This is my jam! 5 Tips to Find Your Writing Niche.
How do you know which copywriting services to offer?
What steps can you take to figure out how to position yourself in the market to offer your best writing services to those who need it?
In this blog post, I'll give you five tips to help you decide what services to offer as a freelance copywriter.
1. Follow your gut!
Ask me to write a blog post. No problem. Ask me to title it, though, and that is when panic starts to set in. I would estimate that it takes me just as long to come up with a few headlines and blog titles as it does to write the actual blog. Over the years, I have come to accept that long-form writing is my jam and short-form writing is not my specialty. And guess what? That is fine.
The first thing you need to do is realize that as a freelancer, you do not have to take on any project that does not play to your strengths. Don't like writing white papers? Then don't do it! You are your own boss. Do what comes naturally for you, especially in the beginning, and you will continue to be motivated to build your business day after day.
2. Do not reinvent the wheel
Taking on various projects during my 9-5 days helped me narrow down my best writing skills. If you have any professional writing experience, then draw on it to figure out your writing strengths.
If you are brand-spanking new to writing, then I suggest you take a free or inexpensive writing course to narrow your strengths. Taking a course as a writing newbie is a great way to develop your skills and start building your portfolio from your assignments.
3. Stay in your lane
Right now, you may have a few tabs open, researching some of the most profitable avenues in freelance copywriting. Here's a word of advice: Stop it! Why? Because what works for someone else, may leave you second-guessing your decision to become a freelance copywriter at best, or broke at worst.
When I first started, (and let's be fair, I'm still new to this), I researched a ton of websites about freelance copywriting. I saw some people charging as much as $700 for headlines and ad copy and $100 per 500-word blog post. Just looking at the numbers, it seems more lucrative for me to focus on writing headlines than it does the blog posts, right?
Wrong! I suck at writing headlines. It is not that I cannot do it, but it does not come as freely to me as long-form writing does.
Doing something based solely on price is a mistake a lot of newbies make, especially when they do not have an idea of their writing strengths.
4. Practice
"Practice makes perfect," or so the saying goes. However, I do not believe that and I do not want you to believe it either. Why? Because trying to crank out the perfect blog or the perfect newsletter is like trying to catch a rainbow. You can see what it looks like, but you can never obtain it.
Intead, focus on practicing your writing to perfect your process. At this stage, you need to concentrate on how long it takes you to create a rough draft, how long it takes you to edit a short-form piece compared to a long-form piece, and more. Having a good idea of your writing process will help you outline your budget and schedule once you begin to take on multiple clients.
5. Jam on!
Your job as a freelancer is to find and market your niche. Whether that niche is blogs, newsletters, event marketing materials, web content, etc., it is up to you to make the most of your writing strengths.
That doesn't mean you cannot have fun. In fact, you should be having fun or else you could just go back to working for someone else.
For example, if you have always wanted to learn more about interior design, call up a few interior design companies and ask if they need somoene to spearhead their blog, pro bono. You get to learn more about a subjet that interests you, build a company blog, and add the work to your portfolio. They get much needed exposure.
A fun project can help keep you going when you are working to get your freelance writing business off the ground.
Have any tips on how you found your niche? Leave them in the comments section below.
