A Much Better Strategy Than ‘Find Your Niche’

And it’s not to be a generalist.

Photo by Paul Skorupskas on Unsplash

Successful internet writers will often advise you to ‘find your niche’. The argument goes like this: the internet is such a noisy place that we tune most of it out just to get through the day. We only pay attention to things that speak to us directly. So get hyper-specific with your message and your audience to find your ‘Creator-Market fit’ ASAP.

I see the logic behind this advice. But as someone who’s only been writing online for a few months, I do have one problem with it.

I find it suffocating as fuck.

And I know I’m not the only one.

So I think it’s about time we address the issue of premature optimization. But first, let’s unpack the ‘find your niche’ advice.

WTF is a niche anyway?

Here is the most popular definition of a niche given to wannabe online writers:

There are many topics you can write about on the internet. There are many styles/formats in which you can write about those topics. There are also many audiences you can write for. The combination of your choices for these three elements is your niche.

Here are some examples:

• Productivity (topic), written about humorously (style/format), for middle-aged men (audience).
• Make money online (topic), written about in Twitter threads (style/format), for college students (audience).
• Gardening (topic), written about as markup (style/format), for software developers(style/format).

All of this leads to the first question most new writers have when given the ‘find your niche’ advice:

How are you supposed to find your niche when you’re just starting out?

Ever told a joke at a party that bombed? Some things just sound better in our heads.

The same goes for our ideas of what the world wants to hear from us. In the Lean Startup world, they encourage you to test your startup idea ASAP by saying: “get out of the building”. With online writing, that building is your head.