You’ve heard the “gurus” say you should “pick a niche”, or “niche down”, or “find the most profitable niches”.

So, what is a niche?

There are a surprising number of meanings for the word “niche”.

But the meanings we’re looking for are that a niche is “an activity for which a person or thing is best fitted” or “a defined category”.

So, in picking a niche, you want to find an activity that you’re good at and enjoy doing (best fitted) in a market with many similarities (defined category).

Why Should You Pick a Niche?

The short answer to “why pick a niche” is that by narrowing your focus, you’ll become an expert at it, enjoy the work, and get paid more for doing it.

If you think about it, in our lives outside of our work, we’ve all picked niches, either consciously or unconsciously.

For example, if you’re a sports fan, you’ve chosen the sports niche. You’ve probably niched down by focusing on your favorite sports and ignoring others (basketball, but not cricket, or vice versa). You further narrowed your niche by following and knowing everything about your home team.

You read about your sport, the teams, the players, who’s having a good year, and who isn’t. You talk to other sports fans and watch the games. You’ve become an expert in that niche.

If you’re a sports fan and a copywriter, designer, or programmer, wouldn’t you like to be part of the communications department for your favorite team? Dream job, right?

You’d understand your audiences, know what they like, what excites them, how to encourage them to buy tickets and merchandise, and how to support the team.

Naturally, you’d be better at your job than someone who doesn’t enjoy sports, doesn’t follow your team, but for some reason is assigned to write a 2,000-word article on it.

How Do You Pick a Niche?

Freelancers often ask, “How do I pick a niche?”

Maybe you’re in your first few years of business. You’re trying to learn as fast as you can. But more importantly, you’re looking for clients and projects to sustain your business. You need the revenue, and “picking a niche” implies that you would turn away some business because it doesn’t fit your niche. That’s tough to do.

Maybe Let the Niche Pick You?

Here’s my advice for anyone at this early stage. Don’t worry too much about picking a niche yet. Get as much broad experience as you can. Soon you will see that you have some clients that are similar to each other.

Word of mouth is probably working for you. Your name is being passed around, and you’re becoming recognized in that sector. You also like the work.

In other words, your niche is forming. Once you start to see that, then you should consciously seek to expand within that niche. Find clients that are a complement to it.

So rather than the standard advice—“follow your passion”—I would say get good at something, and that will become your passion, aka, your niche. In other words, let the niche pick you.

I wrote about how freelancers can start with their existing client base to build a niche here.

A Personal Example of How I Developed a Niche

When I started freelance copywriting, my first big steady client was in the marketing department of our regional electrical utility. At the time, electrical utilities were rolling out various incentive programs to promote energy efficiency.

I started by writing copy for brochures, ads, direct mail, the web, and email campaigns. Within a year, I was an expert on the various programs, technologies, and audiences.

Here’s what excited me about the work. Energy efficiency is good for the environment. It helped phase out polluting generating plants. No more summer smog days. It saved money for the customers.

It was also common sense. Why would you waste electricity? It was practical, and once you understood it, obvious. At the scale of a major utility with thousands of customers, it made a real difference in society. All of that appealed to me.

That one-client niche was the basis for forming my first agency. There was plenty of work for more than one person. I found a business partner, and soon the agency was growing. Here are tips on how to find the ideal business partner or cofounder for your agency.

Through word of mouth and personal recommendations, we developed this narrow niche into working for other utilities and organizations in the energy field.

And since these companies are government-regulated, it wasn’t a giant leap for us to get on the preferred vendor list for the provincial government and start working for various ministries. (Here’s how to get on vendor lists for big corporate and government accounts.)

So, as you can see, niches are expandable. What defined this niche for us? Most of our clients were government-regulated and had to do with projects that had a significant societal impact.

We learned how to work efficiently with these clients. We received detailed briefs, which in turn required us to produce detailed estimates. (Learn how to increase your billing with detailed estimates here.)

Most importantly, the clients had significant budgets to achieve their goals. The work was ongoing—one project led to the next one.

Two Niche Categories—Vertical and Horizontal Niches

I look at niches in two ways: vertical and horizontal.

The vertical niche is what I described in my example. Learn about a market sector and specialize in it. That’s what most people mean when they say choose a niche.

There are thousands of sectors, so you may as well find one that you enjoy.

Pro Tip: Don’t pick a niche you don’t like, even if it’s highly profitable. It becomes drudgery, and you’ll hate your work. Just don’t.

The other type of niche is a horizontal niche which most often applies to technology-related companies like web developers, email marketers, or filmmakers.

In this case, you focus on one technology. For example, you may be a web developer, but your niche is just sites built on the WordPress platform. You could niche down further and specialize in “headless WordPress” sites. So, you don’t care too much about the client sector, only that you will use a specific technology to meet their requirements.

You can decide what level of service you want to offer in this type of niche. For example, if you’re a filmmaker working with clients who want videos for their sites and/or YouTube, do you just handle production, or do you also offer scriptwriting, art direction, and promotion?

Making these types of decisions will have a significant impact on how you market yourself within your niche.

Your Goal When Picking a Niche—Become a Highly Paid Recognized Expert

Once you’ve established yourself in a niche, you should be marketing your expertise. To do that, you’ll need a focused portfolio, testimonials from happy clients, maybe some case studies, and an active social media presence.

Now you can let your work do the talking for you. You can approach potential clients to offer your services. With good SEO, the clients will find you.

Your pitch to them? Little or no learning curve since you know their business. You can work efficiently and add your own industry insights to the work.

But there are a few critical decisions you have to make.

What are the Highest Paying Communications Niches?

In theory, it could be any niche, but in practice, it’s the niches closest to actual money. It’s also the niches where the competition is high, and the services are virtually undifferentiated.

Here are some examples: finance which includes banking, investments, and insurance. They’re purely about money, right? They’re in highly competitive markets, very profitable (check salaries of banking CEOs), and generally offer similar services. For these clients, being able to reach their preferred audiences and lock them in is incredibly valuable. They’ll pay for expertise.

Or look at healthcare, corporate consulting, or I.T. Again, very competitive, similar products and services, requiring specialized knowledge, with big dedicated budgets.

Government or monopolistic government-related organizations can be very good. Although they’re generally not selling in a competitive environment, they need to communicate new programs or offers.

You can also look at trends. Pets, for example, have seen massive growth in the past decade, especially since the pandemic began in 2020. Pet owners are spending more than ever on specialized food, pet care, accessories, etc.

In contrast, what tend to be low-paying niches? It seems obvious, but sectors where there isn’t much money to go around. Many not-for-profits fall into this category. They’re always scrambling for funding and have many competing requirements for every dollar.

Also, generic products that just live on low price. Go into any dollar store, and you’ll realize that most of those products are not heavily marketed (some of the brand name products, yes, but not the generic stuff).

Surprisingly, there’s often very little money in the glamor sectors such as music, movies, fashion, and publishing. They frequently run on low-paid or unpaid interns because of the alleged “glamor” that the industry provides.

Should You Work in a Low-Paying Niche?

It might sound like a dumb question, but if money is less important to you than passion, then yes. If there are causes that speak to you and you want to help promote, then go for it.

Just as long as you walk in with your eyes open. In this case, you’re not doing it for the money, and that’s okay.

Find Clients with Recurring Business

Whether the specific companies are large or small, ideally, you want clients that have ongoing needs for the services you provide.

A colleague does video, photography, and package design for organic food producers. Compared to banks, these companies are tiny. But they’re doing well, they’re constantly introducing new products, getting distribution in larger stores, and therefore need an ongoing supply of new materials.

Starting with one company in the sector has led to referrals, collaborations, and new clients who’ve seen the work on social platforms and store shelves.

As long as the budgets are appropriate for the required work, these types of clients can be enough for your business and fun to work with year after year.

Last Word—Promote Your Expertise in Your Niche

Fine-tune your messaging on your site, in emails, and on social so that others know exactly who you are and what you do.

Find the best way to define your niche and use those words wherever you can.

Learn more about finding your niche for your freelance or agency business in my book, How to Start a Successful Creative Agency. It’s the essential business guide for graphic designers, copywriters, filmmakers, photographers, and programmers.

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The book is packed with useful information to help freelancers start and grow their business.

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Freelancers: How to Pick a High-Paying Niche