You Need a Niche, but You Also Need to Find Your Lane as a Writer

Your niche is what you write about; your lane is how you write about it.

I’m not a confessional writer.

Well, I should say I’m not a confessional writer anymore.

Throughout my grad school years and for a time after, I blogged about my dating and sex life and to a lesser extent, my family life.

I had a pretty successful blog and the whole nine. I’ve actually been moving a lot of those old posts over to Medium after a site migration gone terribly wrong had me lose 95 percent of my traffic and the income that came with it.

But this article isn’t about that; it’s about figuring out what kind of writer you want to be.

Are you a storyteller?

Are you a data specialist?

Are you a satirist?

So often, we talk about finding your niche as a writer, but we don’t spend enough time talking about finding your lane as a writer.

Your lane is how you write about the topics in your niche.

Confessional writers pull their topics from their personal lives. Their niche is them.

Storytellers can turn anything into an engrossing tale you can’t put down. Their niche can be anything.

Me?

I’m a problem solver.

I decided if I wasn’t going the confessional route anymore, I should be useful.

I know I have a lot of questions about things, and I figured people may have similar questions and need similar answers. So I decided to be the person to provide those answers.

It’s not the only type of writing I do these days, but it is my primary lane and the one people most expect from me and the content I produce.

Having a lane, a way of writing, is an important part of developing your brand as a writer. As much as people like to eschew convention and proclaim they will write about whatever they want in any manner they please, that’s not exactly conducive to making money as a writer or developing a tribe of faithful fans who will become the base of people paying you for what you do.

I wrote more about that here:

Readers have expectations when they click on an article from their favorite writer. When those expectations aren’t met, over time, they may lose that fan.

We, as writers, are an arrogant lot.

We beleive that our fans should read or like whatever it is we produce because we wrote it and their fandom is about us and not our work.

But that’s rarely how it works.

Lil Wayne once produced a rock album.

While it wasn’t a total flop, it didn’t do anywhere near the numbers of any of his hip-hop albums.

People wanted rap Wayne not rock Wayne.

Tommy Lee of Motley Crue wanted to be an emo-rocker/rapper and have a solo career away from the band.

Fans wanted Tommy Lee, the drummer from Motley Crue.

Who do you think won out?

When people have shown you that they love your work and they’re willing to pay you for it, it takes a lot of arrogance to then say,

No. I’m an artist and I’m going to produce what I want regardless of what the people paying me say they want.

Why recreate the wheel or make your life more difficult when, by simply choosing a niche and a lane, you can have the success you’re after as a writer?

Choosing the type of writer you want to be combined with a popular niche is a recipe for success in a field that’s overcrowded and difficult to distinguish yourself in when everyone is writing about the same things on the same platforms.

If you find there is no cohesiveness to your writing either through topic or style, take the time to look at your body of work and see which ones have resonated most with your readers.

Are their conclusions you can draw from your popular articles?

Are the themes similar? Is the style of writing the same?

If yes, you’ve found your lane.

And while I know us artists types don’t want to hear this, but once you’ve found your lane, stay in it.

It doesn’t mean you can’t ever branch out and do other things you love (I dabble in poetry here and there); it just means to build fans, and a successful writing career staying in your lane is what’s going to get you there.

Once you have a lane, you can stop worrying about where you’re going and just enjoy the ride.

And that’s what we all want at the end of the day, right?

This is How I Made $135 Dollars in My First 30 Days On Medium

Only seven to nine percent of writers make at least $100 each month on Medium. I did it in my first month. Here is what I did each week to achieve my goal, hopefully, you can use my journey to $100 a month to achieve yours.

If you enjoyed this case study check out my latest case study: How to make $100 a week on Medium.