Ever wondered what the profitable writing niches are? Or if the one you want will be profitable enough to pursue?
One way to know is if you are writing in the niche and getting paid well. (Gosh, Ashley, thanks so much! What a helpful answer!)
It’s true, though. Sometimes we accidentally discover a profitable niche and think, “Holy cow, this pays really well. This client is offering me a lot of money and doesn’t seem to think that’s a big deal. I wonder if there’s more of this?”
Or maybe other writers you know personally are getting paid well in that niche.
I have a friend who’s a B2B copywriter. She was 9 months into year this year and was already at six figures. The stuff that she’s writing is definitely profitable!
She’s someone who I know personally, so I take her at her word… but if you’re just reading random stuff on the internet or it’s hearsay in a group, I don’t know if you can trust that as much. Maybe, maybe not.
Here are three better ways for validating your profitable niche.
Validate Profitable Writing Niches with Job Boards
A simple way to validate your niche is the job boards on Problogger or mediabistro.com. Start at one of those two. Some types of businesses post at mediabistro that don’t post at Problogger, and vice versa.
Search for your topic or for your niche. Use general broad category keywords within your biggest version of your niche and see what’s coming up.
For example, if you have a background in software or logistics or curriculum design, go search at mediabistro for those terms and see if there is paying work and if you can determine the frequency those gigs come up. Get information on the rates and on the types of stuff that they need.
Maybe you go there thinking you’re going to write blog posts, but really what they want is case studies, web copy, or even technical writing. If people are hiring for that work with some frequency, there’s probably some money to be made. Remember, not everyone who’s hiring will go to these websites; if there’s a chunk of them on these websites, you’ve probably found a good niche.
Validate Profitable Writing Niches with Available Training
Another way to validate is looking for available training on your specific niche. My friend Brittany Bailey is an email copywriter for possibly the most well known internet marketer alive today, Russell Brunson. She writes all his emails–she’s an email copywriting specialist.
Someone might look at that and think, “Is email copywriting profitable or is Brittany a one-off outlier success?” I personally know that emails are very lucrative. I can just tell you emails are lucrative, but to validate the niche you also need to go and see if there is training available on the subject.
Try awaionline.com. They’ve got robust articles under their free resources. At the top of the website, there’s a search bar. Type “emails” or “email copy” in the search bar and see what they’ve got.
You’re going to get pitched there, FYI. But they have great information and if they have training on a specific niche or type of service, odds are good that there’s money to be made in that little pocket. That’s a really good clue!
Their product catalog is sorted pretty much by topic on niche copywriting markets. For example, B2B is one, which in and of itself is a massive market. Then, you can burrow down even further inside of B2B.
You can pick the industry of your B2B clients or the type of service that you provide, whether it’s case studies, white papers, websites, VSLs, emails, etc.
If AWAI says that their Christian writing market is a $1 billion industry, I’m going to believe them. They’re going to be shoving all their pitches for their Christian market product down my throat, but there’s going to be some truth there. There’s no money in pitching programs that don’t make money, right? They have a massive reputation to maintain.
Validate Profitable Writing Niches with Google and LinkedIn
Google “freelance writer” and then whatever the niche is. See if you can find freelance writers in this niche that you’re looking for. Digital marketing, freelance writer or B2B freelance writer or freelance copywriter. You can change up the search terms.
If you write about apparel, look for apparel freelance writer, merchandising freelance writer, clothing design freelance, whatever the key search terms and see if you can find other writers who are succeeding. You can also do that at LinkedIn. (Their job board is another great place to check for your niche keywords to see if there’s demand, by the way.)
When you find these writers, look for their portfolios and activity that is recent. Dig a little deeper. Don’t just take them at their word. Someone could have randomly said, “I’m going to be a niche writer for big kid athletic shoes” because it’s what they’re into. Maybe they’re a shoe designer and they want to write about them.
Validate that they are getting paid, getting work, and they’re doing all right. If they are, you’ve probably found a good little niche where you can make a bit of money, which is ultimately why we’re here.
