What is a niche in copywriting?

A niche is simply an area of expertise - an industry or type of copywriting - that you decide to specialise in.

What about the copywriters who write about anything and everything? Aren’t they going to land more gigs?

Not really.

Truth is, niching is really important in the copywriting game, because it shows that you’re an expert at something.

And the fact that you’ve narrowed your focus down will actually work in your favour - particularly for the brands within that niche.

Often, niche copywriters tend to earn a lot more than their ‘Jack of all trades’ counterparts - precisely because they’re an expert in something. And a brand will always pick the ‘expert’ over the ‘Jack-of-all-trades.’

How do you pick a niche?

We’ll go over some of the most popular niches in a second, but you’re probably wondering how copywriters even decide to pick a niche in the first place.

Keep in mind that there are hundreds of different niches.

So yeah… not exactly an easy task.

Before you make the leap and narrow your focus into, say, beauty - take a look at these questions:

• What do you enjoy writing about?

• What are you good at writing about?

• What niche really interests you?

• What niches bring in a lot of money (not a super important point, but it’s useful to note that some will bring in more $ than others)

• What kind of topics does your portfolio showcase?

Some of these questions will be quite difficult to answer - especially when you’re at the very start of your copywriting journey or yet to land your first paid gig.

My advice?

Write about as many niches as possible at the start. Get a feel for them. For what you like, what you don’t like, and what you’re good at.

The best way to go about this is by working with an agency that specialises in a broad range of topics.

Or if you’re looking to freelance ASAP, then write as many pieces as possible for different niches.

You can do this by either writing up ‘made-up pieces’ or by contacting start-ups and brands directly and asking them if you can write a piece for them for free (being honest about your position and that you’re trying to build a portfolio will work in your favour, so definitely mention this when contacting them).

Once you’ve spent some time testing out different niches (I’d say give it a year, but ultimately everyone’s timelines will be different) circle back to the questions above and give them another go.

By that stage, you’ll have built up enough experience to answer those questions properly.

Types of copywriting niches

For the sake of brevity, I’m not going to dive into detail here - this is more of a list.

If you’re subscribed to the newsletter, you’ll see that I write about a new niche every week - so stay tuned!

As mentioned previously, a niche can be an industry or it can be a type of copywriting. Example: you might decide to specialise in beauty or you might decide to specialise in social media copy.

Some people take it a step further by specialising in an industry and a type of copywriting.

Some popular industry niches include:

• SEO copywriting

• Tech copywriting

• B2B copywriting

• B2C copywriting

• Food copywriting Medical copywriting

• Beauty copywriting

• UX copywriting

• Fitness/self-improvement copywriting

Some popular types of copy you might decide to specialise in include:

• Social media copy

• Direct response copy

• Blog copy

• Long-form copy

• Short-form copy

• Emails and newsletters

• Ads

• Whitepapers

• E-books

• Website copy

Now, these lists aren’t exhaustive - there are hundreds of different niches out there, so do your own research too.

It’s also worth mentioning that some niches will have sub-niches.

Take tech. Sure, you could go broad and just niche in tech, or you could narrow down your expertise even further and focus on a sub-niche within tech such as gaming (yes, gaming!) or fintech.

I’ll be taking a deep-dive into each niche within my newsletter, so subscribe and stay tuned.