Not Having a Niche as a Writer on Medium Is Okay

You can succeed just well as a writer without having a specific niche

Photo by Karolina Grabowska on Kaboompics

I’m fairly a newbie on Medium as I started my Partner Program in May, and instead of writing and posting right away, I took my time and read a bunch of posts on Medium to be prepared before diving in, and a lot of those posts included tips for making money from writing here and being successful on this platform.

I noticed that a lot of those posts carried the same advice among other advices: “find your niche” and write about the area you are most interested in.

When I started writing on Medium, this niche advice was the one I most struggled to apply. Even though I don’t have too many pieces on Medium yet to reach this conclusion — 17 posts in nearly 2 months — almost all my pieces are about topics that are unrelated from each other.

I’m interested in a bunch of different areas that I struggle to find a niche and write around a certain area of focus. And I see some other writers being in this situation too.

I’m aware because I’m only warming up on Medium right now, I have yet to tell more about these topics. So I, of course, will have writings on similar topics on my profile later on, but still, I’m confident that none of them will be the one and only area I write about in the future.

Advantages & Disadvantages of not having a niche

A disadvantage of not having a niche can be not being as skilled as a niche writer in that certain topic you write about.

Say you are interested in cultural topics and want to write about it, but on the other hand side, our other writer whose field is culture, who read dozens of books about it, maybe studying in a related field, etc. is stronger in knowledge and experience than you in that area.

Because you are interested in many topics, you tend to know less than an expert or a whiz in that specific area.

Another disadvantage is, niche writers can be more successful and gain a larger and a solid audience at first compared to non-niche writers because their area of interest is clear and as long as they succeed at sending a reachable message, they will find people interested in the topic they write about more easily.

The non-niche writer can struggle to keep a solid audience, as they write about unrelated topics; yesterday they wrote about elections, today, mental health, tomorrow, who knows, movies?

So they have to have a particular style and voice to their writing (just like the niche writer should, but stronger). That’s what will make them stand out, not their area of expertise as there are none.

The advantage of being a non- niche writer is they know less about a certain topic, but they approximately have an idea about any topic. And they can develop ideas from there with proper research, reading, etc. They can get creative with what they write about.

They can almost write about anything, as long as they are willing to learn, experiment, and expand their — and their readers’ — horizons further. There is almost no limit to what they choose to write.

Niche’s role in creating your own publication

Medium writers also recommend other writers to have a niche because you can create your own publication around it. Almost all writers who give beginners’ advice on how to get big on Medium tell that they should create their own publication, besides getting published on others.

Because you get to have your own audience, who is interested in the area of expertise you write about, that they can more easily reach that knowledge and insight and you can reach your audience more easily via your publication.

Medium has wonderful publications around certain niches, P.S. I Love You for relationship advices and stories, Better Marketing for marketing tips and strategies, The Writing Cooperative for writing tips, Invisible Illness for mental health awareness, Age of Awareness about education, and the list goes on like that.

Even though those aren’t the only topics these publications accept, they mostly circle around it and relate to those main topics somehow. Because its those publications’ niche and the readers expect to read something about say, struggles of post-grad life in The Post-Grad Survival Guide.

And I enjoy writing for some of those publications, but I couldn’t follow the advice of creating my own publication, even though I wanted to. I worked my head around and thought for a good amount of time on what can I make my publication about if I opened any.

I had some ideas, but none of them were strong enough, because I didn’t believe myself that I could write on a publication dedicated only to a particular field.

To see what I could write about in my publication, I narrowed down my niche, and 4 different topics popped up, the topics I most like to write about and interested in, but they are all unrelated to each other to make one publication around them.

They are Psychology, Traveling, Writing, and Music. These are my main topics of interest, but not limited to. I also like to write about cultural issues, equality, language, productivity, social media, and any topic that catches my attention strong enough to write about it.

And this is of course not just me, there are plenty of Medium writers who don’t have a niche and like to write in a variety of areas.

One option for non-niche writers (or we can say multiple niches) who want to open a publication is, they can always open multiple publications about different areas of focus they want to write about.

Yes, that’s possible and there are a bunch of writers on this platform who does that. Who knows, maybe in the future I can work on that too. But it requires a lot of hard work and dedication to manage those publications simultaneously.

Another option is to open a publication under your name or without a specific area of focus — with writings from a variety of topics — but the following may suffer at first if you don’t have a solid audience because the publication most likely won't have a certain direction.

Writing goals can differ amongst writers

One of the reasons I found why I don’t have a certain niche, and others like me; a good amount of writers on Medium start to write on Medium because they already have a certain domain they can talk about and spread their knowledge and experience in that area.

Most of them even confess to have not written anything before Medium other than college reports or their journals.

I’m not saying that they are all experts — they don’t have to be — but they are particularly knowledgeable and interested in a specific area, and have many things to share around their area of focus. And that’s great because as readers we get to learn more than surface-level knowledge on topics we want to learn more about.

But in my case, and some others like me, we were writers beforehand, I opened my Medium account because I don’t have too much knowledge to share about a topic, but I like to write about what comes to my mind or what interests me, I’m passionate about writing itself and to learn as much as I can about different topics that interest me.

Passion and curiosity is enough for writing about any topic

As of today, I know I’m not knowledgeable enough about any topic I want to write about. I don't consider myself an expert in any of them. I’m just curious or passionate about that topic that I write a heartfelt — if a personal story — or a well-researched piece — if a guide like or investigative writing — on it.

I write about psychology, but I’m only a student in that field, yet. I like to write about music, but I’m just an avid music listener (and an instrument player, though not that great). I write about traveling, but I’m only a person who's a little too enthusiastic about traveling.

And if we are talking about experience, I’m only 20 so I can't compete with the majority of writers in terms of experience.

So what guides me in my writings is not my expert like knowledge or experience but my passion and the research I make, readings I do, about it. It works for me and others, and it will work for you too. You don’t have to be full-on knowledgeable and experienced in a certain area to be qualified to write about that topic.