Choosing a niche causes the worst kind of FOMO! 🥴

But if writing is your full-time job, you should probably pick a niche anyways 😓

For those of you who are new around here, this is me! 💛

Happy new week, friends! In scouring the Internet for freelancing and ghostwriting advice (as I do regularly, for I like to stay updated on my craft), I found one piece of advice echoed in almost every book, article, and podcast I studied: to be financially successful as a freelance writer, you have to choose a niche. *Sigh.* While they’re not wrong, I don’t want to choose just one!

Since there are freelancers all over the world specializing in different niches, I know that I’ll have a super tough time making a living as a literary jack-of-all-trades. I know that I need to pick a niche to get really good at so that I can be the go-to ghostwriter in that arena. But as a fervent lover of many different types of writing, that’s really difficult for me.

I started out as a full-time ghostwriter with memoirs, war stories, and love stories for clients. Writing people’s stories has always fascinated me, and making their lived experiences come back to life was a dream come true. But I didn’t know a lot of people who needed my services, and after a lot of marketing, contacting family members, and directionless cold emails, I decided that, at least for now, I needed to choose a new niche.

I recently dove into writing for professionals and businesses, such as entrepreneurs, start-ups, and public speakers. I’ve made this switch because I have a more identifiable market for these types of professionals AND I know that I can help drive traffic to their sites with better opt-in copy, auto-response email copy, and newsletter articles.

But I felt a lot of FOMO (fear of missing out) when making the switch. What if a high-paying memoir project was right around the corner? Would I have stuck with my original course of action?

Honestly, I don’t know the answers to these questions. But I’ve always gotten severe FOMO when choosing a niche at all. One day, I want to write informative books, and the next, I want to write a mystery novel. Give it a week and maybe I’ll be working on a series of romantic short stories followed by some copy for a start-up company blog. Basically, I have so many interests that it’s hard to choose just one specialty. You may be experiencing the same dilemma in your own writing journey.

Here’s what I’ve concluded: If you’re writing just for fun or for yourself, don’t feel pressured to choose a niche. You have the flexibility to write about anything you want at any time. If you’re a career writer, though, you may have to separate your for-pleasure writing and your business writing. While you still have the freedom to write whatever you want in your spare time, you should choose a niche for your ghostwriting business if you want to financially support yourself with writing. Picking a specialty is helpful; it allows you to know who to market your services to and it helps you get really darn good at your area of expertise.

• Please Note: You 100% can and should choose a niche that you enjoy. I’m not saying that you won’t be successful if you pick a type of writing that you like. What I am saying is if you’re working on a client-by-client freelancing basis, you want to choose something that you love AND that you can make money doing. Brainstorm: What are you willing to do that clients are willing to pay for?

I understand your protests, though. Maybe you love a ton of different niches, and the idea of giving up one for another (even if you can still pursue the one that was “given up” in your spare time) is terrifying. Maybe you have mental/emotional FOMO about the writing you could be doing, social FOMO about the community you could be a part of, or financial FOMO about the monetary success you could have in the abandoned niche.

FOMO is a real feeling because it reflects reality. You probably are missing out on some things when you choose one niche, but you’re also gaining a ton within your arena while growing the financial freedom that you need to pursue your other writing passions. FOMO is a real sentiment, but to be successful, you often have to put it on the back burner.

What are your thoughts on FOMO in the writing world? Have you experienced FOMO on Substack (perhaps in trying to choose a single focus for your publication, like I have 😂)?

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