Met with my first coaching victim client today.
Was great to connect. And work together on gaining some clarity with his freelancing business.
One thing we talked about was niching.
Yep… one of those areas of supreme mental anguish for many a hapless freelancer.
Now…
Niching is often a really good plan.
Because it means you can be a the specialist antique Victorian cufflink copywriter — or whatever.
Clients will appreciate your knowledge of their market. And how things work in their industry.
Plus you can be “one of them”. Part of their exclusive sliver of the world’s population who cares about and understands this stuff.
And with niche expertise comes the ability to price your services higher.
So niching ain’t a bad idea.
But it can be a bad idea if “Find my niche” becomes just another UN-ticked-off thing on the eternal todo list…
And the important legwork of getting clients is delayed or just stalls because of it.
My advice to freelancers who are starting out — and don’t have an obvious niche to easily slide into — like the former area they had a job in… is to:
Forget about the niche thing
Not forever.
Just while getting a little experience to start with.
Reason being:
Many freelancers get themselves in a flap about what niche to choose — worse than when our cat goes “visiting” the hens.
They’re virtually hamstrung.
If you’re starting out. I suggest being single-minded about landing your first few clients.
Those first client projects — no matter the size — will help validate that: yes, you can actually be paid to do this thing!
“Confidence boost” is almost an understatement.
And the cool thing is…
You might get a taste for niches that you’d never even thought of working in.
It’s the way I did it.
I started out being a generic “copywriter”.
Picked up my first project on Upwork, writing an About page for a clothing website.
Finishing that was a little surreal.
It was like:
“Hey, there’s money in my bank. And it’s because I gave someone a bunch of words on a page. Really?”
But it was validation. And I asked for a testimonial. Which I leveraged to help get the next job.
Then rinsed and repeated a few times.
It was enough to get a foothold.
Further along I thought I’d niche myself on elearning.
Kinda made sense as I have an education background. And do like teaching.
But turns out I wasn’t particularly into this.
I was, in fact, more into using a particular set of skills around email marketing… to help my clients make strides in their business.
So I pivoted to email. And here we are.
Ecommerce has become a bit of a niche I’m working with clients in. Even though the actual things they sell are worlds apart.
So, not niching to start with is possible.
It’s a way to get some experience. Get some testimonials. Get some confidence. Get some clarity.
And niching on skills is completely possible.
Even if you don’t niche by industry.
Yes, there might be the hurdle sometimes of clients wanting niche experts.
But not all do.
And not being familiar with a niche means you can approach it with fresh eyes (hint: that’s a benefit for clients that you may like to throw into your discovery call conversation).
You’re welcome to disagree with me on all this.
And what worked for me might not be the way that works for someone else.
But there is a little method to the madness I share 😉
Ready to build your email list? Go here…
EmailForTheWin.com
Chris Milham