There are many benefits of niche writing. While I don’t believe that it’s necessary to immediately write yourself into one niche, having a particular topic that you cover will help your freelance writing career grow. The problem for many is knowing where to start.

You can pick a subject and not quite have a niche. If you’ve seen me writing in the past, you’ll know that I love history. It’s a topic that I enjoy writing about, but I don’t just cover the whole of history. My main focus is the Tudor and Stuart periods. I started with Henry VIII’s six wives and built out from that, still sticking to roughly the same time period; something that connects back to the original niche.

Niche writing involves choosing something that covers a specific focus. For example, you could write about being parents with older children at home. You may write about caring for elderly parents. You may even write about caring for a terminally ill loved one.

Narrowing down your focus is important but how do you do that?

More: Why you should start your own blog instead of another paid-to-write site

Personal experiences work great for niche writing

Think about something that you already have a personal experience with. I’m slowly breaking into working from home as a mom. It’s a very narrow niche that not everyone is able to cover.

Working from personal experience is a great way to choose your topic. It’s something that you already know a lot about and you know the more common questions that people have.

Take being a work at home mom as the example. There are parents looking at how to find a career with children at home. Parents are looking for tips to balance their work and family life. They want to know how to be more productive, more organized.

Basing it from your own experience helps you become an authority quickly and you offer valuable content. You write your own tried and tested solutions to problems faced.

Write about something you love

You need passion for niche writing to be successful. If you don’t like something, then it will show in your writing. So, find a topic that you’re passionate about; something that excites you.

Not only will this excite your readers but you’ll constantly come up with new ideas for posts. You’ll never run out of things to say and find new angles to the same information.

This is why I chose history for some of my writing. In fact, history was the first thing I started writing about when I started at HubPages. I love learning more and delving deeper into the facts. I love looking for reasons why something happened—such as why Anne Boleyn was really executed and whether Anne of Cleves was smart enough to agree to an annulment.

It doesn’t mean you have to have a degree in the subject to be passionate about. However, if it is something technical, make sure you do your research to get the right information!

Choose something with little competition

You need some competition—no competition is a sign that it’s not going to be a profitable niche. However, you don’t want too much competition. As you think about niche writing, do your research into the subject.

How many other people are writing about it? Who are those people? Can you create a niche website that will rank above them?

While it is still possible to rank highly with high competition keywords and niche, it is just harder and will take longer. For your first website, you want to make it as easy as possible. As you learn more about freelance and niche writing, you can start choosing more competitive areas.

Niche writing requires people to invest

Whether it is time or money, the best way to make niche writing work for you is to find an area that requires people to invest; and where they’re willing to invest! You may love writing about computer games but you need to choose an area that encourages people to spend their time and money in. Giving your own reviews of old games or talking about the history of games consoles isn’t going to quite make the money you want.

How does investing time work for you? They’ll read your blog and want to learn more. This is perfect if you use ads on your site; whether you use some sort of software like Google AdSense or people pay you for a set period of time for an ad.

Going back to my work at home mom example; this is a topic that people will spend time looking through posts and doing their own research. You can lead to offering products and services for purchase that makes working from home with children easier. You could even create an eBook that covers a variety of solutions that you’ve had experience with to your readers.

Getting into niche writing isn’t very difficult. Choose a subject that you are passionate about and find a narrow area that has low competition but is highly sought after.

More: 5 essential tips for starting your writing career

What type of niche writing are you looking to break into? Have you found it difficult or have you used other tips to get there? Share in the comments below.

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