Items Of INterest
Create Your Niche
By Tanya Davis
November, 2006, 07:40

Stand out as an expert in your area. Build your market by establishing your niche.

If you have made the leap from “I want to dabble in writing” to “I want to become a successful freelance writer,” the first thing you need to do is create your own niche. That’s right, create it. You don’t need to find it. I don’t believe that your perfect market is lying around like a big sheet of poster board, waiting to be discovered. I believe that you make your own area of expertise and create a niche by marketing yourself as an expert in your area.

You may think that having a tightly focused niche limits your opportunities. But believe me, by narrowing your field, you actually create more writing opportunities. Once you have a niche, pitching yourself is a cinch. I used to spend hours trying to create perfect queries: think of a topic, narrow it down, research like crazy, write the letter. Now I have a simple four-paragraph introduction letter that describes my topic, my articles, and myself. I clip a couple of samples to it if I’m using snail mail, or I direct them toward my clips page if I’m pitching by email. I have more assignments than I can handle.

1. Select Your Area

How do you choose your niche? First, you need to choose the area that you are, or are going to become, an expert in. You might select your job. Many people write about their work because, after all, they practice that activity all day every day. Or you might choose to establish yourself as an expert on the how-to of your business. For example, if you’re a therapist, rather than writing about the therapy, you might choose to become known as an expert in creating a successful therapy business.

You may want to consider your hobby as your niche, especially if you have an unusual one.  Do you have a collection? If you do, you’ve probably spent a great deal of time learning about it already. There’s your research! Wouldn’t it be great to gain from it?

The neat thing about writing is that you can choose a topic that doesn’t require a lot of research, so that most of your writing is opinion. For example, I keep getting emails from a lady who hates to see people in public talking on cell phones. Let’s call her Susan. She wants me to write about it. She’s really, really passionate about the topic, and she keeps sending me examples. 

2. Satisfy a Need

Now, “talking on the cell phone in public” is not a niche. It would be a great topic for an article. A niche must satisfy some sort of need. Susan’s latest email ended with, “As you can tell, rude people talking on phones in public really burns me.”

If Susan is a writer, there is her niche: cell phone etiquette. It’s a perfect niche, too. It requires minimal research, and it’s something everybody can relate to, so she could sell it to many markets.

3. Create Demand Through Supply

Once you’ve selected your niche, make yourself such an expert in peoples’ minds that when your particular topic comes up, your name is the one on everybody’s lips. How do you do that? By showcasing your work in many different venues.

Let’s say you have landed a regular article in a weekly newspaper. Every week you write about rude people you saw talking on the phone. They’re everywhere: the supermarket, the gas station, the mall, your favourite restaurant. (I’m starting to like this topic.) Don’t stop there, thinking you’ve made it. Remember we’re making you into an expert.

Get on the Internet and create a website and a daily blog. Mention the article in the blog, and give the blog address at the bottom of the article. Market yourself to every daily, weekly, and monthly publication you can find, as well as websites and corporations.

Write an eBook. As soon as you have 100 published articles on your topic, compile them into a book and either submit it to a publisher, or self-publish it.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go write about cell phone etiquette.