How To Find Your Niche As A Content Creator

I create content for a living. My niche is digital writing. And in that niche, I write short form posts on X. I make carousels on LinkedIn. I spend a bunch of money making videos like this on YouTube and Instagram, which is how I've generated over $6 million in revenue this year and over $20 million in lifetime revenue in the past five years. So if you're still trying to find your niche as a content creator, especially if you want your niche to be lucrative, then this video is for you. I'm going to walk you through my entire process for discovering your niche as a content creator in any industry, no matter how you want to monetize. And finding my niche in digital writing is how our business went on to generate over $20 million in lifetime sales. This year, we did over 6 million in revenue, and it's been incredibly lucrative. And it's not that big of a niche. And so, no, you don't need some giant niche or industry in order to make money. You could pick the most obscure niche in the world, and I will show you how to monetize it. So before we talk about how to find your niche, we need to break down a couple faulty beliefs. Because every time I explain this, people always hit me with these same question and same objections. So I want to walk you through it, because I think it'll help prime you to understand how to go about finding your niche. So the first faulty belief is people think if I pick a niche, I can never change it. Okay? They think of it like a marriage decision, and this is not true. Okay? My niche today is digital writing. The first niche that I played in 2013 was fitness. And the first product that I created was an ebook series called Skinny to Shredded. Okay? So you probably don't know that or you never knew that, and that's okay. That's the point. Point. Your niche can change, all right? This is not a marriage decision. And if anything, you will learn more by picking a niche and sticking with it for a year, two years, three years. Because when you go deep in a niche, you have to learn and build all the other skills in order to make that niche successful. Successful for you. Once you build those skills, you can apply those skills to any niche. And I always like proving it with a really simple example. Imagine if I said to you, hey, I'm happy to write all your content and create all your products for you for free. Would you like me to do that? That you would probably say, yeah, Cole, I would love for you to do that, but I know Nothing about your niche. I know nothing about your industry. You would probably still trust me or want my help because you see that I have done all these things in my niche and you assume that I could use those skills in your niche, too. Okay? So, yes, these are things that you can use for the rest of your career. Now, the second faulty belief that you've probably internalized or maybe you've heard this by seeing other content on the Internet is, well, I think my niche is me, right? I am the niche. That is wrong. Okay? You are not the niche. And I can prove it with a very simple example. Real quick. If you want to write online but aren't sure where to start, click the link in the description of this video and check out startwritingonline.com this is a free masterclass I put together, sharing all of our most helpful frameworks for beginners, like proven hooks to capture your target reader's attention, where to write online to get the most distribution on your work and little growth. Hacking tips to to build your social audience and email list faster. Over 100,000 writers have gone through this free masterclass, and many even send us emails afterwards thanking us for sharing such valuable information for free. So click the link below this video to check it out and make this year the year you start seeing success from your writing online. Let's say that we're hanging out one Friday night and I go, hey, do you want to go to Larry's for dinner? You go, I don't know. What kind of food does Larry's serve? I go, don't worry about what food it serves. Larry's is incredible. They've won all these awards. It's amazing. Just trust me. You go, yeah, I don't really care how many awards they've won. I want to know, does Larry's serve sushi or pizza? Right? That is a category question. You don't care about the brand, AKA me. You care about the category because I might say, Larry's is an amazing restaurant. But if I go, yeah, Larry's is pizza. And you go, ah, I just had pizza last night. I'm really not in the mood. I want sushi. That is a category decision. It has nothing to do with the brand. It has everything to do with the category. So when you're looking for a niche, your niche is not about you. It's not about your personal interests. Your niche is this intersection between what you care about and what other people care about. This is you, this is other people. You're looking for this in the middle, right? You don't want to pick something that other people care about, but you're not interested in at all. And you also don't want to pick something that only has to do with your interest but no one else cares about. Right? You're looking for that overlap. And when you discover that overlap, the point of that overlap is the niche is about the other person. It's about their interests, it's about their questions, it's about the problems they have in their life, it's about the outcomes that they're trying to generate. And when you focus on that, it's very easy to create content because you know exactly who you're creating for. Which leads to the third faulty belief. If I niche down, I will have no opportunity. There won't be enough people for me to help. This is probably one of the biggest misunderstandings that people have about this idea of niching down. If you've ever read the book Positioning by Al Reese and Jack Trout, it's an iconic marketing book. Everyone should read it. The big idea in that book is that when you say you do everything, no one can hear you, no one can understand you. When you say you do one very specific thing, everyone assumes that you can also help them. Okay, so let me give you a really basic example. Let's say that I go out into the world and I say, hey, I can help you with writing. That is an extremely broad category, right? Are we talking about speech writing? Are we talking about newsletter writing? Are we talking about short form content writing? Are we talking about blog post writing? Are we talking about thought leadership writing? Are we talking about press release writing? What kind of writing are we talking about? Are we talking about fiction writing? Right? As a result, when I say something this broad, nobody can hear me. Nobody knows where to put me in their brain, right? But if I say I ghostwrite, just for example, I ghostwrite LinkedIn content for SaaS founders, all of a sudden I have niched down and this person can hear me very clearly. But you know who else I attract? I also attract other founders and I attract other people in SaaS, and I attract anyone who wants to write on LinkedIn. So when you get more specific, what actually happens is all of these people around the person that you're targeting also assume that you can help them too. Every founder assumes that your skills will translate to them. Everyone in SaaS assumes that your skills will translate to them. Who wants to create content on LinkedIn assumes your skills will translate to them. And then it doesn't stop there. It goes beyond there, because if you work with founders, why can't you help CEOs and other execs? Why can't you help department heads? Everyone assumes that you could also help them. If you could help SaaS, why can't you do B2B tech, right? If you could help them on LinkedIn, why can't you also help them on X? Why can't you also help them on Instagram? Why can't you also help them writing YouTube captions or YouTube descriptions? Everyone else assumes that you can also help them. So it's a logical fallacy thinking if I niche down, I limit my opportunity. No, what you're actually doing is you're making it easier for everyone to understand what to do with you. If you lead with something really broad, no one knows where to put you. That's why it's a problem. Hey, by the way, if you're brand new to the world of ghostwriting, maybe you've heard the term, but aren't really sure what it is or how it's different from copywriting or content writing, check out premiumghostwritingblueprint.com. it's in the description below. Okay, this is a free masterclass that I've put together for writers who want to monetize their skills and love for writing. With ghostwriting, this is what I did. And ghostwriting completely changed my life. It's how I quit my job. It's how I quadrupled the amount of money I was making. It's how I've gotten to work with so many smart, amazing people, but also have time for my own writing, like writing this book. The Art and Business of Ghostwriting. Anyways, check it out. If you're at all interested in making money from your writing, I would really encourage you to get into ghostwriting. And this free premium ghost trading blueprint in the description below is the best place to start. Okay, so you understand why niching down actually helps you tap into more opportunity. But let me explain why niching down also makes you so much money. Okay? And I always like starting with this really basic story. So imagine that you just bought this beautiful house and you know you have this really pretty stained glass window right above the front door. And. And one day your neighbor's idiot kid fires a hockey puck through the window and the stained glass window shatters and you need to find someone to fix it. Okay, so what do you do? You go on the Internet and you start looking for someone who can repair the window. Now, again, this is a really pretty stained glass window. This isn't Your average window. Which window repair person are you gonna hire? Are you gonna hire the first one that says, I repair windows, Any window you need, I can repair it, or are you going to hire the person who says, I specialize in stained glass windows? Right? You are going to pick the second person every single time because you have a very specific problem and you're looking for someone who specializes in that specific problem. Okay? Everyone thinks if I go broad, if I say I do everything for everyone, I will attract more opportunity. It is the complete opposite. The more specific you get about what problem you solve or what outcome you drive, the more likely you are to get that specific person to want to hire you. And then again, going back to what I just explained, you also tap into all the other people who go, oh, well, if you specialize in that, I assume that you could also bring that specialty over to my problem as well. Now, there are three reasons that niching down makes you so much money. Okay? So the first one is pricing power. When you specialize, you become the go to person for that niche, that industry, that problem, that outcome. When you are the go to person, you actually have no competition, right? All the general window repair people, they're all competing against each other. They all say, I do everything, I do everything. Let me know what you need. The stained glass window repair person goes, I specialize in this one thing. If you're looking for a specialist, let me know. Fundamentally, that means that you differentiate yourself from any and all competition. Okay? So it gives you pricing power. This is the first reason why niching down is so effective. The second reason is efficiency. Now, you might not realize this right away, but this is especially true if you have a service business. So, for example, I've spent a lot of my career writing for other people as a ghostwriter. I started working just for myself. Then I turned my service into a whole ghostwriting agency. I have made a lot of money by writing for other people. That's providing a service. It's very hard to create efficiencies when the service that you're providing is anything, right? How are you going to create efficiencies if one client wants blog posts and another client wants Instagram captions and another client wants newsletters and every client is in a different industry. Think about the switching cost, right? You're writing different things for different people in different industries. That's very hard. The way that you build efficiency is by doing the same thing over and over and over again. So for me, that was thought leadership articles for CEOs. This was the only thing that we did, it was 800 words. We didn't do newsletters, we didn't do short form content, we didn't manage your LinkedIn page. The only thing that we did was write thought leadership articles around 800 words for founders and C level executives. It's the only thing we did. And we scaled that to hundreds of pieces every single month. 20 plus full time employees, 2 million plus in annual revenue, 80 plus clients around the world at any given time. So whenever people say, oh no, that limits my opportunity, that limits my ability to make money. No, the more specific that you get, the more efficiency you can build. And the reason this is so important is because if you have no efficiency, maybe you could work with three clients. If you have efficiency, maybe you could work with 10. When you have efficiencies, this allows you to make way more money. Okay, so that's the big idea here, is it actually allows you to increase your capacity, which means you can take on more work. And so the third reason is revenue. If you have pricing power, that means that you dominate a niche, right? You are the go to person. I became the go to person for thought leadership articles ghostwritten for founders and executives. That allows you to charge more and more when you're able to have pricing power. And you double down on a very specific niche, a very specific service that allows you to create efficiency. Efficiency is how you templatize the work that you do, which means you can get more done in less time. So you could choose to make more money or you could just focus on reclaiming time, right? Maybe you don't want to work eight hours a day, maybe you're cool with the amount of money that you're making, but you can get it done in four hours a day. So you could get paid in time. Or third, you can increase your capacity, which increases revenue. So now the same person or the same group of people, the same team, instead of servicing just three clients, you could service 10. Instantly, your situation becomes three times more profitable, five times more profitable, right? And so niching down is how you accomplish these benefits. If you don't niche down, what happens is you're a generalist and you have no pricing power and you have no efficiency, which means you have no ability to either reclaim time or increase revenue. That's why so many people get stuck, writers especially. So I want to end this with a little bit of tough love and a brutal truth that I have learned over the years. Okay? The brutal truth is that the reason people bounce from niche to niche and they never take the time to specialize or learn any of these skills is because it is significantly easier to change niches than it is to be confronted with the fact that you lack the skills. The other tangential skills to make a niche work. Okay, because if you niche down, what do you have to learn how to do? Well, you have to learn how to create content. This is how you're going to attract opportunities. You need to learn how to maybe create a little funnel for yourself, maybe a newsletter, maybe an educational email course, capture some emails. You need to learn how to run a sales call. Right. You're never going to attract premium opportunities if you're just sitting on upwork or fiverr waiting for someone to tell you what to do. Right. You need to get comfortable running projects and being a project manager. You need to learn these skills. And so what happens is someone picks a niche, and then they get confronted with these different new skills that they have to build, and they get overwhelmed and they go, actually, you know what would be way easier is if I blame the niche and I just go try and do something different. And then you start right back at level one all over again. And you repeat this cycle over and over and over again. And you don't realize that every time you change niches, you run into the same brick wall, the same problems. These are never going away. These will always be there, no matter what niche you pick. And I run into this. You know, I mentor over a thousand writers in our premium ghostwriting academy. I have answered this question and explained this 500 times, and I see it over and over again, especially with beginners. It's fine. I just want to be honest about it, is beginners think that the answer is picking a different niche, picking a different industry. And that's not the answer. The answer is confronting the fact that you lack these other skills, and you would be way better off in the long term caring less about the niche and just committing to using this as a vehicle to build a bunch of these other skills. Okay, so let's end with tactically, how do you go about finding your niche? Right. This is something that people really build up in their heads. I think they make it very existential. They tell themselves, you know, the niche that I pick is going to represent me for the rest of my life. No, it's not a marriage decision. It's not that serious. The beginner version of how you find a niche for you is very simple. You create 30 pieces of content in 30 days. You create something every single day. This idea is what caused our beginner writing program, ship 30 for 30, to grow so quickly? Okay, we had north of 10,000 people go through this. It was a very simple idea. You're not creating, you should be creating. Why don't we ship 30 pieces of content in 30 days? You will gather a bunch of data. You will learn what works. Throughout this process. You're going to notice at the end of every week, every two weeks, at the end of the 30 days, you're going to notice, hey, it's actually these two or three topics that are getting the most distribution that people are enjoying the most. It's a very simple idea now where people go wrong and the problem here is what they think they're looking for is, oh, I wrote 30 pieces. And, you know, all of them got one like two likes, three likes, you know, 10 views, 50 views, 100 views. And they're looking for an outlier in the extreme sense. They think, oh, I'm looking for the post that gets a million views. That's not how it works. Especially in the beginning. These two or three winning topics are usually only like 2x better than everything else. So if you write 30 pieces, maybe everything gets 2 likes, but these few, maybe they got 4 likes. You might think that's not that big of a difference, but it's a huge difference. That's twice as good, right? So what should you do? You go, oh, actually, these two or three topics, they actually performed twice as good as everything else. Three times better, five times better. What do you do the next 30 days? You double down, you take what's working and you do it again. You go, let me write about those two or three topics over and over and over again, right? Let me write about the same topic for a different audience. Let me write about the same topic, but it solves a slightly different problem. It generates a slightly different outcome. Right? At the end of the 30 days, what do you do? You go back and you look for the two to three. That's messy, two to three different topics. Maybe it's the same topics, but you look at the data again, you go, oh, those started performing better. Maybe they performed twice as good. Let me do that again. And this is what you do every 30 days, over and over and over and over and over again. If you look at your favorite creator, your favorite Author, your favorite YouTuber, your favorite person on LinkedIn, all of them are doing this process. I still do this process every week, every two weeks, every month. I go back through and I go, hey, that post performed pretty well. I should do it again. I should write about that topic again. This is a very simple strategy, but it requires you to start. It requires you to actually be putting out volume in order to see what works. The advanced strategy is once you learn, okay, these are the two to three topics that I see performing really well. You create what I like to call your client constellation. Now, if you're providing a writing service, you can use the word client. If you're not and you just want to create digital products, you might call this your content constellation. Okay. This idea is very simple, but it's really cool. It's something I notice most people don't realize. By the way, if you're brand new to writing online and want a really easy place to start, I recommend reading the Art and Business of Online Writing. I wrote this book after I'd been writing online for over a decade and accumulated over a billion views on my work, monetizing my writing in all sorts of unconventional ways. And I wrote this book to give other writers like you a way to skip all the lessons that I had to learn the hard way and start seeing success from your writing a whole lot faster than I did. So if writing online is something you're thinking about or something you're actively practicing, I recommend picking up a copy of the Art and Business of Online Writing. I could talk about nonfiction and fiction. I could talk about ghost writing. I could talk about copywriting. This is an umbrella. And all you have to do is realize that inside of this umbrella are lots of other relevant subcategories. Okay? But again, going back to our big idea, from one of the best books on marketing I've ever read, Positioning, by Al Rees and Jack Trout. Okay, if you lead with everything, no one can hear you. If you lead with one thing, everyone can hear you. If I lead with digital writing, everyone can hear me. But I don't have to just write about digital writing. I'm just leading with that. That's just the tip of the spear. But I can still write about self publishing and nonfiction and fiction and ghostwriting and copywriting. That is what builds your constellation. And if you're building digital products, that's a content constellation. And if you're providing writing services, that's a client constellation. I actually talk about all these ideas in my two bestselling books, the Art and Business of Ghostwriting and the Art Business of Online Writing. So if you want to go deep on all of this stuff, how to find your niche, how to create a content strategy, how to write content that goes viral. All right, how to get paid. How to monetize your writing talents with a service. These books are a really great place to start, so I would encourage you to grab these. But otherwise, you know, this is how it works. Don't over complicate it. You have to get moving in order to test and gather data and see what's working, what's resonating with readers. And then as you clarify what topics or topic you want to be your niche, you're not limited. It becomes a constellation. You can tap into as many other relevant subcategories as you want.