Picking a Niche | Screwing This Up Is Harder Than You Think

In 2019, I held my breath as Sarah Turner, my copywriting mentor, read aloud my question during a live Q&A Zoom.

“I’m so stressed about picking my niche I could cry,” she read. “No! Don’t cry. It’s gonna be ok.” But I could not figure out how to stop stressing.

The experts on the internet told me it’s like picking a pond to fish from instead of aimlessly casting my net in the ocean. But which pond was the right one?

As a fresh copywriter, “picking a niche” truly felt like I was making some life-altering decision I could never go back from.

It’s been several years since that Q&A. And I’ve gone through enough clients, copywriting projects, and niches to have very different thoughts on it now.

I wrote this blog as a time capsule to send back to my earlier self—and to any new copywriters who need it now. Picking a niche is a big step as a business owner, but it’s way easier and less scary than you think it is.

I’ve got eight points, some pro tips from my experience, and a tool at the end that’ll help you figure out a niche confidently within a few minutes.

1. Picking a Niche Isn’t Picking Your Degree

You’re overthinking it. Promise. When you’re committing to a niche, you’re not committing to four years of education. Or even one.

You’re not defining your identity or picking long-term retirement investments.

But I keep seeing Write Your Way to Freedom forums and other groups full of brand-new copywriters losing sleep over how to pick a niche for copywriting.

I get it. It’s going to direct how you write your website and who you start looking for during client acquisition. And yes, you’re going to need to commit for at least a few weeks or months if you want results that either bring you money or valuable insight into what to do next. But you are not committing to a whole career.

So where do you start with picking one?

2. I’m Begging You – Please Leverage Your Knowledge & Experience

I would tell my newbie copywriter self a lot of things. That it’s gonna be fine. She’s not going to prison if she messes up her taxes.

But specifically, I’d tell her to just start with a medical niche, specifically wound care. Leave these idealist vague-vision niches alone.

Why? Because it gives you an insane head start. And if you’re pressed for time and money right…you need momentum, not a dandy ideal.

My copywriting side hustle started while working as a wound care nurse. I had quite a bit of knowledge and experience. And burnout.

That’s why, as a newbie copywriter, I strongly resisted anything in the medical niche. I wanted something fresh, something that felt more "aligned."

But it actually made the beginning WAY harder. When I did eventually give in and make wound care medical copywriting my niche, it opened up a lot of the opportunities I had initially been looking for.

It was very easy to rank with SEO—since there was no competition.
I got requests from people who needed copywriting in related niches, like surgical offices, infusion centers, and healthcare software systems.

If you’re wondering how to pick a niche for copywriting when MONEY is your primary goal… leverage the knowledge and experience you already have. It provides the momentum you need to earn the seed money that will help you transition to a more ideal niche later.

You don’t have to give up the dandy ideal dreamy vague vision. It probably won’t serve you as well as a familiar niche when you’re starting.

3. Changing Niches Is Normal & Expected

Like I said, picking your niche is not picking your degree. You can, and probably will, change niches as you evolve as a copywriter. Most of the copywriters you love and respect have done just that.

Heck, Taylor Swift changed niches (country to pop music). Even after winning an award in her *old* niche. I’d say it’s working out for her. If she can do it, you can too.

There are a couple of cool things about niche changing:

You usually can’t get to that second, third, etc. niche until you pick your initial one. The initial niche opens the doors to the ones you pick later.
There are lots of niches you’d’ve never considered (or even known existed) until you picked a niche. It forks over opportunities you can’t guess.
Changing your niche is typically as easy as tweaking your website a little and going after slightly different clients. You’re not changing majors. Your credits (copywriting experience) rolls over just fine.

If you’re wondering how to pick a niche for copywriting without regret, stop stressing. Know that it’ll probably be the steppingstone to another niche you love even more.

4. A Niche Is Not an Official Label or Certification

“Is X niche a real niche???”

“Can I make X my niche?”

Is there anyone else in the X niche??”

I’ve seen those a ton in Write Your Way to Freedom forums. Here’s the thing: yes, you can make up niches. But the point of picking a niche isn’t to create a phrase that acts as a career dream board.

It’s to help you find paying clients.

In that sense, copywriters tend to discover niches and create niches based on audience demand.

If someone wants to pay you to write about something – congrats! You found audience demand.

That’s why you’ll see copywriters who specialize in something that feels wildly obscure, like the "pediatric physical therapy." Or copywriters that specialize in an "offer" that hardly feels like it’s a niche (but it must be real because they’re making bank off it!), like the “HVAC white papers."

If you’re wondering how to pick a niche for copywriting, remember that a niche’s purpose is to give you direction on your ideal clients and where to find them. It’s not an official label or a permanent career direction.

5. Your Indecision is Costing You Money

If there’s one thing I really, really wish I could impart to past Sarah, and to all newbie copywriters, it’s this:

You’re losing money and opportunities when you don’t pick a niche.

It doesn’t really matter what niche you pick. If you don’t pick one, you don’t have direction for your website. You don’t have direction for what clients to look for. Most of all, since you don’t have direction, you can’t focus your action, which means you can’t make money.

Pick something. Anything. OK, not just anything, but I have a recommendation for you in the next section.

The Hormozis (that famous multi-millionaire gym couple) call it the Wantrepreneur cycle.

You get a brilliant idea for your business direction! And three months later, you’ve got…still just that idea. No action. Maybe some web copy you never published.

This Wantrepreneuring will cannibalize your business. You don’t just earn $0. You forfeit everything you would have learned if you’d just tried it out.

You could have learned SO MUCH about where that niche’s stellar clients hang out.
And what offers they’re willing to shell out big bucks for.
And what direction would be worth pivoting towards!

So how do you pick the “right” niche for copywriting? Pick something. Especially if it’s rooted in knowledge and experience you already have.

Indecision costs you more than making an imperfect choice.

Course correcting is a regular part of successful freelancing. But you can’t course correct if you haven’t even picked a course.

6. Pick a Copywriting Niche with Actual Clientele

Looking at my new copywriter “niche” I picked is just wild. I literally decided on the “web designers, graphic designers, and digital artists niche.” Whatever that means.

I see a lot of new copywriters doing exactly what I did there. I was creating a niche based on vague clientele I wanted to serve, not actual clientele that need copy.

A lot of us were/are trying to get out of soul-sucking linear jobs — so the idea of committing to something sounds more like swapping masters than an escape.

I think that’s how Marie Forleo captured our hearts suggesting we might just be “multipassionate” entrepreneurs.

So we can run that dream bookshop/plant store/cafe and make 6 figs if we just commit and work hard…right?

Maybe. But not at the very start.

Picking a niche (any niche) gives you direction to start practicing the foundational basics of business. Things like:

Client acquisition (it’s the pits. But we all have to do it if we want the glamorous sides of entrepreneurs)
Being consistent. Answering emails. Delivering stuff on time.
Course correcting slightly as needed. Like seeing what’s working and doing more of it.
Saying no. You can’t do all the courses or get all the nifty software. Your time and budget have limits you gotta practice honoring.

We can guide and craft our multi-passionate niche vision later, once we have some experience and money under our belt. But for right now, most new copywriters need to have some income, pronto.

And real income comes from real clientele that are willing to pay for your services.

Some green flags for discovering actual clientele in a niche: there’s a bunch that are already producing quality copy to sell their stuff.

If companies are producing websites, blogs, have email lists, create landing pages, and professional ones at that, it’s a really good sign that they would be in the market for hiring a specialized copywriter.

I’d be really wary of “niches” that don’t have professionals that are regularly putting out that kind of copy. Ones that are so small it’s hard to find any regularly produced copy.

Like, if you’ve got your heart set on being a “rescue dog copywriter” — but you’re having trouble Googling lots of companies that regularly produce emails and blogs on that…maybe explore a niche that includes rescue dogs.

“Rescue dog copywriting niche” might not give you SEO traction or make sense to people you pitch. Which means they don’t want your offers, much less to pay an invoice.

Make sure you’re aligning with actual clientele who need and are willing to pay for your services.

7. Don’t Make Your Niche Super Broad

One of the biggest problems with my first “niche” was that it was WAY too broad.

A lot of us pick overly broad niches because:

We’re not familiar with what a niche really even is, so we go with whatever we’re seeing people talk about.
We’re so worried about limiting ourselves “too much” that we can’t attract any clients.

In my experience—it’s much easier to get clients when you have an ultra-narrow niche versus an ultra-broad one.

Ultra-broad niche copywriters are a dime a dozen.

Nothing really stands out about their offers, so they’re easy to ignore.
It’s hard for them to rank well with SEO.

But for an ultra-narrow niche, you tend to have clear indicators of your professionalism. Like relate experience. Similar clients.

It’s super common for people in related niches to look to you.

For example, even though I told people I was in the “wound care medical niche,” I didn’t get very many actual clients needing wound care copy.

But I got a whole bunch from related professions.

I had one full-service agency reach out on LinkedIn. They had several clients who did a little bit of wound care but primarily needed copy for their surgical practice or their lymphedema clinic.

Since those are areas I was also familiar with (thanks to wound care nursing), I was happy to take them on as clients.

(That’s another pro tip – being narrowly niched works great for getting full service advertising & SEO agencies as clients. It’s a win-win. You write copy for multiple clients of theirs, and they get to deliver copy that’s not coughed up by a generalist.)

Casting your net wide is not how to pick a niche for copywriting. Being specific attracts clients and set you apart in the industry.

8. Don’t Pick a Niche that Struggles to Pay You

This is one of the toughest truths about choosing a niche – while there’s no such thing as a “profitable niche,” there are niches that will have a hard time paying you.

Finding clients in these niches becomes super frustrating.

They can’t afford you even though they wish they could. And you want to help them but their budget won’t pay your bills.

Sometimes it’s because the niche is not producing a lot of copy that’s outsource to a professional. If non-profits tend to have someone in-house that does their copy, they’re not gonna want to pay you.

But a lot of the time, the niches with low budgets consist of people who can’t yet pay you what you’re worth.

It’s very common – especially as a beginner – for freelancers to serve clients that are WAY further down the business road. It’s ok if you couldn’t afford your own services.

Some common offenders I frequently see are the “small business” niche and the “nonprofit” niche. We copywriters wanna help the little guy!

Not only are these super broad, but as a beginner copywriter, you'll often be interacting with people who are at a similar level to you budget-wise.

And as much as they need your copy, they will often simply not be able to afford it.

If you’re wondering how to pick a niche for copywriting, I highly recommend picking a niche with a clientele that produces decent copy somewhat regularly. Not the guys who have a nearly non-existent email and blog.

When you do research, you’ll probably first come across the bigwigs of the niche, often above your scope at the moment. But that’s a great indicator that there are medium and smaller versions of that kind of company that also need regular blogs and emails.

One bonus tip I have for beginner copywriters—consistently-needed copy is an excellent way to start up regular income.

It’s usually in the form of blogs and newsletter emails. Landing pages, web copy, etc. are usually one-off projects. So niches where you see lots of blogs and emails are a green flag.

Another pro tip – when you have more bandwidth in your business, you can create free and low-budget resources for the kind of clients that can’t afford you. Until then, compile a little collection links to helpful resources to refer them to.

When a client needs copywriting services, but can’t afford me, I like to offer them Sarah Turner’s Youtube videos on the specific service they need. Now they have a free resource from an expert on how to do it themself.

That’s how you can help them AND make money.

How Do You Pick A Niche for Copywriting?

Not By “Doing More Research.”

Choosing a niche as a new copywriter can feel totally overwhelming. But you have permission to pick something and just run with it until it don’t run.

Remember, your niche is a tool for direction, not a life-long commitment.

Leverage your existing knowledge and experience to gain momentum.

Changing niches is normal and expected, and it’s usually a simple process.

A niche is not an official label, but a way to find and attract ideal clients.

Avoid broad niche definitions, as ultra-narrow niches make it easier to stand out and attract clients.

Be mindful of the financial viability of your niche. Some dream clients will struggle to pay you what you’re worth.

An easy way to pick a profitable niche is to think about the knowledge or experience you’ve gained from past jobs. Then, do some research to see what kind of copy the industry is putting out and if there’s a need.

The best business decision you can make is to STOP WAFFLING and just commit to a direction for 90 days.

You can always course correct during those 90 days. But don’t keep changing your destination. Course correcting is supposed to help you find a path to the destination, not wantrepreneur around 3 different ones.

But if you’re still overwhelmed, I made something for you that’ll make it way easier.

To help you explore and feel more clarity on niche options that align with your goals, I’ve created a free chatbot that you can talk to. I’ll send the link to her right to your inbox.

You got this!