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Freelance
Writers' Series
Career & Business Development Help
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Making Freelance Writing Niche
Types Fit
by Roxanne McDonald
Our
Freelance Writing Needs Defined: 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
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.
Hyperdictionary. WEBNOX CORP., 2000-2003 7 Dec. 2004.
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….
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