find your freelance niche
Share the article!
By 8.5 min readLast Updated: 7. December 2023

Freelance niche: the art of going from generalist to expert

Selling yourself as an expert can lead to better clients, bigger budgets and more freedom.

Here's our guide to finding your freelance niche.

Contents:

Customers want the best

As self employed freelancer is the way you are selling yourself decisive for which price tag you can put in the window and which potential customers look in.

Especially as a new freelancer, it can be tempting to brand yourself as a jack of all trades who can do both write razor-sharp copy, animate videos and create backend code because you are hungry for tasks.

But customers don't buy services, they buy results.

And when you purchase specific results for specific projects, you also want the best the market can deliver.

The most important step you can take to grow your freelance business is therefore the way you take prospective clients by the hand and show them the promised land.

When you choose a niche, it does not mean that you limit your income - quite the opposite. Although it may feel a little contradictory: a smaller pool of possible customers means fewer opportunities, right?

Choosing your niche is the difference between setting yourself up as a "freelance copywriter" and being a "copywriter for fintech scaleups". We have seen several cases where freelancers have made a small shift in their approach and increased their earnings enormously.

The very basic reason you should choose a niche is to maximize your freelance income. The riches are in the niches, and it's about understanding the need in the market, selling yourself correctly and of course building confidence to also get paid.

create free user

Freelance with Factofly

Use Factofly to invoice and get paid without having your own CVR number or registered company. We handle all the boring stuff, so you can spend your time where it's most fun.

create free user

What is a freelance niche?

If you're new to the glittering freelance scene, “niche” is a word you'll hear a lot. Basically, it's about specialising, and reaching out for the expert brand.

A niche is your specialty, but it's not an industry. Finance is an industry, crypto is a niche. Fitness is an industry, yoga for pregnant women is a niche. As a freelancer, you can have several niches, but most choose to zoom in on a single one, and go for the top here.

With a well-defined niche, you can create a clear and distinct brand, and be consistent when it comes to yours hourly or project price.

Why is it important to find a freelance niche?

focus

Potential clients often need a little help to dream and see how your magical solution makes all their problems disappear.

The more concretely your expertise can be formulated, the easier it is for potential customers to see themselves in, for example, previous cases.

You can think of it this way: you have a bag full of chocolate buttons, and three bowls of cookie dough. You can either divide your chocolate between all three and get three mediocre results, or empty the bag into one bowl and throw out the other two.

The result is a baking tray with the market's best cookies, and there are people who will pay big money for them.

When you choose your niche, you also make a choice to deliver the very best service within a narrow field. But this is also where the real tasks are hidden.

create free user

Freelance with Factofly

Use Factofly to invoice and get paid without having your own CVR number or registered company. We handle all the boring stuff, so you can spend your time where it's most fun.

create free user

How do you choose your freelance niche?

the three golden circles that make up your freelance niche

When you need to find your niche, there are three circles you want to overlap: skills, passion, and money. As such, there is no right or wrong way to find your niche, but you can use these three circles as a guide:

  • What are you good at?
  • What are you passionate about?
  • Where is the money?
1. What are you good at?

We often don't see our own strengths and weaknesses in the same clear light as others, so that's why it can help to think back to the reason why you were chosen for previous projects. That is, why customers have come to you.

Across projects and jobs, you can find a common denominator, and here you have your niche.

2. What do you like to do

I remember once hearing someone say “there's nothing worse than being good at what you hate doing”. Google doesn't quite agree with that being said at all, but that doesn't change the fact that you have to build your freelance career on passion.

After all, it is you who controls which projects go through the door, and if PR work is one of your core competencies, but you are about to jump out the window with each new assignment. Well then you might not be looking forward to a career full of excitement.

3. Where is the money

When the famous American bank robber, Willie Sutton, was asked why he robbed banks, he replied "that's where the money is!".

Don't follow suit, but be inspired by Sutton. Therefore, make sure you do your homework and keep an ear to the ground about which areas are trending. Succeeding in a down market is quite a difficult exercise.

What do you do when the circles do not overlap?

passion and skills but no money

It happens - and especially in the spring of the career - that there is a little distance between the different circles, and therefore you cannot zoom in on the perfect spot where money, passion and skills meet. The art of compromise here becomes quite essential for your happiness in your freelance work.

In Denmark, it's not that popular to say, but there needs to be money in the account for us to get things going.

You can therefore advantageously work with 2 to 3 niches that you keep separate. Possibly with different entrances. One you dedicate to being the money maker, with a long-term strategy of creating greater profitability in a parallel niche you enjoy being in.

create free user

Freelance with Factofly

Use Factofly to invoice and get paid without having your own CVR number or registered company. We handle all the boring stuff, so you can spend your time where it's most fun.

create free user

Test, test, test!

Finding a niche is one test of a hypothesis. You must therefore also treat it as such.

Therefore, choose an area where you can test the idea within 30 days, with the aim of landing a customer within your chosen niche.

Addressing your niche for a test period allows you to quickly validate whether your hypotheses hold true. Both too short and too long time to test an idea are equally deadly sins.

30 days is the sweet spot. Long enough to create results, short enough that you can quickly move on if you are left with a "meehhh" feeling.

Timing is all-important: jump on the trend

As with so many other things in life, timing in freelancing is also of the essence.

Because you may be too early for it. This means that there is no understanding of how your skillset can help create results. See e.g. how developments in searches for "ux designer" have moved, and only really started to take off in 2014.

development in ux designer searches

If you as a designer tried to sell yourself as a UXer in 2012, there may have been some dead air from potential clients. Customers who, all else being equal, needed the competence, but did not themselves formulate it as a UX task.

If you're a wizard at advertising on social media, it might make sense to jump on the train that's taking off and brand yourself as, for example, "TikTok Ads Expert". It can be difficult to grow your business in a down market, so choose your niche where you already have the wind at your back.

Freelance experts win the customers

Being a freelancer is tough, and unfortunately you don't get points for doing things the hard way.

Shifting your brand and narrative from generalist to expert – starting with yours Homepage – is one of the absolutely essential maneuvers you can do to create a better foundation for success as a freelancer.

To summarize briefly, these are the questions you need to ask yourself in order to get closer to your freelance niche:

  • What do I enjoy working with?
  • What am I good at?
  • Where can I get paid well?
  • What makes customers contact me?
  • Where do I have access to customers?
  • What niches are growing right now?
create free user

Freelance with Factofly

Use Factofly to invoice and get paid without having your own CVR number or registered company. We handle all the boring stuff, so you can spend your time where it's most fun.

create free user
find your freelance niche
By 8.5 min readLast Updated: 7. December 2023

Freelance niche: the art of going from generalist to expert

Selling yourself as an expert can lead to better clients, bigger budgets and more freedom.

Here's our guide to finding your freelance niche.

Contents:

Customers want the best

As self employed freelancer is the way you are selling yourself decisive for which price tag you can put in the window and which potential customers look in.

Especially as a new freelancer, it can be tempting to brand yourself as a jack of all trades who can do both write razor-sharp copy, animate videos and create backend code because you are hungry for tasks.

But customers don't buy services, they buy results.

And when you purchase specific results for specific projects, you also want the best the market can deliver.

The most important step you can take to grow your freelance business is therefore the way you take prospective clients by the hand and show them the promised land.

When you choose a niche, it does not mean that you limit your income - quite the opposite. Although it may feel a little contradictory: a smaller pool of possible customers means fewer opportunities, right?

Choosing your niche is the difference between setting yourself up as a "freelance copywriter" and being a "copywriter for fintech scaleups". We have seen several cases where freelancers have made a small shift in their approach and increased their earnings enormously.

The very basic reason you should choose a niche is to maximize your freelance income. The riches are in the niches, and it's about understanding the need in the market, selling yourself correctly and of course building confidence to also get paid.

create free user

Freelance with Factofly

Use Factofly to invoice and get paid without having your own CVR number or registered company. We handle all the boring stuff, so you can spend your time where it's most fun.

create free user

What is a freelance niche?

If you're new to the glittering freelance scene, “niche” is a word you'll hear a lot. Basically, it's about specialising, and reaching out for the expert brand.

A niche is your specialty, but it's not an industry. Finance is an industry, crypto is a niche. Fitness is an industry, yoga for pregnant women is a niche. As a freelancer, you can have several niches, but most choose to zoom in on a single one, and go for the top here.

With a well-defined niche, you can create a clear and distinct brand, and be consistent when it comes to yours hourly or project price.

Why is it important to find a freelance niche?

focus

Potential clients often need a little help to dream and see how your magical solution makes all their problems disappear.

The more concretely your expertise can be formulated, the easier it is for potential customers to see themselves in, for example, previous cases.

You can think of it this way: you have a bag full of chocolate buttons, and three bowls of cookie dough. You can either divide your chocolate between all three and get three mediocre results, or empty the bag into one bowl and throw out the other two.

The result is a baking tray with the market's best cookies, and there are people who will pay big money for them.

When you choose your niche, you also make a choice to deliver the very best service within a narrow field. But this is also where the real tasks are hidden.

create free user

Freelance with Factofly

Use Factofly to invoice and get paid without having your own CVR number or registered company. We handle all the boring stuff, so you can spend your time where it's most fun.

create free user

How do you choose your freelance niche?

the three golden circles that make up your freelance niche

When you need to find your niche, there are three circles you want to overlap: skills, passion, and money. As such, there is no right or wrong way to find your niche, but you can use these three circles as a guide:

  • What are you good at?
  • What are you passionate about?
  • Where is the money?
1. What are you good at?

We often don't see our own strengths and weaknesses in the same clear light as others, so that's why it can help to think back to the reason why you were chosen for previous projects. That is, why customers have come to you.

Across projects and jobs, you can find a common denominator, and here you have your niche.

2. What do you like to do

I remember once hearing someone say “there's nothing worse than being good at what you hate doing”. Google doesn't quite agree with that being said at all, but that doesn't change the fact that you have to build your freelance career on passion.

After all, it is you who controls which projects go through the door, and if PR work is one of your core competencies, but you are about to jump out the window with each new assignment. Well then you might not be looking forward to a career full of excitement.

3. Where is the money

When the famous American bank robber, Willie Sutton, was asked why he robbed banks, he replied "that's where the money is!".

Don't follow suit, but be inspired by Sutton. Therefore, make sure you do your homework and keep an ear to the ground about which areas are trending. Succeeding in a down market is quite a difficult exercise.

What do you do when the circles do not overlap?

passion and skills but no money

It happens - and especially in the spring of the career - that there is a little distance between the different circles, and therefore you cannot zoom in on the perfect spot where money, passion and skills meet. The art of compromise here becomes quite essential for your happiness in your freelance work.

In Denmark, it's not that popular to say, but there needs to be money in the account for us to get things going.

You can therefore advantageously work with 2 to 3 niches that you keep separate. Possibly with different entrances. One you dedicate to being the money maker, with a long-term strategy of creating greater profitability in a parallel niche you enjoy being in.

create free user

Freelance with Factofly

Use Factofly to invoice and get paid without having your own CVR number or registered company. We handle all the boring stuff, so you can spend your time where it's most fun.

create free user

Test, test, test!

Finding a niche is one test of a hypothesis. You must therefore also treat it as such.

Therefore, choose an area where you can test the idea within 30 days, with the aim of landing a customer within your chosen niche.

Addressing your niche for a test period allows you to quickly validate whether your hypotheses hold true. Both too short and too long time to test an idea are equally deadly sins.

30 days is the sweet spot. Long enough to create results, short enough that you can quickly move on if you are left with a "meehhh" feeling.

Timing is all-important: jump on the trend

As with so many other things in life, timing in freelancing is also of the essence.

Because you may be too early for it. This means that there is no understanding of how your skillset can help create results. See e.g. how developments in searches for "ux designer" have moved, and only really started to take off in 2014.

development in ux designer searches

If you as a designer tried to sell yourself as a UXer in 2012, there may have been some dead air from potential clients. Customers who, all else being equal, needed the competence, but did not themselves formulate it as a UX task.

If you're a wizard at advertising on social media, it might make sense to jump on the train that's taking off and brand yourself as, for example, "TikTok Ads Expert". It can be difficult to grow your business in a down market, so choose your niche where you already have the wind at your back.

Freelance experts win the customers

Being a freelancer is tough, and unfortunately you don't get points for doing things the hard way.

Shifting your brand and narrative from generalist to expert – starting with yours Homepage – is one of the absolutely essential maneuvers you can do to create a better foundation for success as a freelancer.

To summarize briefly, these are the questions you need to ask yourself in order to get closer to your freelance niche:

  • What do I enjoy working with?
  • What am I good at?
  • Where can I get paid well?
  • What makes customers contact me?
  • Where do I have access to customers?
  • What niches are growing right now?
create free user

Freelance with Factofly

Use Factofly to invoice and get paid without having your own CVR number or registered company. We handle all the boring stuff, so you can spend your time where it's most fun.

create free user