Get Rich in Your Niche…

… That’s what Bob Bly, the guy McGraw-Hill has dubbed “America’s top copywriter,” considers the first rule of successful freelance writing. And our contributors in today’s blog agree. “The worst thing a writer can do,” insists Luigi Benetton–copywriter, journalist and trainer in information technology–“is to say, ‘Well, I’ll write about anything’.” Specialists appeal strongly to clients. “You have to be known for something.”

In his book, Everything You Wanted to Know About Freelance Writing, Paul Lima echoes this thought. “If you say you are willing to write anything for anybody,” he quips, “then you will find yourself writing nothing for nobody.”

But what’s the real case for narrowing your focus? You’ll get “shown the money” more often. Business clients, in particular, feel more comfortable with someone who has experience in their industry. In fact, the B2Community website advises its 17,000 readers that working with someone experienced brings better results.

This holds true beyond the corporate market. A science editor at Wired magazine says she trusts pitches from specialists more than generalists, because she feels she can rely on their abilities.

Our digital age virtually requires specialization. The Internet floods us daily with knowledge–more bits of information now than there are stars in our universe, says computing company EMC. With a specialty, you can realistically claim to be on top of one area. No one really buys the idea that we can be experts at everything, insists veteran freelancer Gordon Graham who will be speaking at the upcoming MagNet conference in Toronto. Those who claim this come across as a little over-eager. With someone saying they write about one topic, say parenting, we can’t help but believe they must really know their business.

Specializing not only makes you more money, it’s an easier path. That’s been Gordon’s experience. “You do your basic research on a few projects and then after that the learning curve is much simpler.” When he writes in his specialty–white papers and case studies for software companies–these practically write themselves. Should he step outside that domain, he needs to do a heck of a lot of research. “I earn much less per hour, and if I do that too many times, much less per year.”

Okay, let’s assume the case has been made for the specialist route. But where to go from here? That’s the subject of our Show Me the Money blog this time around:

“How does a writer find the right niche?”

First off, some introspection is in order, something Gordon believes most people have never done. His recommended first step? Identify the areas you’ve worked in and the types of documents you’ve written. Think about your whole life. Paul Lima offers four areas to look at: education, work experience, hobbies/interests, and passions. Include full-time, part-time, and volunteer work.

Yikes, this could soon slip into a navel-gazing sinkhole. Not so, our contributors insist, there are ways to make the process both effective and efficient. Look for clues, suggests Gordon. Like this key one: Of all that you’ve done, which areas/efforts were (still are) your favourites?

Start with your passion. That’s MagNet speaker Mariellen Ward’s word to the wise. Publisher of the “meaningful adventure travel blog,” Breathedreamgo.com, Mariellen has been inspired by her passion for travel in India. Her success has come from actually “mining’ her obsessions. In her world as travel blogger, her niches–India and meaningful travel–are unique. “I tend to be interested in spiritual and what I call meaningful adventure travel experiences.” That’s distinguished her, a distinction that has attracted travel readers seeking that something more.

Paul points to patterns or “cluster” associations as a way to narrow your focus. Is there any grouping of your skills, education and experience that suggests specific writing services you can offer to particular sectors? An example: You’ve worked on Company X’s product catalogue; took a design and print course at a community college; are familiar and interested in the printing industry. That’s your evidence. Your possible sector choice could then be printing; your document focus, product catalogues.

Still stuck for niche notions? Gordon recommends two ways of determining your specialization:

▪       Horizontally, by type of document. For example with periodicals it could be features or opinion pieces; for corporate, white papers or speeches.

▪       Vertically, by a sector of the economy, such as e-commerce or healthcare, or by interest area or hobby such as pottery or gardening.

And there are even more. Specialize by skills. For example, research ability, which a medical writer could use to synthesize online information about a particular disease for a pharmaceutical client. Or pick your specialty based on writing style. For example, the ability to simplify the technical or the complex, or to express information in the more engaging style of the storyteller.

Your childhood can hold clues as well, says Mariellen. When she went to India and began to write her India travel blog, she was writing about her childhood fantasies. “As a child, I was obsessed with the Arabian Nights, the ‘exotic Orient’.” And that six-month magic carpet ride in India changed her. It was only later (years later she admits) that she realized it wasn’t so much the destination of India that was her niche but the theme of change, of transformative travel.

Move from You to Them. Specifically to Their Problems.

Now, ask yourself, ‘Who needs the kind of writing I want to do or can do?” That’s Gordon’s Step Two. Note the word, “needs.” Think of your writing as the solution to client problems or the means for them to realize an untapped, even unrealized, opportunity. Consider this option. Almost every product sold comes with some type of instruction manual but the vast majority are incomprehensible to the customer, accounting for more than 50% of all returns. The skills of a freelance manual writer would be a welcome change for any of these product manufacturers.

Solution-oriented expertise can evolve from a knowledge base. A legal secretary for example who knows and loves lawsuits was able to carve out a niche around business bankruptcies. The value for his clients: Finding someone who understood their industry, one it seemed that appealed to few of his writing colleagues.

Ditto for a hobby. A gardening aficionado with a writer’s skill can create marketing materials for lawn care product manufacturers. A scrapbooker could offer to write customer stories for specialty paper manufacturers like Calgary-based Scrapbook, Eh Wholesale.

For Mariellen, it was her focus on understanding that her blog visitors were looking for meaning, an authentic voice to be their travel guide, that propelled her into the ranks of the recognized, and the well-paid. It was that concept that resonated with the Irish Tourism folks in Toronto when they recently accepted Mariellen’s proposal to research her roots in their country. Because it was different, special. “They said, ‘It is so unusual for someone to come in and say I want to do something deeply meaningful and personal’.”

Be creative in your thinking. You may favour charity work but charities aren’t likely able to pay well. You may, though, be able to pivot this passion into writing grants directed at an industry group where you have valid credentials. Say you’ve worked in the oil & gas industry or you have a science degree or you’ve done some teaching. Consider approaching the ExxonMobil Foundation for a piece of their $125 million campaign to help raise awareness about the state of math and science achievement in the U.S. – The Let’s Solve This campaign.

Find high-paying possibilities and marry these to what you like, counsels Gordon. Take the case of his path to a focus on white papers and client stories (case studies). As a former vice-president of marketing, Gordon wrote and commissioned all of the most common types of documents. Over time, he found he liked the more journalistic, fact-based ones. And he had discovered these were the ones that got his company more traction.

Gordon’s story holds another clue. Write a lot and what you like will most likely bubble to the surface. As it did for Luigi who says his niche, technology, found him. Seems perhaps a bit unlikely, but think of it this way: You’ve already done a lot of writing, or if not, a lot of different jobs, and if you give yourself permission to do so, says Mariellen, you know in your gut what you enjoy writing about. Let the marketplace point you to the best-paying gigs.

Luigi’s story goes like this. In his pre-freelance life, he had a job as a technical writer for a software firm. “I’ve always enjoyed fooling around with technology. I took a good look at what I wanted to do, and said; hey I’m good at it, why not?” And he found a lot of companies are experimenting with mobile technology. Mercedes, for example, publishes both iPhone and iPad applications for its salespeople. So Luigi wants to write for mobile application developers so they can better market to and serve companies like Mercedes.

Organizing your niche thoughts is an important step.

To get the most out of your clue-ferreting activities, it is best to jot them down in an organized fashion. Paul offers a worksheet style: you list each of your niche clusters of evidence (appropriate bits from your education/experience etc.), noting the sectors that would value these, and then, the documents you will write to deliver that sector value. Sounds like work, which it is, but Paul’s approach has a number of pluses. Not only do you begin to realize your best niche(s), at the same time, you learn how to craft a credibility pitch that showcases, for a prospect, the evidence proving why you’re the expert who can help them.

A niche is not a prison, nor need it be your one-and-only.

Specialization doesn’t mean only one niche, and you’re never wedded to a niche. In fact, it’s not wise to be too narrow and have your specialty drop off the radar (remember the dot.com disaster?). Plus, a unique niche is not essential. Sounds counterintuitive, yet it is doable. Mariellen points to a fellow freelancer in the already well-populated niche of the single/solo travel blogger who’s differentiating herself by taking a very professional approach to the topic.

Gordon echoes this advice. You don’t need a niche that no other writer occupies. Take client stories/case studies. A recent statistic says 90% of companies are now using them. That attracts a lot of wannabe case study writers so how are you going to rise above this hungry horde?

That’s not nearly as hard as you might think, insists Gordon. He relies on his magazine roots. “I don’t do anything more than write a good-quality magazine story, with an actual lead and conclusion, lots of quotes, and maybe a metaphor to unify the story.” Yet even these basic elements, he insists, puts him far ahead of most people who are touting their case study talents.

Experts and nichers need proof. That’s really the binding tie between what you love and what you can get paid well to do. The proof offered by writing samples is perhaps the most important; they offer the concrete proof, as Luigi says, “that I know what I am writing about.”

But what if you’re shy a decent crop of samples to solidify your niche expertise? Write for trade magazines or for web sites aimed at your niche community is Gordon’s recommendation. Trade magazine editors are constantly looking for good writers. If you’ve got the knowledge base, and you position yourself as someone who’d like to write in this area, knows a certain amount about it (insert here your evidence a la Paul’s list), Gordon’s experience is that 50 percent of the time they’re going to give you a try. And they don’t expect freebies. You won’t be paid at the marquee client rate, as for Chatelaine or Canadian Business, but you won’t have to do two or three rewrites, either.

Another way is to volunteer (yes, this time do give it away) to write for a charity or an association, their newsletter for example. Preferably one that has some links to the sectors you’d like to target. Never write for free for a corporate or mainstream periodical client. On this Gordon is adamant. But it is perfectly acceptable not to charge the nonprofit sector.

Still unsure of which niche has a reasonable market for you to tap into?

Look for clients who have already bought into the value of quality content and are willing to pay for it. Gordon offers smaller companies as his illustration of this. According to the Content Marketing Institute, they spend over 60 percent more on content than larger companies. And they don’t nickel and dime you to death in rewrite hell. “When I write a white paper for Google, they have 15 people reviewing it. When I write for a medium-sized company, it’s usually the president and vice president.”

Marketers everywhere have begun to embrace the social web, many are now using written content as the vehicle to carry their messages to prospects and customers. The tourism industry is Mariellen’s example here. “They are finally waking up to the reality that 90 percent or more of travellers do their travel research online and are starting to partner with travel bloggers.”

And do some research. We don’t mean the basic Google word search ,which is a time drain. Luigi has some great shortcut suggestions. For example, using the “fantastic” LinkedIn database, he is searching out marketing managers in his niche of mobile application developers and checking in with mobile app groups to catch the latest industry buzz.

Rely on your network is Mariellen’s research tip. Her Twitter friends, for example, helped her realize her real niche, transformational travel, and create the tagline for her blog. And she’s right on top of what’s going on among travel bloggers, and that’s confirmed the uniqueness of her focus. “I network a lot, and I don’t know anyone else who is going after this niche.”

Look on the web in your sectors/industries and see who’s doing your document specialty. Take customer stories/case studies. Find those companies who are doing these but not well. Approach them with the idea of how you can help them, and prove it with your credentials. Gordon suggests something like, ‘I am an experienced magazine writer with 25 stories in x and z. You can see my samples on my website, ‘reallygreat-writer.com’. I’ve interviewed over 50 executives. And I’m interested in writing for your industry. I’ve noticed the customer stories on your website and I believe I can put more zing into them, make them more compelling, and make them work better for you as a marketing tool.’

And this brings us right back to the beginning–the value of being a perceived expert. You’re no longer the starving writer asking for a break. That, says Gordon, is just putting more work on your client’s back to figure out whether they can use you. Instead, you’re already a specialist in their industry, and you’ve got the evidence to prove it. That elevates your stature immediately from being just one of the vast (perhaps not unwashed but likely underfed) writing masses. You come with a solution to their problem, that makes you the expert, and their peer.

And it gives you a straighter path to where the money is.

Luigi Benetton is a copywriter, journalist and trainer who focuses on serving the information technology industry. For more information, including free special reports, check out his website www.LuigiBenetton.com.

Award-winning writer Gordon Graham has been a freelancer for 25 years, and written close to 1,000 magazine articles for everyone from accountants to woodworkers. He currently specializes in B2B white papers and customer stories for clients such as Google, Intuit, and Oracle. Gordon is a past president of PWAC. www.ThatWhitePaperGuy.com

Paul Lima is the author of “Everything You Wanted to Know About Freelance Writing” and several other books on business writing and the business of writing. You can read more about Paul and his book online at www.paullima.com/books.

Mariellen Ward is a travel writer and blogger who writes the “meaningful adventure” travel blog, Breathedreamgo.com, inspired by her extensive journeys in India. She writes for many print and online publications. Her book, Song of India: Tales of Travel and Transformation, is available for sale on her blog.