Writing Opportunities
It seems that a lot of advice encourages writers to pass up writing opportunities. Writers, and particularly those that like to give advice on building a freelance writing career, love to use the word “niche”.
To me, this word is blasphemy and I don’t think following the usual advice about it works very well. In this article I will talk about why I think that niches should be avoided like the plague, particularly for writers just starting out.
The Gospel of Niche
If you think I am exaggerating, pick up any book on freelance writing or go to an advice website; I will bet that one of the most repeated words in the print will be niche. The line is that in order to be successful, you need to find one area that you are really knowledgeable in or you really like writing about, and concentrate just on that.
This was the theory upon which I started out my freelance writing career, but I quickly realized that there was not a lot of opportunities out there for the niches I was interested in, or that the competition was just too crowded. And usually, it was crowded with seasoned freelancers who had starved themselves carving out their own niche.
The Heretic
I had a couple of options. I could indulge in artistic snobbery and decide only to focus on one area like everyone said to, and pad the monthly earnings with money earned at a mill or in a kitchen, or I could go against the niche gospel and take advantage of any writing opportunities I found. I went for door number two.
Instead of bidding on jobs that I felt I had a sound knowledge base about, I would bid on any and all jobs that I could find, as long as they weren’t too boring.
I was honest about my experience, but I found that as long as I bid a bit lower than the experts I could still get jobs. Moreover, I could parlay those jobs into experience, for as I wrote articles on a specific topic my portfolio started to carry a lot more weight, and I had a lot more samples to show to potential clients.
Weddings, real estate, fishing, and Internet marketing
I also found that when it comes to writing on the Internet, there seems to be a few cycles. All of a sudden web site developers will realize there is a dearth of information in an area and will all try to create a killer site on that area.
That’s another reason why you can’t be too narrow and have to take advantage of any writing opportunities that you can if you plan on making a career out of writing for the web; what’s big today won’t be in three months.
My first few jobs were all about weddings, something which was surprising given that I am a very inartistic male whose only wedding experience comes from the fact that I had my own wedding. And yes I did help with that.
Still, what I found was that as long as you can do good research, be it in the form of interviews or even just poking around on the web, great ideas for articles will come to you. I’ve ended up writing dozens of articles on weddings, and never once has a client been dissatisfied.
When wedding season is over and article are in less demand, other seasonal work has presented itself, on areas about as far removed from each other as you can imagine.
By far the most article I have written have been on real estate and Internet marketing, with fishing and other outdoor activities (in which I actually am something of an expert) coming in third; weddings are fourth and there are about 20 other topics I have some experience in.
The big picture: embrace all writing opportunities!
The point here is that if I had taken the advice of many others and only focused on my niche area, I would probably not be making a living freelance writing today. By taking advantage of every opportunity, I was not only able to make money writing, but I was also able to hone my skills and create a very diverse portfolio.
To be sure, there is something to be said for the theory “jack of all trades, master of none”. But we are living in a new age, one where the traditional ideas of the offline magazine and newspaper are going to be supplanted by the free for all that is the Internet.
It’s best that as writers, we also learn to adapt in order to make a living, and that means leaving the Gospel of Niche behind and taking advantage of any writing opportunities!
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Tags: writing opportunities
February 25th, 2008 at 7:51 am
[...] wrote a post that outlines why niching reduced your writing opportunities. However, there are two main approaches to making a living through writing: quantity and [...]