Transcription
Everything changed when I finally found my freelancing niche. I went from making $10 an hour, struggling to find clients, really worried about my next paycheck, to straight up chilling, making really great money, knowing the value I deliver to clients and getting referral after referral. Finding my niche felt a little bit like my princess diary's moment, honestly. And how I went from this chaos to my perfect, profitable, shiny niche was kind of weird. So in this video, let's talk about why you got a niche eventually if you want to make the big bucks as a freelancer; what exactly the perfect niche is—I have a little checklist for you; how I found my six-figure niche; the not-so-sexy truth behind it; my three-step method for you to find yours; and a whole lot of opinions on niching from my six-plus years of freelancing experience. So let's dive into it. And if I'm looking down, it's because I'm looking at the slides I made.
First things first: what is a niche? A niche, a niche, a niche is essentially a small segment of the larger market. So if you think of everything you could offer under the sun, a niche is just a small section of that that is hopefully really in demand and will make you lots of money. For example, you could be an Instagram manager for eco-friendly brands in particular. You could be a virtual assistant for online health coaches. You could be a graphic designer for cafes. A WordPress website developer for nonprofit organizations. You could be a business manager for six- and seven-figure course creators—that's me. You could be a YouTube strategist for education-based creators. Those are all specific niches that you can go into as a freelancer.
Why should you niche? I know sometimes there's a little bit of concern around, "Well, if I could target everyone, don't I have more chance of just making lots of money?" Like, if I segment down and niche down, doesn't that just limit how many people could potentially be interested in my service? Yes, I understand, but I beg a question: imagine for a second that you're a seven-figure cat trainer who runs a cat training business. You're super successful, cats love you, your clients love you, but you're really struggling with getting your Instagram presence up and running. Who would you hire? Would you hire: one, a social media manager; or two, an Instagram manager for specifically seven-figure cat trainers? Play the Jeopardy music. Who are you picking, A or B? Now, if you're a sane, normal human being, you're probably going with Instagram manager for seven-figure cat brands. Why? Because it's the most relevant for you, right? And that's the important thing to keep in mind when you're thinking about whether you should niche or not: how relevant is what you are offering and your messaging to the person that you ideally want to work for? Niching is what makes your messaging more specific, and the more specific it is, the more memorable it is. Right? Like, social media manager—yeah, it's kind of interesting—but Instagram manager for seven-figure cat brands—that's super memorable. I'm not going to forget about that, and I just made it up, right? If it's more specific, it's also more powerful; it's more impactful to the right person because they will feel like they're being called out. The more specific, the more credible you are as well, because if you specifically do things for cat trainers, automatically I think, "Oh, she probably knows more." The more specific your messaging, the less competition you'll also have because nobody else is specialized probably on cat trainers, and so it's just going to be a competition of one. So basically, the long story short of it is: the more specific you are, the more cash money you make as a freelancer. Who doesn't want to do that? The goal is to have people get what you do immediately and think, "That's 100% for me," or at least, "That's 99% for me." And the way to do that is to be as specific as you possibly can.
Now, don't get too specific—we'll talk about that—and not only that, this is for my beginner freelancers out there: niching can also be a strategic way to get started so that you're not competing with absolutely everybody. A really great example of this is Taylor Allison Swift, who she started out in country music, right? She could have easily come out as a pop singer or like a rock singer—how cool would that be—but she started in country music, and that was a really strategic way to begin because then she was only competing with country music artists. She could then rise very quickly; she got awards for her country music, and then slowly she essentially expanded her niche, and now she kind of makes all types of different genres. But if she had started making all types of different genres of music, people wouldn't have had a clear idea of who Taylor was, and her identity wouldn't be as memorable as, "Oh, she's a country music artist," right? So that's an example of where niching can come into play really well, where you can—I really don't know if you can hear Ginger in the background; she is noisy—so that's an example of where niching can really help you get started and get your kind of foot in the door before you then broaden out and try out more things.
Now let's talk about some of the biggest niching mistakes I see. The first one is niching that is too me-centric. What does that mean? Me-centric means it's all about you; it's too specific to you. For example, "I'm only going to work with cat owners who like Taylor Swift, Gilmore Girls, and who like to do 1,000-plus piece puzzles because that's what I'm passionate about, and that's who I want to support." What do you have to tell the people? She's like, "That's actually a really good niche." It's important not to be super me-centric because, at the end of the day, we need to be—we live and exist in a market, right? And the market will always validate your niche. If the market doesn't want what you are offering because it's too much about you and it's not about the market, the market will not pay you any money, and you will not make any money as a freelancer.
The second mistake is niching too fast and too focused. Sometimes I see this with beginner freelancers; they think that they have to start immediately very, very specific when they're just getting started. If you haven't tried enough things, don't feel pressured to niche immediately. I know I said to niche as specific as possible, but it's also a common mistake to niche too specific. Too specific is like, "I'm only going to work with people who are within one kilometer of me who are true crime YouTubers who post five times a week." That's too few potential clients; then you're going to tap that market and dry very fast.
The next mistake is only optimizing for money when it comes to niching. This is my personal principle: I don't ever think in business you should solely optimize for money, just because I think you will actually make more money if you optimize for other things first. Let's say you're like, "I'm going to do something AI because that's where all the money is right now; it's super trendy." Do I like it? No. Could I potentially one day grow to like it? No. And then you still try to do it. I just feel like that's just not going to be sustainable. You're not going to enjoy it; if you don't enjoy, you're not going to show up properly; you're not going to learn; you're not going to get better; you're not going to start the way you would if you were doing something you were interested in, and then you'll probably just stop where you won't have the motivation to keep going. So if you hate it, it's really just not your niche. Your niche should be something that you like. I hope that goes without saying.
So what is the perfect niche? This is my little checklist of five items. Number one: it has to be a blue ocean skill. A blue ocean skill is where the demand is greater than the supply for this service, for this product that you are creating. There really has to be a pull from the market, and if you've watched any of my other videos, then you'll know this blue ocean strategy is something I talk about a lot. The next thing is your target clients have to have the money to pay you money. This is just a small thing to keep in mind because I do sometimes talk to freelancers who are like, "Oh, my ideal target client would be somebody who's just getting started with their business, who's just starting a YouTube channel." But somebody who's just starting a business, just starting a YouTube channel, probably doesn't have much disposable income to invest in hiring you, or they'll probably have really unstable income, which is not really fun for you as a freelancer. So, as much as possible, make sure your target client actually is comfortable with the amount of money that they're going to spend on you and the rates that you want to charge ideally.
The next thing is that your service is not super easy to learn. I'll give you an example: when I first started freelancing, a lot of the services I was offering was just stuff I could Google; it was like, "How to upload a blog post to WordPress," "How to use Canva." Those are easy things for most people to figure out and Google, and so if your service is relatively easy to learn, your competition will always be very, very high. For example, for me, when I started developing myself into project management, team management, operations management as a business manager, I knew that those were things that weren't super easy to pick up on Google in like two hours. I was like, "I'm really going to invest in learning these things because they're higher barrier to entry, which means I'm not going to be competing with absolutely everyone."
The next thing is it should ideally solve a very important, a huge and painful problem for your target person. The more painful, the more of a problem it is, the more frustrating it is, the more tied to business goals it is, the more money you will make as a freelancer. So, example, like I said, when I first started freelancing, I was doing all this small stuff like uploading things to WordPress, helping them edit blog posts, this kind of stuff. Yes, it's a problem for them, but it's not really a huge, frustrating problem, right? What is a huge, frustrating problem for the business owners that I was working with? Was the fact that they had teams, and they hated that every single day, every single team member was sending them 50,000 questions, and they didn't even have time to work on the things they wanted to work on. It was a huge problem for them that all of their cool ideas, none of them were getting done because they didn't have a proper—they didn't have a proper project plan or somebody keeping track of all the todos in their task. Another huge, painful problem was they had no systems or workflows in place, which meant they could never go on vacation because everything was living in their brain. The fact that they built this business, the business makes good money, but they could never take a break; they could never go on vacation because the business would fall apart without them. That is a humongous, super painful problem that I was like, "How can I solve that problem?" Because if I solve that problem, then business owners will be fighting to work with me. And of course, the last thing is you have to actually like your niche. I really hope that goes without saying. If you don't like it, it's just not going to be sustainable for you long run. You're going to hate it; you're not going to do a good job; you're not going to want to learn more about it and develop yourself, all that good stuff. You have to actually like your niche.
All right, now let's talk about how to find your niche. Let's get into it. So a few like precursory tips here: as much as possible, don't rush the process. Get-rich-quick is a huge scam in online business; there's no such thing as get-rich-quick. Get-rich-quick is more like waste-time-quick. So the question is: do you want to waste time quick, or do you want to get rich slow? Those are the only two options. All right. Now, some very controversial advice: stop trying to find your niche. And I know you're like, "D, what the heck? Like, what? Like this whole video is about niching." Forget about finding your niche if you're just getting started; you don't really have a clear service that you know you want to offer yet. The truth is that your niche finds you, and the only way your niche will find you is if you give it enough data points. So this is the not-so-sexy truth about how I found my niche exactly.
So at first, I was like, "I have no idea what to offer as a freelancer. Maybe I'll just apply to anything that I can realistically Google and figure out on my own time." Did that, and then I was like, "Oh, maybe I could try voiceovers. Like, I have a voice; I can speak words." So I did voiceovers. Then I was like, "Maybe I should try translation; I know other languages; I could try that." And then I was like, "I've dabbled in Photoshop; let me try again; see if I can make money with Photoshop." And I was like, "Oh, you know what? I really like reading blogs; I really like organization; maybe I—I can help people organize their blogs." And then business owners that had other pieces of content, like podcasts, were like, "Hey, D, do you want to help us with our podcast management?" I was like, "Sure, I can help you manage your podcast, too. I like podcasts." And that just unraveled. They were like, "Hey, D, do you want to help us launch this new online course?" I was like, "Sure, okay, I can help you project plan for a new course. Sure, I can help you hire someone if you need a virtual assistant. Sure, I can help you with systems and building SOPs." And then I was like, "I guess I'm a business manager now." And then I was like, "Wait, I love this; this is my jam." I just picked all the things that I like that clients were giving me, and then I started getting rid of all the things, the tasks that I didn't like, and then I created this role of business manager, and that's what I offer to my clients. That was my six-figure freelancing niche; it made me such good money; it was my blue ocean skill, and you can see it did not come step by step.
All right, so now let's talk about how to actually find your niche. So Step One: I want you to make a mega list of potential clients. I want you to be thinking about: what kind of businesses do you already buy from, especially small businesses? What kind of content do you already consume? What kind of stuff are you already interested in? Hobbies? What do you spend time researching and reading books on already? Where do you actually go on a regular basis? Do you go to coffee shops? Write those down; those are small businesses that need freelancers. What type of businesses do you find really cool? Anything like that. I want you to make a mega list of at least, let's say, 10 to 15 things. You can pause the video if you want and do that right now.
Step Two: I want you to make a mega list of potential services. Now, anything you're remotely interested in. So, for example, for me, it would be things like: apparently, voiceovers, graphic design, data entry, content, blogs. Don't be picky at this stage. So what are you curious to try offering? What could you easily figure out via Google? What do you come to friends for help with? What are a few of your maybe not absolute favorite hobbies, because we don't really want to monetize all of our favorite hobbies, but what are your like third, fourth, fifth favorite hobbies? And what do you lose hours doing? Like, where—when does the time just fly by? Like, for example, when I build IKEA furniture, time flies by; or in a digital context, following rules step by step in building things like systems, which is something I do help clients with. So you see it all ties together.
All right, awesome. Now you should have around 20 to 30 things that you've written down, right? So now Step Three is the biggest task. I want you to systematically work your way through that list. Now I want you to find one person for each of the things on that list and try it out. This is how you find your niche. You might be like, "D, that's so unstructured." No, this is the most strategic way of finding your niche because you're getting those data points. So if you wrote down bloggers, I want you to find one blogger—maybe not a celebrity blogger, maybe a smaller blogger—and just talk to them and see if there's something that that you can help them with, even if it's like free or discounted to start, because again, just see this as data collection. Don't worry too much about the money; I promise the money will come if you focus on the data collection and just learning and growing as much as you possibly can. And I know that's annoying advice; just do it. If you wrote down, for example, crochet as one of your hobbies—so fun—go look for people who make content on crocheting; go look for people who sell crochet stuff. I don't know anything about crochet—crochet equipment, needles, yarn—go find people who have those types of small businesses. You can go to Instagram, type in those keywords; go to YouTube, type in those keywords; go to Google, type in those keywords. At Cop crochet small business, crochet, crochet online store; look for those types of businesses, and then reach out to each of them, see what they need help with, try to get them to say yes to some sort of project, and then you have that testimonial, you have that portfolio sample, and most importantly, you know whether you actually like it or not and whether it could potentially be a niche thing for you to explore. And I want you at this point, with your list of 20 to 30 things, I want you to now rate each thing as you try them. Number one: I want you to rate it on enjoyment; how much do you actually like it, 1 to 10? And then the next thing is how profitable it actually is as a service, and the third one is how badly the client actually needs it; how big, how frustrating of a problem is it that we've talked about, right? One being the client's kind of like, "Meh, whatever, yeah, sure, you can help me with that," 10 being, "You would save my life if you fixed this problem for me." Now, anything that averages seven points across those three categories—seven and up—try it again; do it again. And if you did it free the first time, try to do a discounted this time. If you did a discounted, then increase that rate, the discounted rate, and so you'll just try it again; you'll increase the price; you will eliminate things that you don't like as much as other things; and slowly over time, you're going to notice a pattern. You might not notice it at first, but slowly there will be a pattern, just like with me; slowly over time there was a pattern, and I was like, "Oh, I really like content. Oh, I really like project management. Oh, I really like team management as well," and then I bundled that together, and I made a business management, and I was like, "Who knew that I could be paid to organize and plan things because I do those things for free."
Now here are more opinions about niching from me. Number one: say yes to absolutely everything if you're just getting started; you can be picky later. You have to earn the right to be picky. Anything that you're remotely interested in, say yes to. Talk to lots of people; get out there enough. Most freelancers are not getting out there enough; they're doing everything secretly here, like building the website, building the branding, building the logo, instead of getting out there and getting the outreach and the touch points with clients. The next thing is: remember that you aren't marrying this niche; you are not committing to life with this niche, so chill out. I know it seems like, "Oh my gosh, I'm going to have to blah blah blah." You can change your mind later; you can always change your mind about your niche; you can go full-hand 10 years down one niche and still change your mind, so don't take it too seriously. Also, quick tip: if you are offering a lot of things, then at least make sure your outreach and messaging to potential clients is niche. So when you're reaching out to a single client and you see that they have a specific problem, don't tell them everything that you do; that's too confusing. Confused people do not buy. So when you are reaching out to people and you know that there's a specific type of business, they have specific types of products, keep your outreach messaging niche for them. That's also a good strategy if you still want to stay general: just make sure that the people you're talking to, you're speaking niche to them. And I always recommend niching in slow phases versus niching day one to day two. Niching in slow phases allows you to make sure that you're actually happy with the choices; it's not too drastic a change for your clients to be like, "Wait, what are you doing?" Niche in slow phases, the way I did: content assistant, content management, project management, business management.
And my last bit of cash money advice: this is honestly the reason I was able to find my six-figure freelancing niche is when I was working and trying out all these different types of businesses and services, I was observing everything, right? I was observing the clients and the business I was in very carefully while I was doing my work for them. I was looking for: what problems do they have? What is that painful problem? What does their ideal business look like? What is keeping them from that ideal business? Why are they not there yet? Why are they not making more money? Like, what's really the blocker here? And then I was like, "How could I learn the skills to solve those problems?" That is the best way to make tons of money as a freelancer. Now, if you're struggling with niching, I actually have a video about the best and worst freelancing niches for this year; I'll link it here in case you need a little bit of inspiration on things that you could potentially be interested in trying out with new clients. That's it for this video. Thank you so much for watching; as always, I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope to catch you in the next one. Okay, bye.