Find Your Niche in Freelance Writing

Starting out as a freelancer, you might feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of jobs that are available to freelance writers. Even once you’ve filtered out those you know you’re not qualified for based on the requisite writing and academic experience, you might be scanning a long list of jobs that you’re considering applying for. So how do you choose? Well, when you start out as a writer, you might not be picky and just take whatever gigs you can get. However, to make freelance writing a more sustainable and enjoyable career or side job, you may want to choose a freelance writing niche.

Your writing niche should reflect your personality—it should be, above all else, something you want to write about all the time. If you choose a specialty just because it’s in high demand or you have experience with it without a passion driving your interest in the subject, you will probably not feel motivated to write. Of course, your interest is not the only consideration to make since you need to think about the demand for different types of writers as well as the competitiveness within a given field. For example, if you have a background as a paralegal and want to create content for law firms, you will probably have a much bigger competitive edge in your field than someone who likes to cook and is looking to be a food blogger.

How to Identify Your Niche

So, you’ve been dabbling in freelance writing and you want to start building a career of it. Your best next step is to choose a niche to guide you in what to write and where to apply for gigs. It might take some time to get it just right, but having at least some idea of your specialty will be beneficial to your career in a few ways.

First, it can help you stand out when applying to job listings that are seeking people with more experience and expertise to lend to their writing—these also are typically the highest-paying gigs out there. Next, choosing a niche will help shape your creative voice and your brand. As a freelance writer, you are essentially a one-man business, and like any business you should have a mission statement as well as distinct goals for what you want to accomplish. Identifying your niche with the following key steps will help you develop these goals and create a clearer career path to follow.

Consider your skills.

Your previous professional and life experience can be a huge boost for your success in a certain niche. Specialized industry knowledge of healthcare, law, finance, or home improvement may bolster your freelance writing resume and help you land gigs where insider knowledge goes a long way. Of course, you don’t only have to look at your professional qualifications. If you have spent a lot of your life traveling, you might be in a great position to become a travel writer. Additionally, these types of qualifications will only be helpful if they also cater to your interests as a writer.

Play to your interests.

Let’s say your professional experience is not in areas where you’d like to specialize as a writer. Can you still specialize? Absolutely, but you might need to do some extra work building a name for yourself as you get started. It will likely prove to be a worthy effort, because you will ultimately be writing about things that genuinely interest you when you let your passion guide you to your writing niche.

Research each market.

With professional qualifications and personal interests in mind, you may have a few ideas for what your writing specialty could be. Now it’s time to test those out with a little bit of research. First, consider the demand for writing in a specific subject, as well as the number of other freelancers who might be focusing on that area. Start looking for job postings with keywords aligning with the niche you’ve chosen. If you’re finding a healthy handful of available jobs that fit your description, then you know you’re on the right track. You might also look to see how many publications there are surrounding your chosen subject area, because these will create the option to pitch articles that you’ve written or want to write.

Be realistic.

If your dream is to be a jet setting travel writer or daring culinary critic, then these may be areas you can specialize in, but it’s important to be realistic in your expectations. Though there are some amazing opportunities for the more fun and adventurous side of freelance writing, the gigs you’d land to sustain a living are going to be much more competitive, because who doesn’t want to get paid to travel the world and write about it?

Along with considering what types of gigs are really out there for your fantasy writing career, you should also think carefully about the logistics. Let’s use travel writing as an example one more time. This is a career where you will be constantly on the go, and you may not spend much time home at all—spending most of your time hopping between campsites, hostels, hotels, or anywhere else you can manage to book on Airbnb. If you’re the type who enjoys having a set routine and roots in a certain area, it may be best to explore other avenues that allow you to stay put.

How to Make a Name for Yourself as a Niche Writer

Once you have chosen the route you’ll take as a writer, you can start to focus on making a name for yourself in your chosen niche. The steps you’ll need to take can vary depending on your area of specialization, but there are some general guidelines to point you in the right direction with any field. These steps are measures you should take in addition to searching for paid jobs, since they will ultimately build your brand and make you a desirable commodity as a specialized writer—which, of course, will lead to more, better paying gigs.

Keep an active blog.

Any professional writer should have a blog, but for niche writers, it is even more essential. Blogging encourages you to write often, even when you don’t have a full schedule of gigs, and as any writer knows, you can never really get enough writing practice. With your blog, you will be able to establish a voice while writing for your niche, and you might take on some longer-term projects with deeper research to further your expertise and contributions to the field you’re working in. As you keep writing and build up a solid library of content, you can also build a bigger audience and maybe even monetize the blog itself or make a name for yourself that has publications and companies specifically seeking out your work.

Pitch your content like crazy.

While you are blogging and coming up with great content ideas, you might have several that sound like they’d be great magazine or journal articles. For these stand-out ideas, you should not hesitate to pitch to publications that might be looking for work like yours. Pitching content, of course, is a great way to get published and paid, but even if you’re seeing a high volume of rejections on your pitches, you may still get something out of it. Depending on the publication you pitch to, you might get some professional feedback and insight that can help you create more effective pitches to the same types of publications later on. And, as you keep writing new pitches, it will become easier and faster to do, so you can easily keep it up.

Network in the industry.

Networking is another step that’s necessary for building your personal brand and getting to know the big players in the industry where you’ve found your niche. To network effectively, you might not only reach out to other writers and editors, but you should also build relationships with any professional in your target industry. That might mean attending trade shows and small business events, as well as reaching out via social media to key influencers who can help you boost your own name recognition.

Set the right price point.

It’s common for writers who are just starting out to idealize the career and think “I’m happy to take any rate of pay as long as I get to do what I love and write for a living.” However, you should really think about the value of your work and the degree of specialization you have when you are setting your rates. The truth is, it’s possible to burn out when you’re writing about any subject for enough time, even if it’s a subject that you absolutely love. That’s why you should work for rates that are fair for the work you’re putting in.

If freelance writing is a career you’ve thought about pursuing, Writers Work is a great place to start. Along with access to job listings for almost any writing job imaginable, Writers Work delivers tools and resources to jumpstart your career and help sharpen your skills, no matter what niche you choose to explore!