The number one stumbling block for entrepreneurs is choosing a niche for their business.
A niche is a specific area or position with an industry. Business gurus dictate that you should “niche down” or hone in on an ultra-specific niche so that you can more easily dominate it.
So, if you are a copywriter you should be the “auto-responder guy”; or if you are a designer you could be the “logo designer guy”; or if are a developer you could be the “membership site guy”.
As with all business advice, “niching down” is right only some of the time. And this advice is actually stopping a lot of people from getting started.
But I’m going to show you that it’s OK not have a niche. All you have to do is follow a very easy-to-follow path. It’s called: your own way.
1. You are your niche
Who am I? I’m the “freelance-artworker-turned-graphic-designer-turned-web-designer-turned-best-selling-author-turned-online-course-creator-who-now-sometimes-blogs-about-personal-development guy” – it doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.
Has it caused mass confusion amongst my audience? No. Has it caused my customers to turn away in their droves? No.
This works for me and it could work for you, for the following reasons:
- It’s enabled me to do different things instead of concentrating on one thing
- I don’t get bored doing the same thing all the time
- Online business moves at a great pace – it’s a good thing that I’ve moved on to more interesting, more lucrative areas (for example, online course creation)
You can build a business around being a jack of all trades rather than being a master of one (that could be redundant next year).
2. It should be obvious
For some people niche selection will be obvious. These are the lucky ones. The people who love SEO (for example, Neil Patel), or who love outsourcing (for example, Chris Ducker) or who love writing books (for example, Jeff Goins).
The niche selection was obvious for them. It’s what they are. It’s what they do. But it should be obvious for you too.
It’s what you are. It’s what you do. It may not seem cool or sexy to you now but that’s because you haven’t made it cool and sexy yet.
3. It will distract you from getting started
Many people postpone getting a website, postpone content creation, postpone product launches or postpone starting a business because they’re thinking, thinking, thinking about the niche decision.
This is a huge mistake.
You will find your niche more easily by getting a website, creating content, launching products and starting a business. You will find yourself inside the act of creation.
4. It will change anyway
All existence is change.
My business looks completely different today to three years ago. I used to get most of my income from graphic and web design clients, now it mostly comes from the sale of video courses.
In five years time our businesses and lives will be going in completely different directions. Guaranteed.
In the beginning of the year 2000, WordPress, Facebook, Google Adwords, Twitter, Kindles, iTunes didn’t exist. In five years’ time there will be several life-changing apps we’ll all be going crazy about – and there’ll be niche businesses springing up around them. You could dominate one of them. What’s the point of worrying about a niche now when there could be a more obvious one just around the corner?
5. The world is not made out of niches
Some people have listened to the gurus’ advice and have needed to artificially carve out a niche that they’re not totally happy with. If you’ve found this process difficult and painful suggests that you may make a lousy decision. You are never satisfied with your choice if the decision has been hard. Easy decisions are the right ones.
If the decision is too difficult don’t make it. It’s much better to forget about the decision entirely and forge your niche from the areas of business you most enjoy.
In reality the world is not black and white but includes billions of gray areas.
6. You have more than one defining factor
Ultimately there are many, many areas you excel at:
- You probably are creative in certain areas but not others.
- You probably have a certain types of people skills but not others.
- You probably have affinities for particular business models but balk at others.
You can craft your niche or niches out of your many areas of excellence. This will happen naturally if you follow your interests. Don’t force it.
7. People are different – customers are different
And then there’s the customer. All customers are created differently. I have customers from every part of the world, of every age group, social background and gender. They all have different needs. Some of them will be more drawn to my entrepreneurial products, some will like the passive income products, others will be interested in the WordPress development stuff. And, if they are interested in more than one area, so much the better.
“Niching down” could cut you away from certain audiences as they’ll think, ‘he’s the “something-something guy” he won’t be able to help me with such-and-such’.
People change in their interests as well, so they are more likely to buy other products and will cross-sell more easily.
You can do it
You can build that website, you can create that content, you can launch that product, you can start a business. But you’re going to make mistakes while you do it. So you should start.
Don’t let anything distract you from taking action, least of all niche selection. Don’t waste one more second on niche selection, it’s wasted energy. Put that energy towards taking action in your business and your “niche” will grow out of this action.
Thanks Rob, you know how completely I agree with you on this one –Â feels great when you reiterate it. Another useful comparison are Renaissance men in general: Leonardo da Vinci, for instance, was a painter, an architect, an engineer, a forensic scientist, an inventor – the list goes on. No niche!
Hello Piccia, great point about Leonardo! I bet he didn’t have a guru telling him to specialise. Well, if he did, I guess Leo wouldn’t have listened!
Great article Rob.
I think most business advice today is framed around the adage, ‘If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.’
When a business niche is focused on, it’s really following the formal process of business planning with market segmentation in mind. This is very difficult as online users/customers are so diverse from many different backgrounds, as are the skills of the owner.
Anyway, I enjoyed this article and it was very amusing. Especially your attempt at defining your job role. You should write a book about it, ‘My Crazy Business Plan.’
Haha, yes, Marty. I’ve made my fair share of mistakes and failures that’s for sure. All this business advice is good but should be taken with a pinch of salt. Planning is good, for example, but look at Twitter! They found a killer idea while they were working on something else, they didn’t plan for that! Yes, you’re right, it’s difficult sometimes. We can learn from others without being a carbon copy. 🙂
Hi, Rob
Thanks for your post.
I feel so release to find some bloggers like you who doesn’t beleive in “niche”.
I am a newbie in blogging with no technical background. It is not the technical things that hindered me to move forward. It is the “niches” thing.
My blog is helping readers to achieve good life through Kindgom within.
I ask myself what kind of ‘niche’ I can belong? I find none.
My own inspiration is that I just keep doing my posts and providing best valve and solutions to my readers. Who cares about “niche” ?
Thanks for your post. Will share it in Facebook and Twitter today. -Stella
Thank you, Stella, exactly, who cares about a niche? You care about your readers, that’s really important. You will learn from them about what they want and deliver that – there’s no point in worrying about it and not starting the conversation. Thanks for the shares, I really appreciate it.
Rob,
Thank you so much for this article!! In being a creative, I find honing in on “one thing” to be boring. I lose interest in just one topic so quickly. In my desire to rebrand, I’ve wanted to choose one niche, but your article has be second guessing that decision.
You provided such clarity and on why focusing on niche selection can be a bad idea. I really enjoyed reading this and am soaking up your knowledge of Udemy as much as possible!!
Thank you for sharing your gifts with us!
Hello Cynthia, it might be something to do with creative people. There are a lot of creative people who come here so maybe that’s why this message resonates. Thank you for your kind, encouraging words and good luck with everything you do. 🙂
One word: awesome! Thanks for sharing, Rob. This has been a HUGE issue for me of late. I was actually just thinking about this this morning before I popped onto this post.
Cheers,
Tom
Hey buddy! You’re the best! Thanks for sharing this post with your community. So glad it was helpful to you. 🙂
I appreciate this article greatly. How do you make something small when you see the big picture? Much of the frustration we experience trying to conquer challenges in life are due to tunnel vision or fragmentation. I’ve labored over pigeonholing myself far too long. Seems it’s better to educate your prospective client in your uniqueness–how you go beyond the competition and how they will benefit much more so by what you offer.
Totally agree with you, Susanne, and welcome to the site. You certainly sound unique to be just by reading this comment! Why do we need an artificial “niche” to pigeon-hole us? We don’t! 🙂
I read your article with great interest. I love the concept of “just do it,” but how to create a web site, content, or products, if you don’t know the niche?
Just do it, LeAnne. Write about what you know. Write an article that could be the most useful 1,000 words you’ve ever written. That would be a start! I hope this helps. Let me know if you have any more questions.
Thanks for that post Rob. If I would have to describe who am I business-wise I’m sure I would have beaten your meager 24-words-long description. I’m ALL over the place.
And I still make some money.
Yeah but I had to cut those words down to 24 in the interests of brevity! Thanks, Michal 🙂
Wow Rob. This is a very interesting post. I like it. Everybody tells me you have to niche down. I tried it and I found myself thinking about so many other things to include, even before I finished my first 10 posts. I may have to change a few things to include my new ideas. It is out of the niche, but if feels great writing about these new ideas. I know I will somehow make it fit in with the main niche, but if my niches changes or expands, it doesn’t worry me; and I also feel that it will help my readers.
My fav statement here is: You will find yourself inside the act of creation. Deep. Thank you my friend. It is great to see you writing this way. I love it.
Thank you, Rene. The good thing is that we are free to decide and free to change our decisions when it comes to niche selection. Glad you liked the article. Thanks.
I instead chose to build a product that helps as many people as possible, while promoting it to various individual niche groups using angles specific to each one. I much prefer it to creating a bunch of niche products.
Hey Rob. I’m sure what you did was the best way to go. The article was more about things from my perspective as a content creator with multiple but related interests. But I agree with you bunch of unrelated niche products would be a nightmare to sell. 🙂
Awesome article Rob. I am on the personal development bandwagon. And have made a lot of good changes in my life as a result. However, the one area I was stuck on was developing that one big idea, that master plan, that one thing that will differentiate me and help identify me as “the guy” for whatever that may be. I went through some exercises and courses (including your WordPress Skillshare course), set up my domain, and then – nothing. I hit a wall when it came to developing content. But, I share your view that maybe I don’t have to be the guy good at one thing. I have many talents and nobody is exactly the same as me, having experienced the same things as me with the same knowledge, skills and perceptions. And who knows? Maybe it’ll form into a mountain of a niche one day. For now it’s just a bunch of little rocks. Point being, I should just start.
Honestly, Mark, you’ve done the hard bit. You’ve set up a website – that’s a hurdle that proves too much for most people so you really need to tackle the next hurdle of creating regular content. And it’s not difficult, you can do it. You’re right. Action will cure all your problems. You’ve just got to create a great piece of content every weekend (or more often). Don’t worry about the niche. Just write about something that occurred to you that week!
Thanks a lot Rob. I have plenty of topics jotted down. Just the actual content needs doing. I have a nasty habit of waiting until everything is just perfect and setup right before I start. I suppose I can afford to throw caution to the wind a bit.
Yes, you just need to start. What’s the worst thing that could happen?
I really needed this article right now, Rob! Thank you! I have been fretting over identifying a niche for my blog and/or e-book, because EVERY blog/article/course I have investigated recently is advising to specialize in a narrowly-defined area. I just concluded today that – as you explained it – I am my niche. When I read your post, I was very excited to see validation of my conclusion! Before I added this comment, I defined my target audience, identified two broad subjects (blogs) for this group, identified my freebies for growing my subscriber list, and came up with tentative blog titles. I can do this! Thanks again.
Hello Cheryl, did the blogs that advised you to specialize in a narrowly-defined area actually specialize in a narrowly-defined area themselves?
Sure, you can do this. Best of luck!
Rob 🙂
Haha! No, not as narrow as they advise. Point taken! Thanks.