Niche Writing: Spreading Your Niche Net Wider

When the world locked down last year, how did your freelance writing business hold up?

If you are a niche writer — someone who works in a specialized topic area — the answer depends on your particular niche, doesn’t it? If you are a travel writer, you had to look elsewhere for work in many cases. Not all, for there were some outlets and clients still needing writing help, though the topics may have shifted by quite a lot.

If you wrote for the healthcare industry, you might have had a much easier time of it. Plenty of information to get out to the general public, but also those who write for industry-facing publications had to address issues that the healthcare industry itself was facing.

In either case, the work was there. In the first case, it just doesn’t look like what you’re used to. And that’s okay. It’s great, actually.

[bctt tweet=”Surviving in a niche means #freelancers have a specialty, but not a ball and chain.” username=”LoriWidmer”]

Plenty of you generalize. And I think you’ve found that even generalizing, you do start to see the same types of projects or topics showing up more than others. Even those of us who specialize have a wider variety of topics than we expected. For example, last month I wrote about:

• Mexico travel
• Cyber risks
• Equine issues
• Art
• Medical devices
• Trade credit
• Construction

All of these topics were in my niche. Every one of them. But every single one can be a niche of its own, right?

That’s the point of today’s post: How to stay in your lane, as it were, while expanding well beyond the perception of what’s in that lane.

Look under your own hood.

Right now, look at the projects on your desk, and look back at the ones you’ve completed this past month or two. See any patterns? Are you writing more about electric vehicles? Cannabis? Are you writing more case studies? What is in your own background that is straying somewhat outside of your niche or, if you’re a generalist, looking more like a small specialty in the making?

Capitalize on new specialties.

If the insurance industry had dried up on me last year, I could have switched to writing about cannabis or about environmental issues or even about remote work. If you’ve written two or more projects in any one area, you can use that to find more of the same. If you were writing about electric cars, you could switch that to the tech magazines that need more insider info on the industry. Or you could write for newspapers and general magazines on how the industry was impacted by COVID. Suppose you found yourself writing a dozen case studies for the healthcare industry. Take that experience and approach other industries — telecom, retail, utilities or anything you can think of. Whatever business is thriving in the current economy (whatever it looks like now or in the future), that’s the business area to target.

Fish in a different pond.

If you write for consumers, go on. Reach out to the business side. For example, if you write about fashion, why not try writing about fashion from the perspective of the people who create or distribute fashion? Someone has to create the design, source the materials, manufacture the items, make packaging for them, ship them, sell them …. right there are six new client pools for you to fish in. Each step in that process has magazines and associations and clients. They all need to get their messages out. Be their messenger.

If you write for businesses, try dipping a toe in the consumer pool. Consumer-facing publications need the same types of articles you may be writing now, but with the focus on the consumer. Let’s use the cannabis industry. Consumers need to know plenty about the ins and outs of cannabis in their states and at the federal level. Medical marijuana, different forms of cannabis, all of that matters to consumers. Shifting your focus is all that’s needed. You’re just putting on a different hat.

Learn something new.

I’m willing to bet that in the back of your mind, you’ve tucked away one thing that you want to learn, but haven’t found time for. SEO? Rock climbing? Landscaping? Cybersecurity? Dust that thing off. Search for courses or webinars from credible sources that will teach you even the basics. Buy a book that does the same thing, or an audio book that you can’t skim (I’m a skimmer).  Schedule time in your day to learn that one new thing. Then write something related to it, pitch ideas, and start building a new area of focus. And congratulate yourself for finishing that one thing, and for adding it to your writing repertoire. You’ve just pleased yourself and expanded your business by meeting one goal.

Writers, how do you expand your niche? If you generalize, how do you capitalize on similar projects?
How do you shift your business when the work dries up?