I know why you’re here.
You’ve already:
- Read multiple blog posts about how to choose a freelance writing niche (if you haven’t and don’t even know where to start as far as picking your niche, read this)
- Put a lot of thought about which freelance writing niche to choose
- Come up with a few decent options for your freelance writing niche
And yet…
You STILL can’t choose a damn niche, even though you know you NEED one to land high-paying writing clients.
You’re stuck.
You don’t want to cold email and pitch before you choose a niche.
And as a beginner, you know that you can’t truly market yourself effectively until you make the dreaded niche decision.
So, what are you gonna do?
…Well:
You’re gonna read this blog post. 🙂
By the end of it, you’ll know EXACTLY what to do to finally pick a freelance writing niche.
You’ll get UN-stuck so you can start marketing yourself.
(Instead of sitting around wasting even MORE time you could be spending running your freelance writing business, traveling, and working from home!)
Ready? Cool.
How to Finally Pick A Freelance Writing Niche When You Can’t Decide
Let’s start with a good ol’ harsh truth and the REAL reason you haven’t chosen a niche yet:
You still haven’t chosen a freelance writing niche, not because you’re lacking information, but because you’re afraid to fail.
That’s right.
I’m calling you out on your bullshit.
ESPECIALLY if you’re a long-time reader and follower of my YouTube channel.
I have LOADS of information on how to pick a niche (like this blog post).
So there’s no way in hell you’re lacking in information.
What you’re lacking in is BALLS.
Let’s explore this further and talk about a few things you might be thinking right now and WHY these thoughts are bullshit:
Bullshit Freelance Writing Niche Excuse #1: “I don’t know enough about anything to choose a niche!”
LIES AND BLASPHEMY.
Unless you’re a literal child, you’ve surely got some knowledge and/or life experience you can use toward choosing a niche.
And the experience doesn’t have to be direct experience either.
You worked as a receptionist at a doctor’s office?
That’s healthcare experience!
Your mom is a teacher and you’ve had to spend time listening to talk about the education system?
That’s education experience!
Now, one more important point to make here:
You CAN write in a niche you have zero experience in.
I have done this multiple times.
No one is stopping you except the shitty voice in your head telling you you’re not good enough.
Yes, you need to be able to deliver what the client needs.
And yes, you’ll want to improve your knowledge over time.
But come on – you’re a writer, so I know you’re smart. And I bet you have amazing research skills.
Hell, if I can write about ultrasound technology with almost NO resources available on that topic online (yes, I really did this – it was difficult but turned out great!), I’m pretty sure you can write about anything you set your mind to.
Remember, clients don’t expect you to have as much industry knowledge as they do.
They just expect you to deliver what they ask for.
Bullshit Freelance Writing Niche Excuse #2: “I have X, Y, and Z niche ideas. Here’s why each of them would/wouldn’t work. Now: Which one should I pick!? I can’t possibly pick.”
Okay, if this is you, then you’ve probably been thinking about this for WAY too long.
JUST. FUCKING. CHOOSE. ONE.
Stop being a perfectionist.
Take action fast.
Don’t overthink it.
And most of all:
Remind yourself that you WILL fail as a business owner at some point.
One of those failures might be choosing the wrong niche and having to change it.
…Which isn’t the end of the world. Not even close.
In fact, it’s a really easy problem to solve!
I’m saying this from firsthand experience. I changed my niche really quickly after starting my business because my initial niche, while decent, didn’t really work out as well as planned.
But let’s explore the worst case scenario:
Your niche doesn’t work out.
Guess what?
All you need to do is update your freelance writer website / social profiles / writing portfolio with your new niche.
Easy peasy.
You can literally do this in a day or two, including the time you’re spend self-publishing a few writing samples in your new niche.
I have done this multiple times. And you know what?
Fucking up and learning from it got me FAR.
Taking imperfect action will get you so much further in business than sitting around worrying and doing nothing.
So make a decision, and give yourself permission to try it out, keeping in mind that it’s OKAY if it fails.
It just means you’ve found one thing that doesn’t work… which means you’re closer to finding the thing that DOES.
Quick mid-post announcement: My best-selling course for freelance writers, Killer Cold Emailing, is opening up in February 2019 for a short time. Sign up here to be notified and I’ll send you a FREE cold emailing guide.
Bullshit Freelance Writing Niche Excuse #3: “There are already so many writers in X niche – I want to choose it but I can’t possibly win clients because it’s so saturated. I’m not good enough to get clients over those other writers.”
Nope. Not true.
DIFFERENTIATE, my friend.
That’s all there is to it.
Seriously – think about when you go to the grocery store and walk down the bread aisle.
I guarantee you, you see a SHIT-TON of different bread brands, with many of them being basically the same thing.
But guess what?
There’s a different customer out there for each of those brands of bread.
If you can differentiate yourself, there will be a customer out there for you too, even if you’re in a saturated niche.
If you know how to deliver what the client needs and know how to market yourself + SELL your writing services, saturation really doesn’t matter.
I’ve written in the marketing blog posts niche a ton, which is highly competitive and saturated, but it ended up being a great niche for me anyway because:
- I was passionate about it and found it interesting.
- I kept growing my knowledge in my niche over time and made it my goal to become a top writer in that specific niche.
- I learned specifically how to market myself to target clients IN THAT NICHE (what specifically they were looking for and how I could position myself as what they were looking for).
Stop letting the voice in your head tell you that you aren’t good enough.
No one starts out as a top writer in their niche, they just start.
They grow over time.
Their clients improve.
And if they keep at it, they end up successful.
Here’s another thing that’ll make you feel better:
Most freelancers have no CLUE how to market, pitch/cold email, and sell themselves successfully – especially writers, who tend to be perfectionists / uncomfortable with selling.
That’s good news for you!
Because it means that, if your marketing is just decent, that’ll be enough for you to stand out from the sea of freelancers out there going after the same gigs.
And it also means that if you just TRY pitching (like, actually try with a solid strategy – not just send out a bunch of bullshit emails), you’ve got a great shot at succeeding.
Keep in mind:
There are writers out there with far less talent than you who are making far MORE money than you.
All because they aren’t holding themselves back out of fear.
And because they’ve learned how to MARKET themselves and SELL their services.
A couple more notes on choosing a niche:
Don’t say a niche has failed too quickly.
Here’s something I see a lot:
A writer will choose a niche and start pitching.
They send maybe 50 pitches, and because they don’t get a client within a few days, they assume that their niche is the problem and give up on it.
The problem with that?
There are too many variables to say that the niche is the problem.
It could be that:
- They need to send more pitches. (I recommend sending at least 100 high-quality pitches to clients IN YOUR NICHE before changing the strategy.)
- They are targeting the wrong clientele in the niche.
- Their site/samples aren’t optimized for their niche.
You can see that there are a lot of different things that have to work together to make your marketing for your freelance writing successful.
That’s why I created the Killer Cold Emailing course.
It walks you through EVERY step so you have everything you need to know/do to start getting clients.
Now, you know why you shouldn’t write off a niche just because it didn’t work immediately, but at the same time, you need to:
Move on to the next niche fast if it truly isn’t working out.
If you’ve truly done the work in learning how to market yourself + taking action accordingly and your niche still isn’t working out, it’s probably a good idea to change it. Fast.
This happened to me early in my career when I was writing for IT service providers.
Don’t get me wrong – I was getting work in the niche.
But it wasn’t the amount of work I wanted, and I could tell it wasn’t going to be a good niche long-term because it was SO hard to sell these companies on good content, especially blog posts, which was what I enjoyed writing most.
I realized that this was because a lot of IT service providers get business using methods other than blog posts. They were more than willing to pay for things like whitepapers and case studies – but those were two things I had no interest in writing.
I was basically trying to sell meat to vegans (which, as a vegan, I know does NOT go over well lol).
So I changed my niche to writing blog posts about marketing for software companies.
And it worked out great – software companies (the kinds I was targeting, at least) have a good-sized marketing budget and value blog posts.
If you want to learn how to market yourself and make your first $1,000 freelance writing, check out my best-selling Killer Cold Emailing course.
Remember…
If you want this to be YOUR YEAR to start writing full-time, you can’t do the same thing you’ve done before.
This course is your step-by-step, proven system for becoming a freelance writer.
Click here to learn more and enroll!
Bottom line:
Whatever you do, AT LEAST DO SOMETHING.
Make your best educated guess, and pick a freelance writing niche NOW.
You have all the knowledge you need to get started.
I’ve shown you why your excuses are bullshit.
So…
JUST FUCKING START ALREADY.
<3