We must make freelance niche types fit our needs, wants, values and lifestyles, and we also must make ourselves fit freelance niche types. Of our waking hours, we work more than we do anything else. I keep this in mind when college students come to me concerned about what to do for a living, and I tell them (because I want them happy) to do what they love. I also tell them (because I believe in the truth) to do what they are good at.
The same goes for freelance writers. If we are talented, we have a chance. If we have a severe work ethic we have a better chance. And if we are devoted enough and relentless enough (and—ahem--masochistic enough) about writing for a living, we will be able to put on our vitaes that we are indeed professional writers. But in order to do and be so, we best find the freelance writing niche types or type we will be spectacular at, staking out a corner in the niche market, one which we’ll bring passion to every morning as that damned alarm (later a wonderful thing) sounds.
Niche Defined
From the Italian-derived French for nicchia, "a shell-like recess in a wall," a niche is an inset, concave enclosure. It is this little enclosure we freelance writers need to find, study, practice, and own. It is the small area of specialty we make ours and offer to those in need. So the smaller (and therefore the less competitive) the better.
We in the freelance writing business and those of us working to get into it have plenty of industries to work with:
Advertising
B2B (Business to Business)
B2C (Business to Customer/Client)
Entertainment
Finance
Medicine
Non-profit
Publishing (online/offline)
Recreation
Science
Research/Marketing
Real Estate
Technology
Niche Types Defined
And for every industry there are tens of freelance writing niche types:
Creative Writing- I’ll say again from my lofty loft of opinions that I believe all writing is creative, as it is generative. My point is affirmed when we look at all of the kinds of writing projects a creative freelancer can do or get into, from magazine articles about bushwackers and George Bush to books about needlepoint and pine cone needles and needling family members to…
Ghost Writing- Ghost writing is a popular preferred choice of many clients, even those who have hung out a writer shingle (or banner) and outsource the assignments, collect them, pay us (hopefully well), and put their own names on the work, be it a booklet or a book, a piece of web copy or a piece of ad copy.
Proposal and Business Plan Writing- For profit or not, businesses need writers to create proposals that show need and get that need satisfied—monetarily. As there is with all freelance writing niche types, with proposal and plan writing a freelancer has the skill sets and experience to prepare documents that will be convincing enough that if the client needs hot soup sold in hell the writer will be able to deliver. I have written two successful proposals and a number of grant proposal reports (that ensured continuation of the grant). They are somewhat interesting, but only to those writers with a particular finesse for a cross between technical and creative/dynamic writing.
PR (Public Relations) Writing- PR writers do concept copy or concept to completion work in a number of media, writing ad copy, doing the layout, and designing such items as brochures, newsletters, press releases, media kits, and more, to achieve the ultimate goal for the client: name branding.
Technical Writing- Involving everything technical, from professional, consumer, and user manuals to white papers, technical writing depends upon a writer’s ability to organize, synchronize, structure, and develop the details of technical content.
Web Content Writing- To meet the client’s goals of web presence and online branding using highly trafficked, “sticky” websites/pages, the web content developer or producer writes what are known as KRPs—keyword-rich pages. This particular wave of freelance niche types was discovered (years ago) to be most beneficial as SEO, search-engine optimizing/optimized/ optimization, text (or content).
While I also specialize in mental health/disability writing and creative and memoir writing, web content development is one of my favorite freelance niche types. To get the keywordphrase keywordphrase keywordphrase construction clear, engaging, and entertaining while keeping it from doing a hideous grammatical/ rhetorical pileup is a challenge I look forward to every morning.
Hey, it beats the alarm clock jangling, signaling the dread of having to punch a card at a factory or see the boss off to work so I can clean her toilets and scrub her floors. Of course, there’s no shame in those jobs…. I did them for years to get through grad school. But that’s more to do with the other definition of niche: “the status of an organism within its environment/community, affecting its survival as a species."
And besides, I love writing so much, much more. It’s a much better fit, one I wish for all of you who adore the writing process as much as I adore it.*
*If this is the case, you definitely need to check out the pages on my site with web content and writing niche samples, articles that exemplify good, tight, even humorous writing and that are about writing at the same time.
Works Consulted
Bly, Robert W.. Secrets of a Freelance Writer: How to Make $85,000 a Year. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1988.
Konradt, Brian. “Creating a Specialty.” Write from Home. 7 Dec. 2004.
About The Author
N.H.-born prize-winning poet, creative nonfiction writer, memoirist, and award-winning Assoc. Prof. of English, Roxanne is also web content and freelance writer/founder of www.roxannewrites.com, a support site for academic, memoir, mental disability, and creative writers who need a nudge, a nod, or just ideas…of which Roxanne has 1,000s, so do stop in for a visit, as this sentence can’t possibly get any longer….
Your literature professor has asked you to write a 7-page essay
comparing Medieval and Renaissance poetry; your economics professor wants
15 pages on how globalization is affecting the economy in three different
countries; and your mathematics professor has forgotten this is a
mathematics class, and wants 5 pages on the quadratic formula. And you
have been staring at the computer screen for over an hour wondering how on
earth you are going to do all of this in the next four days.
This is an all-too-familiar scene to many students. Many students learn
of these large assignments at the beginning of the semester when they
receive their class syllabi, and immediately forget about them because
November seems like years away. Other students are busy with
extracurricular sports, trying to adjust to being away from home for the
first time, and other events and issues. Still other students are quite
frankly terrified of the writing process, believing the blank page to be
worse than their worst nightmare, and so these assignments get shoved
aside to remain untouched until the last minute.
It is an interesting fact of college life that all students, regardless
of major or discipline, are asked to write about their subject matter --
often quite extensively. While it is certainly important that all
individuals be literate, and know how to read and write in a variety of
capacities, styles, and genres, it is also the case that not everyone has
to be a professional academic writer (www.korepetycje.com/join_us.html).
Engineers need to know how to design bridges or better towel racks; pilots
need to be able to take off and land safely and smoothly; and physicians
need to be able to diagnose illnesses and injuries and to prescribe the
correct medical interventions. None of these people needs to know how to
write a term paper.
What, then, are the options for the poor student struggling in the
first paragraph? What will happen to the student who is a prodigy on the
piano but is facing failure because she cannot write 10 pages on
Beethoven? What will happen to the next Frank Lloyd Wright who is stuck in
his psychology seminar, unable to write a series of vignettes portraying
various mental illnesses?
There are a few options. Most college campuses have writing labs, where
many students are helped with researching and writing their papers. Many
students form study groups, where they help each other through the tough
assignments. Some students write their custom essays and term papers (see:
http://www.korepetycje.com/indexam.html) and then pay an editor to
polish them. Still others turn to professional writing services for
assistance with their assignments. This is where services such as
CustomPapers.com come
in. We have a large staff of professional writers who specialize in
writing papers about a wide variety of disciplines ranging from economics
to ecology, marketing to Mozart, Hemingway to heart murmurs. We can also
assist students with related projects, such as PowerPoint Presentations.
In the many years of our existence, we have found tremendous success
helping students with assignments of all sizes, all levels of difficulty,
and all subjects.
Regardless of what type of help you choose, the important thing is that
you get through college as quickly and effectively as possible. College is
a step leading up to the rest of your life -- don't let a term paper be
the skateboard in your path.
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