Is there any advantage in selling your writing by specialty? In other words, instead of advertising yourself as a freelance writer, would it be better to emphasize the work you do best or most often?
As an example, my biggest income stream comes from blogging for trial lawyers. I do this through my Vancouver employer. Mostly, I write posts about traffic accidents. But I don’t pursue similar work. Should I? Since websites are so cheap these days, should I have a website dedicated to my writing in that space?
Another example. I recently got a second assignment from a respected outdoor magazine. This will be my seventh article in two years about the outdoors. Five articles were for Rock&Gem. There I covered rocks and minerals. Now I am writing about wildlife. Again, would it profit me to set up a small website to highlight outdoor writing?
One would always have to have a general freelancer website. Just recently, for Catalogs.com, I completed articles on restoring Mustangs, Buick Regals, and BMWs. No, I am not a mechanic. I also did an article on taking care of custom car covers and one on how to make bedrooms safer for the elderly or the infirm. I’m glad I could write those articles but collectively, none of those topics has a focus.
There are many reasons to specialize and on the net you can find arguments for doing so. One writer mentions less competition. Read what she says:
“On the other hand, if you have a freelance writing niche like wedding industry blogging, or copywriting for commodity businesses, or ghostwriting for business executives, or home decor writer and you tailor your site accordingly, you’ll have a much, much better chance of ranking on the first page of search results because there are will be far fewer good sites on the internet to compete with yours.”
http://themomgoals.com/finding-niche-freelance-writer/
I don’t like the idea of making my life more complicated by adding more websites and business cards. Perhaps I should rearrange this existing website to have separate pages or chapters to highlight different areas. What do you think? I am just thinking aloud but I find the arguments for specializing compelling.
