Should You Specialize Your Writing Business? – Tips for Freelancers

Specializing as a Freelance Writer

Specializing as a Freelance WriterWhenever anyone starts any type of business one thing that is drilled into their heads is niching down. Niche down your services, niche down your audience, niche down to serve a small portion of the entire audience so that you can specialize and make more money with less work. But, is it always a good thing? Let’s explore the pros and cons of freelance writing specialization.

First, there are two ways you can specialize. You can choose to write within a certain industry regardless of the type of writing. For example, if you wanted to write for the medical industry. You can write about it in general, but you can also niche to a specific topic like pediatrics as a topic.

The second way is to specialize is to specialize your skill set. For example, if you’re a nurse who wants to write about breastfeeding you can play up your skill set as a nurse. Another idea is that you may specialize in creating lead magnets for any niche, or reports, or books. It’s up to you how you specialize, but the important thing is that if you do, that you are clear about what you do who you do it for and why you’re the right one to do it.

The Pros of Choosing a Specialization

When you choose to specialize there are a lot of benefits to doing it. The benefits are the reason that most business experts suggest niching down.

It’s Easier to Attract the Right Clients – When you know what you will write about, or the types of things you will write (such as lead magnets or reports) it’s easier to market to the right clients. For example, if you want to specialize in creating lead magnets, you’ll need to market to people who use them.

It’s Easier to Write What You Know – When you know a topic, it’s so much easier to write about it. If you have education, time and experience dedicated to a topic you can call on that when you write.

You’ll Get More Referrals – Knowing that Betty writes about breastfeeding means that if someone sees a request on a group for that type of writing, they’re going to tag you or tell you about it. Plus, if anyone asks them, they’ll be sure to refer you because they know that’s you.

You’ll Be Writing What You Enjoy – Hopefully, the thing you’re an expert in is what you also enjoy. When you like your work, it becomes much more fun to find clients, do the work, and get paid for it. It will hardly seem like work.

These pros generally make up for any cons because when marketing and finding clients your work is so much easier if you know who will need your skillset. Plus, when you work in a niche, you will be building those skills even stronger as you get more clients. While there aren’t very many cons let’s look at them anyway.

The Cons of Choosing a Specialization

While the pros probably do outweigh the cons, there are some cons. Mostly the cons have to do with stifling your creativity. It can get boring to write about the same topic all the time, or only create lead magnets instead of also writing articles.

Another con is if you choose a niche only based on money-making potential and forget about whether it brings you joy or not you may not stick to it. Does it really matter if vampire related young adult fiction is a money maker if you really hate reading it, and will hate writing it even more?

When choosing whether to niche or not to niche try to figure out how you’ll market to your audience if you don’t niche. There must be some form of a common thread that enables you to create marketing messages that resonate with them enough that they will hire you.

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