How I Focused on Writing in Just One Niche Last Month with Delightful Results

The benefits of niching down

I don’t write your typical how I made thousands as a newbie writer because, after two years of writing, I know it rarely ever happens unless:

🎈You know how and what works — because you have the knowledge that comes with experience under the belt.

🎈By fluke as in your article (s)goes seriously viral.

The audience is king

I write on primarily 2 platforms and the most important lesson I’ve learned is that the audience is king.

You can write your heart out, and brainstorm ideas till the sun comes up but if you are in this for readership and earnings, then you have to give the audience what they want.

And contrary to what you may believe, they don’t always come to you.

This is one of the reasons why though I mainly write about life, I foray into other niches on occasion.

But being nicheless and successful has its downsides as well. Perhaps it could be because I challenge the norm of not sticking to one specific niche and thinking outside the box that I’ve been labeled inauthentic.

Or maybe it is the fact that I like to combine my passion with common sense in order to reach a wider audience.

You’re damned if you choose to treat blogging as a business and damned if you treat blogging as a passion. Whatever happened to ‘You do and I do I?’

But I digress.

Although I have never been keen on niching down, I decided to give it a try and focus on entirely one niche which is relationships — specifically romantic relationships.

The reason for it was a short form about a mysterious Medium writer whom I was crushing after that generated a lot of interest. It inspired me to start a series that turned out to be entertaining to a lot of readers.

And that was exactly my intention. To entertain. Not to give relationship advice or talk about overcoming challenges as I am wont to do but instead, to let loose a little and give my imagination free rein.

The result: My series had a successful run in terms of readership and engagement.

The lesson: Niching down certainly has its benefits.

You know what audience you want to target

According to marketer Lilach Bullock niching down can be the best thing you can do in order to attain success and she describes why in the following words: “When you niche down to a specific, small target audience, you’re instantly eliminating any uncertainties from the equation. When you market widely, you’re somewhat throwing darts at a wall in the dark while wearing a blindfold.”

In other words, when you write for a large audience, chances are that many may not find what you are writing about appealing so it makes sense to pick a target audience and cater to them.

Also, when you are writing for a large audience, there is a high chance many will skip reading what you are writing for whatever reasons. But if you have a specific audience in mind, for example, I had relationships in mind and its sub-genre romantic relationships, you can significantly narrow down the audience you are hoping to reach.

That way you knew there are readers who would be interested in what you have to offer and the next question then becomes how to entice them to read.

The power of a promise-driven headline and compelling post

This is where a promise-driven headline and a compelling post come in as Barry Feldman of “Feldman Creative” states sans the fluff: “Consider content marketing a war zone. The battle is for attention and your headline is your weapon. The reader’s perpetually — but subconsciously — asking, “Why should I read this?” Answer the question. Make it unmistakably clear what the reader gains by investing time in your content.”

To help you with that, Conductor analyzed 5 different headlines and discovered that numbered headlines outperformed reader-addressing ones by 15%! Although I incorporate it in my blogs, I use a different and more old-fashioned technique for headlines with not-too-shabby results which you can check out 👉 this short form.

Having said that, writing a killer headline is only half the job. When the reader clicks on the article, there must be more meat to the matter than just promises. In my case, I managed to create enough interest and curiosity through my posts to make readers come back for the next installment.

But that is not all. Social media promotion can work wonders to give your article the boost it deserves. For example, I use the following to promote mine:

LinkedIn| Twitter| Facebook| Instagram| Mastodon| NewsBreak

The conclusion: Would I niche down again?

Probably not because I find sticking to one niche, quite frankly, to be boring.

Maybe if writing is more than a hobby I would have given it full power and milked it for all it was worth. But at the end of the day, I would say I definitely prefer variety in my writing.

What about you? Are you in favor of niching up or down? Do share!

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