How to Find Your Freelance Writing Sweet Spot
By: Kayla Lee
Tags: Creativity, Productivity, Writing, Freelance Writing, Content Marketing

Digital marketing gives writers ample opportunity to get paid to hone their chops.

While you submit short stories and finish that memoir — wouldn’t you like to pay the bills with writing?

Enter content marketing: writing blogs, ebooks, emails, and any other form of written content that a sales or marketing team can use to educate and attract customers. Writers can sell this service to businesses.

But Kayla, isn’t writing for businesses boring?

Hell naw. There’s so much opportunity out there that you can find clients in just about any niche/industry imaginable.

Big on fly fishin’? I’ve seen publications paying $700/article (not an affiliate link) and wanting to give the best writers steady work. (My dad was ecstatic about this).

What about art history or architecture? Most major museums have blogs/online publications — you could write those posts.

A freelance writing sweet spot

I’m a big proponent of writing niches — or, more than one niche if I’m honest. But, the journey to niche(s) involves casting a wide net to find what you

love are good at earn most with

Those 3 things are a freelance writer’s sweet spot.

Here’s my journey and what I recommend to other writers who are looking to make a living as a writer.

Step 1. Understand what a niche is

A niche can be one of three things —

1. A type of content

You might specialize in writing ebooks, whitepapers, academic stuff, SEO content, sales emails, product descriptions for ecommerce sites, etc.

2. An industry or topic

You might specialize in writing about finance, psychology, or DevOps software.

3. An audience

You might specialize in writing for stay-at-home-moms, writers, software engineers, avid fly fisherman, or any other “persona.”

My most favorite, and most successful niche is — audience.

Why? Because you come to super-understand that “persona” or audience over time — and write superb content for them. The better your content, the more money your clients make. The more money your clients make, the more you’ll make.

Another benefit of an audience niche is that you can be a member of that audience.

For example, I’m writing this piece about freelance writing because I’m a freelance writer. My personal experience makes it easy for me to generate ideas and write on the topic. When things are easy to write about, we maximize our profits because it takes less time to write a piece for that audience.

2. Get clients without experience in a niche

This is much easier to do than you might think. Here’s how you’d get a gig writing about software if you’d never written about software.

You have two options, 1. write something about software on your own blog/Medium and share that with your software prospect. Or, 2. Use a “type of content” to win that gig.

For example, if you‘ve won awards for writing ebooks — you can pitch that you’d be great at writing a software ebook and share examples of other ebooks you’ve written on other topics.

3. Try lots of niches

When I started, I tried writing for marketing software (martech) and sales software because my background was in sales and marketing. I also tried writing about industrial technology, outdoors, coaching, writing, and I.T.

I’ve narrowed this down to my current audience/industry niches:

I love (freelance writing industry/writer audience) I am good at (entrepreneur audience) I earn most with (I.T. industry/engineer audience)

I recommend giving yourself all three (love, good at, earn most with) for a happy balance.

You MUST let yourself write the things you love, even if it means lower earnings on those pieces. Otherwise, you’ll burn out. And I believe, that if you continue to write what you love regardless of earnings, you’ll eventually earn most there.

Many of my writer friends find that one niche satisfies all three. I feel happiest having a few topics to write on.

4. Scale with content-type niches

Once I established my industry/audience niches, I started expanding my business with content types.

Here’s how.

I start with clients by offering blog articles on a per-project basis. Next, I upsell other types of content: mostly sales emails and ebooks that support sales efforts during long sales cycles. You might sell social media management, newsletter creation, whitepapers, ghostwriting CEO’s books (very fun and lucrative!), etc. I track the results (data) of those content types and make sure I share those results with clients. This proves return on investment (ROI) and if you can prove your worth to clients — you won’t lose them.

ROI = $ your content earns a client / $ they pay you for that content

Businesses LOVE an ROI of 2:1 or more. So, if they pay you $1,000 for an ebook and they net $2,000 or more in sales from the folks who downloaded it — you’re their favorite human.

5. Say no to everything else

When you find the perfect combination of —

industry and audience niches + content-type upsells

— you’ve found your freelance writing sweet spot.

screenshot of my sweet spot

When I found my sweet spot, I started saying no to everything else. This exploded the number of referrals I’d get because I became known for my niche stuff. My prospects say things like:

Oh, you need help writing sales emails and supporting sales content that targets engineers? You need Kayla Lee, she’s the best in I.T. at that.

Be the best at VERY specific things

If you’re going to earn bank as a writer, you need to be the best at something. It can be the most random thing in the world, like how I am very good at ebooks and emails that support sales efforts in I.T.

Maybe you are the world’s best medical technology blog post writer. Or maybe you’re the world’s best art history brochure writer for major museums in France.

Find your sweet spot through trial and error, and upsell upsell upsell that special “type” of content. Before long you’ll have emails like: Do you have time for a whitepaper this month? We’ll pay premium if you make time. Your client XYZ says you’re the best whitepaper writer in all of mass transportation data.