Profitable Writing Niches For Serious Freelancers (BEST 2024 Strategies)
So many freelance writers take ONE approach to profitable writing niches: picking the "richest" niche or the niche with the "most" high-paying clients. These DON'T exist, especially when you're looking for six-figure freelance writing clients, writing for interesting freelance clients who pay well, or working to get more high-paying freelance writing jobs.
Attracting good freelance writing clients, getting copywriting or content marketing clients and work, or understanding where the profitable niches actually are (they're NOT what you think) means understanding how your specific high-paying clients work. What are they looking for in a writing partnership? How do freelance writing clients with the best projects connect with writers? And how can you position yourself to meet these diamond clients at their level? That's what this step-by-step video is all about.
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Profitable Writing Niches For Serious Freelancers (BEST 2024 Strategies)
There's no magic wand wave that helps you get profitable writing niches. There's a lot of copy out there, a lot of blog posts, a lot of videos about how you need to have the right niche or the right copy or the right, this thing. And the truth is that you aligning with what you're expecting. Experience knowledge expertise and skills are that's your best case scenario for profitable writing niches Of course, we can split cake and icing This is something that I teach to my wealth lab students and my runway students and I feel like this is kind of that mix between working for bigger clients or content marketing or content strategy clients and working with publications or working on fiction or poetry projects, whatever kind of your creative juices want to go.
1) Profitable Writing Niches Are NOT Types of Writing
So the first thing, number one, the first thing that I want to talk about when we're going through profitable writing niches, it's not types of writing. This is something that I think gets mistaken a lot. When I ask a new student or when I ask a writer, Hey, Where do you find case study clients or where do you find blog post clients?
They don't know right? There's no answer to that because there's so many different types of clients Who need blog posts or white papers or email drip campaigns or case studies? What you want to focus on is niches What you want to do is find niches that are the mix of your experience knowledge and knowledge expertise and skills.
You want to make sure you're putting all those things in the soup and going towards niches that have made tons of money, right? I often give the revenue ranges. So your midsize companies are usually 5 million to 50 million. It could be higher depending on your niche and then you're kind of startups are a minimum of 20 million.
Three to 10 million in revenue or funding. All of those things help you get closer to finding those right copywriting content strategy, content marketing clients, but we're not going after this finding the white paper client or finding the, this type of content client that gives you almost no direction.
There's lots of clients who do lots of different types of projects and lots of different types of niches. We're going for niches because that's what your clients are searching for. That's really critical. It's not always what you're doing and what you're, uh, changing your website or LinkedIn to, or how you're sending out LOIs and pitches, right?
It's also about the activity of your ideal clients, making sure that those things are in alignment, your LinkedIn, your website, how you set up your processes. with how your clients are looking to find you. High paying clients have a very specific way that they go about finding people, right? They end up going through a lot of different processes or searches.
They were looking for the right writer for their brand, not just any writer, not just someone to just create content, right? That would be kind of a lower end client. That would be someone who's just like create mass content. Just do this all the time. That's not what we're looking for. We're looking to align with these High end, high paying, freelance writing, content strategy, content marketing, copywriting, whatever your thing is, brand messaging, messaging and positioning clients, all of those in a group.
We're looking to align with those clients based on the niche that we're in. So they're looking for that. They're looking for someone who's in their niche. They're looking for someone who can hop in and say, hey, I, I know how to do this. I get it, we're in the same pool, and then we're gonna create this type of work.
So don't get stuck in that trap of thinking that niches, your profitable writing niches, have to do with types of writing. That's wrong. That's just not how it works. Uh, if you are someone who is a generalist, I often have this conversation with some writers who are coming from journalism, or who have done a bunch of copywriting projects, If you're kind of a generalist you can kind of squeak away with kind of looking at what would be my really good Copywriting or case study client for landing pages or my really good white paper client or uh Who's my best email drip campaign client because you have the amount of experience and data to start cutting that list down But if you're someone who's coming in and you're like trying to figure out what's the most profitable niches Let me tell you about number two.
2) WRONG Question: What’s The Most Profitable Niche?
Number two. This is a big mistake. I have a lot of times been asked by writers, what are the most profitable niches? I need to make money. Let's just do that. It does not work. It does not work. Long term what ends up happening. Is they either decide one freelance writing just isn't for me or they burn out and they hate freelance writing and they quit Either way, they end up not doing freelance writing anymore because all they did was focus on the money They're just like oh if I write in this profitable niche Whether they think that is a type of content or a certain type of business right in industry or niche What ends up happening is they hate it.
You can't do that long term. It's not a sustainable business. It's not a good way to make six figures. It's not a good way to hit your income goals or hit the goals you have for your business or the types of clients you want to work with. This is a big, big mistake. When we kind of set the focus on like who will pay me the most money, who will pay you the most money based on It's based on you going to find your clients and you setting your rates and you negotiating with clients and you working with their budget It has nothing to do with like magic profitable niches.
So I want you to kind of clear that off your slate There is no like oh i'll be in fintech because that makes the most money or oh I'll just end up doing bitcoin or oh i'll just do biotech or whatever that does not work You have to kind of find this combination of things expertise knowledge experience and skills That's where you make the most money.
And the other part of this example in number two is that you have a bunch of writers. So I've known writers in the most insane, ridiculous, amazing niches that are just, I never thought they would be big and they're big for them. They're big for them because they know how to find those clients. They know exactly what they're supposed to be doing to find those clients.
They know how to talk to them. They have that experience, knowledge, expertise and skills for that niche and they end up making great money and working on really fun projects. That's because they know a lot of stuff, right? They have a lot of background in that niche. Now, it's not kind of small stuff like You know history or knitting or stuff like that or crafting that stuff Like there's just not a lot of people who do content marketing for that So we're looking for a mix of people who are doing content marketing and it might be a little weird But it's something you can make work This is why you'll find a bunch of people who make six figures writing in just food and travel Is because even though people view those as like competitive niches, right?
Those niches end up being really great for people who are combining all those four categories They're putting that knowledge, experience, expertise, and skills together. They're doing all the stuff, sending their marketing, doing their LOIs and pitches, identifying their right clients. Figuring out the projects that their ideal clients need help with most and going forward with that this is why when I see people who are like Oh, I tried to do sass and it didn't work or I tried to do Whatever the niche was that they were told this was going to make the most money It doesn't work because you have to kind of go with the stuff that's interesting to you something you can do long term And then you start kind of whittling out who's your best fit?
Who's my best client? Who makes the most sense in this niche? You What are the types of people who are doing content marketing? What do they look like? What types of projects that information is gold? We're not just like that niche will pay me a bunch of money, right? There's a big difference between getting a ten thousand dollar white paper in your niche And trying to do a ten thousand dollar white paper just because you're in this random niche because you were like it has money It'll be a shit show i'm telling you every time i've tried to do something where i'm like This is for the money or i've seen other writers or heard other writers do stuff just for the money like that You It just blows up in their face because it's just not a fit for you.
It's not going to work longterm. So I want you to avoid that mistake. It's not about the most profitable niches. It's not about the most profitable projects. It's kind of blazing your own path and using the data from your own interests. Your own experience your background to then build a profitable business on top of all the stuff.
3) How Do You Select Niches For Diamond Freelance Writing Clients?
You're really interested in That's something that's that's long term. That's something that's sustainable. And then the last thing we're going to talk about here is number three So the last thing we're going to talk to about talk about is how we're going to move forward so when we're moving through our Our niches when we're thinking about attracting the right freelance writing clients When we're thinking about digging for our diamond clients or who's really going to pay the best You That all connects with getting into making your LinkedIn and website speak to your clients at the right level.
This is all about getting all those things together. And I always have these questions that I go through. Now some of them are available. So if you grab my cheat sheet, my free seasoned veteran cheat sheet, you go to mandalas. com slash cheat sheet. You get the some of the questions for your website and LinkedIn to attract the right client.
But I want you to know that answering those questions means getting on the same tuning fork as these high end clients You need to speak their language part of that language is being in their niche Part of that language is explaining how you're going to work together Part of that language is letting them know what projects you can work on together And part of that is showing them that you understand their pain points.
You understand what they struggle with most Why they struggle with content marketing or why they struggle with content that converts All that stuff is really key. It's proving to them that you're on their level, you get it, and you're there to help, right? So we're doing all this stuff within our LinkedIn, our website, and our LOIs.
We have our niches in our LOIs. And our pitches if you're going after magazines. But a lot of times when we're kind of thinking about our profitable niches or getting to the right clients, there's no magic database. Uh, I think this is something that I always try to harp on with students or with writers is like your ideal clients aren't posting on the internet.
They're not putting up a job ad. They're not posting on LinkedIn. They're not sharing with the world that they're struggling. That's really the key. You have to imagine that your ideal clients are struggling. And you're there to send an LOI or reach out or connect with them. In order to help them with their content.
Your job is to make sure that you're taking an action every single day to move your business forward. And to do that, you're reaching out to these clients who might be afraid to go to their boss to ask for help. These clients who might have just taken a new job and they need extra freelance help on a temporary basis.
Or they're they want someone long term, but they don't want to hire full time So your job is to get out there and find them. They're not posting this stuff That's why you might get on linkedin and you see that a lot of those job ads end up having 500 people apply to them In 24 hours, right? That has nothing to do with niche that has nothing to do with desperation that has nothing to do with the client.
It has to do with writers understanding how to find their right clients. Being in these profitable niches, right? Really has to do with you. It has to do with your interests, what you're willing to go after. And for me, when I've looked at my own business, my own six figure business, my students businesses, my friends businesses, is it's literally alignment on interest and your experience and your knowledge and your skills.
That alignment blows things up. It makes your business great, right? It's something where you might be in food and travel or I have a friend who does kubernetes Or I have another one who does sass and accounting Or, you know, I have students who do biotech and healthcare, or there might be people who are in fintech and wealth management, or there might be people who are in a mix of icing, right?
And cake. So they might do ag tech or they might do green tech, but they might also mix in veterinary sass, right? There's all these things that you're mixing together. And I usually recommend that we're mixing at least three to five niches because there's always going to be an up and down. This happens for the lifetime of your business.
There will always be a niche that's up and a niche that's down. This is just how it works. It has nothing to do with the outside world. I have seen this in my own business. When everybody else has a ton of work, I have no work and it has to do with certain niches and how their business is going right now.
So there's a lot of things that you're kind of tracking in your business and paying attention to. But I also want you to understand that when we have more than one egg or two eggs in the basket, That helps with the longevity of our business. That helps with us making more money. That helps with us getting through those feast and famine cycles if you're still struggling with that Which I know a lot of people are this is really gonna even that out Instead of you having one or two niches where it can be really volatile You have a collection of eggs that you can send all your LOIs and pitches to to have a more well rounded business That's the whole goal.
These niches are are to give you different pools to swim in, to find different clients, to work on different projects, because you're going to figure out that certain clients only want this type of content, but these other clients want five different types of content. You'll also figure out that some of these clients only want content strategy because they're not really ready to execute yet.
They need a plan. There's going to be a lot of different pools that you swim in and the more pools that you can kind of gather in this three to five niche collection, the The better off you are for the longterm and it has nothing to do with like this niche has all the funding and this niche is doing this and This niche is where all the big name writers are, like I can find all kinds of niches where there are big name writers in the most random things.
And I just want you to kind of figure out, in your own mind, where are my niche, or where are my experience, skills, knowledge, and expertise aligning? Where do all those things go? Whether that's full time experience or part time experience, homeschooling your kids, working at your kid's school, or it's something where you're taking your creative endeavors, or your past stuff that you worked on at another job, or you freelanced, then you went full time, then you freelanced again.
We're combining all of that together. And when I look at my own business, and I look at my students businesses, it's truly making their own path that leads them to accumulating great clients. It's really them understanding how to figure out which clients are right for them. What are their personal green flags right beyond the overview green flags beyond the niche stuff beyond the projects What's a yes for them?
And then they start saying no to more things as time goes on and the more you can say no That means your yeses are more powerful and you get to be more selective about your clients and your projects and all the cool stuff You work on so as you're going through this I really want you to kind of avoid that whole magic wand waving I want you to get to work.
I want you to dig into the dirty, grimy data stuff and kind of figure out your matches there. Now we, I gave you the revenue ranges. The other piece of this is that you're looking for industries like cake and icing. This is something I talk about a lot with my students is when we're doing cake, it should be hundreds of thousands, if not millions of companies, lots of them.
You can find huge piles of them. Icing is smaller. So either they're niches within niches or there's something like knitting or gardening or they're, you know, niches within niches would be like adventure travel instead of travel. So you want to kind of combine those things together. So you have balance in your business and you get to work on different kinds of fun stuff, but you also have this.
Ability to well round out your niches, right? So if one's up then there's another one that's down or you know, you can kind of balance that out It also helps with pay rates right different niches might pay different amounts There might be different projects where you're willing to take a lower rate or work only work at a higher rate There's a lot of balance that comes in our business.
So it's not about maxing everything out It's not about like max pay max niche mash max this right? It's about this balance that you create in your business so that you get your time back But you make more money you work on cool projects, right? And you're not always like on this content content hamster wheel So keep that in mind when we're kind of working on these profitable niches You We want to make sure that we're collecting the stuff that makes sense for us and we're moving forward With identifying those right clients and we're setting up our linkedin and our website To attract the right clients to us and if you want those questions that your high quality clients want to answer Uh from you they want your answers go to mandyellis.
com cheat sheet to grab it I hope this has been helpful and in our next video. We're We're going to talk a little bit more about freelance writing jobs. What does that mean? What is the work? What are the content types? Um, how are we actually going to put all of these little puzzle pieces together? So I hope you'll hang out for that one.
I hope this is helpful and I will see you next time.
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