Do you need a niche to start freelancing?
The age-old question for freelancers—niche down or broaden up?
Should you niche down to specialize your skills and become a noted expert? Or should you broaden your abilities to widen your net (and capture more clients)?
I love this question because every single freelancer goes through it at some point. And it usually leads to questioning whether to change either what you do or for whom you do it.
As per usual, I have opinions.
Niche down or broaden out?
I think about freelancing as a combination of three things:
Raw skill: What you actually do (write, code, design, etc.).
Subject matter expertise: How much you know about your space (both your skill level and your industry overall, e.g. design for auto dealers).
Ability to learn: How quickly you can pick things up or understand new industries.
So, the answer to the question “should I niche down or broaden” comes down to two factors: your personal balance of the three elements of freelancing and what your clients might need from you.
Niching down is a function of subject matter expertise on top of raw skill. On the other hand, broadening out is a function of raw skill with your ability to learn.
In both cases, think about how often someone needs the raw skill you have. If you have a raw skill in an area you have subject matter expertise in, niching could be a great opportunity to become an expert in a tight field. This, in turn, will allow you to charge premium rates because you can bring additional value to your clients solely because of your expertise.
But if you have a raw skill that a lot of companies need a little of–that requires skilled experience more than subject matter expertise–you can build a business based on referrals from one client to another with less regard for industry or use case.
How to think about opportunity costs
If you’re choosing one path, you need to be aware of what you’re giving up.
When you choose niching, you are choosing the path of subject matter expertise. This means you might need to turn down projects you might find cool but are not in your niche because you have to focus.
If you’re choosing to broaden, you can take advantage of any cool opportunity than comes your way. However, you might never become known as a subject matter expert in any one thing, leading to possible issues down the line when you have years of mish-mashed experience.
You aren’t stuck on one path
The good news about the niche vs. broaden debate is you aren’t stuck with one choice forever. If you niche down and don’t like it, you can broaden up. And if you start broad then find an area you like, you can focus. It might be painful, sure, but it’s not a death sentence.
In either case, you’ll learn something useful about yourself and (hopefully) make good money.
