your value proposition.

If you work specifically within a certain niche, that makes you more appealing to people in that niche because they know, “Hey, you don’t work with everyone else, you work with me.” If you say, “Hey, I’m a medical copywriter,” then when you’re talking with some sort of medical business, they know that you’ve spent a lot of your time working on medical projects and that you’re specifically focused on that niche. By virtue of you saying, “I’m a medical copywriter” on your website and your branding, you are excluding many other brands.

Clients know that, so they understand that there’s a greater value to them by virtue of your specificity of focus. And in reality, that’s also where we get the other benefit of your spending a lot of time working in the same area, and you develop significant expertise in that area.

If you’re working with medical businesses for five years, you’re going to have a lot more niche-specific expertise in that area than other copywriters. What that translates to is—in conjunction with 5+ years building a business, in conjunction with all this time you’ve spent getting your brand out there, building your lead generation system, connecting with people in the niche, building your referral network—you’re going to have a lot of specific lead flow in this area. You can then charge a very attractive rate, because you’ve also been building the expertise. So it’s kind of the “both/and” there. And when you’re just getting started, you don’t have any of that.