When I was working as an engineer, I tried to corner the market on a specific skill set.
I tried to carve out a niche. I tried to specialize.
Every job hunt focused on firmware, embedded systems, or electronics engineering roles tied to Internet of Things projects.
The reason for specializing was simple: the law of supply and demand.
To increase my value in the job market, I needed to make my skills rare by specializing. If I were one of the very few who fit the role, I held all the cards when it came to negotiating pay.
Beyond that, I wanted to specialize because I’m genuinely into firmware engineering. I really want to build wearables, robotics, and smart home tech like automated lights or door locks.
As a firmware engineer, I get to basically bring objects to “life,” and that is so cool to me. Making things think and do tasks on their own… it’s just is the closest thing to magic!
When I said life, though, I mean they have a bit of intelligence, even if it is pretty low level.
One very simple project in this field is smart lighting in your house or office. You know those lights that change brightness on their own? That.
Did they ever make you wonder how they manage to keep the room lit right, like, when you shut the curtains and cut off the sun, the light compensates? Firmware engineers can explain how it all works.
Anyway, I was thinking about the potential of mastering IoT architecture. I could only imagine how much money I was going to be making if that really happened.
Today, I am not an engineer anymore.
Basically, I am a blogger, writer, and creator now. An online business owner.
And like in other careers, I’ve heard, getting more specialized, or niching down in content creation, is how you attract better opportunities.
Many “experienced” creators selling courses are even pushy about having a niche.
They they say it is the easiest way to build an audience. When you have a niche, you focus on creating content for one specific interest, which immediately pulls in people who are into the same thing.
On top of that, if your audience is on platforms with interest-driven algorithms, these “mentors” say niching down is the best way to reach them.
Focusing on one topic makes it easy for the algorithm to figure out who your content is for, and that really boosts the odds of your work landing in front of the right people.
Most importantly, they say niching down helps you make money faster. Because, you are focusing on a specific group of people with a clear set of problems. That makes it easy to create and sell the exact products they are looking for.
These three points are only a few of the advantages I have learned about niching down from my five years of experience as a creator. I admit the perks are reasonable and compelling enough for me to consider it.
Even so, I have decided NOT to niche down for Explore to Thrive.
It sounds like a huge mistake, but it is actually NOT, especially if you are serious about making your creator business a lifelong thing like I am.
Who would not want a lifelong business that lets you work whenever and wherever you want while making money while you sleep? Nobody! LOL.
But seriously, I decided against niching down because it feels like a trap for any creator who wants their online business to provide a lifetime of income, fun, and fulfillment.
The simplest explanation is that we just change as we get older.
New things we learn and the experiences we have shape our perspectives and what we care about.
You might be super into a specific niche right now, but that might not be the case later. Writing about it might feel like a fun hobby today, but it could feel like a boring chore down the road. Who knows what might happen.
Actually, focusing on a specific niche can sometimes be a problem.
Think about this:
Imagine you decide to focus your content entirely on air travel. Since you fly overseas fairly often and have already partnered with a few airlines, it feels like a natural fit.
For five years, you live and breathe aviation, comparing airlines, sharing hacks for sleeping on long flights, and teaching followers how to score cheaper tickets.
Because you are authentic and draw from real, lived experience, your advice is incredibly helpful. Through this consistency, you manage to build a dedicated community of over 100,000 subscribers.
But here comes the twist in your story.
During your travels, you meet someone special, fall in love, and decide to settle down to start a family. Yiee, congratulations!
Suddenly, you cannot write about flights anymore because you stay home raising kids.
What happens to your audience? You have 100,000 people expecting expert flight tips, but all you have to offer are parenting hacks and household repair advice.
The business essentially stops.
All those years of building your brand suddenly feel like they went to waste.
Now, I am not saying that you cannot travel once you have kids, but the point is your niche no longer fits your lifestyle, which makes it harder to keep creating the content needed to run your business.
Returning to reality, if I am not really niching down, what is the plan here?
Should I just call myself a generalist? Not really.
Instead, I am building all my content around one big long term goal.
Nobody should tell you how to run your creative life since everyone has their own unique mix of talents and interests, but I think you should give this strategy a shot as well.
Of course, this does not mean that you are starting over from square one or completely stop writing about your current interests.
You can keep your niche and write about different things. The only difference is that your content creation is going to be more focused on that “ultimate goal,” which is also the key to attracting an audience.
How?
From my experience, both in person and online, I have observed that people are constantly seeking connections with those they can relate to.
It is part of our inherent human nature to engage with others who are on a similar journey, pursuing the same outcomes, and working toward shared goals. It is our survival instinct.
This is the analogy: if people with the same interests are your audience when niching down, then people sharing similar or related goals are your audience when you use my approach.
So what goals should you have? Well, that is really up to you, but here are a few ideas.
If you are a food blogger, your goal could be to open a restaurant featuring the food you are passionate about cooking and then expanding across the nation. Your audience here could be other people aspiring to open their own restaurants or perhaps those interested in mastering that same cuisine.
If you are a tech vlogger, your goal could be building several niche software companies entirely on your own without venture capital and selling them for seven figures. Your audience here could be other software engineers who want to build their own SaaS companies.
If you are a travel writer, your goal could be visiting all UNESCO sites in the world and publishing a book guiding others on how to do the same. Your audience here could be other travelers wanting to write a book about their own travel interests or simply those who want to visit as many UNESCO sites as well.
If you are a lifestyle creator, like me, your goal could be building a business that you find fulfilling and that lets you work wherever and whenever you want. Your audience could be other people who want to start their own online business and are looking for more freedom in their daily lives.
The best part about cultivating an audience that shares your goals is that you can turn those people into a community you “grow” with.
Here’s one way:
You move forward by tackling the specific problems standing in the way of your progress, then you turn those solutions into something helpful like a post, video, or product that you can share or sell. The people in your community who are dealing with those same issues could purchase your work. And when they do, you earn money, your audience solves their problem, and everybody wins.
What makes this even better is that because you have built so much trust while growing the community together, making a sale feels much more natural.
Now, how do you actually find your audience?
Honestly, I do not think you need to rely on the algorithm to reach them because they are likely looking for you already.
Especially the people who are just getting started, they are already searching for you.
They need your experience, the solutions you have built, and perhaps your unique perspective to get their stuff going.
All you have to do is put yourself out there and make yourself easy to find.
Get active in other communities, mingle with other creators, and learn search engine optimization.
Provide value and a unique perspective to get more eyes on your work as your posts get shared, recommended, and linked.
Do not forget to share your journey because people love to stay tuned when they are curious about what happens next.
Most importantly, be vulnerable and authentic so you can build trust as you go.
The biggest caveat is that you should be ready to fully commit and decide that you will reach your ultimate goal no matter what.
This matters because your ultimate goal is your psychological link with your audience.
This also matters because your progress toward your goal is what will fuel the growth of your online business. If you stop acting toward your goals like making improvements, solving problems, or finding opportunities, you might run out of new content to create.
The silver lining is that if you get the basics right, your business keeps running even when you decide to take a break. Everyone needs a vacation sometimes, right?
Since your content and products are actually based on your real experience solving problems, they stay useful.
And that usefulness is what will lead people to find, read, and share your work or buy your products.
Above all, unlike creating content within a niche, basing your content on your own journey toward a goal is a great way to stay safe from being replaced by AI.
Because, in this approach, you are not only publishing content that other people can rehash using AI and claim as their own.
You are sharing the stories of how you are solving problems, finding opportunities, and creating strategies… the things you actually do to reach your goal. You are providing the real-world experiences and perspectives you earned from working toward that finish line.
These are things unique to you that no one can steal.
If they try, that recycled information will lack your context and become less effective.
Other people can only link, refer to or share your work, which actually helps you reach even more people.
Lastly, if you ever try this approach, know that it will take way more time and effort to get an audience or make any real money.
Because, let’s be real, there is no shortcut for building connection, trust, authority, and credibility. You have to put in the work.
Even finding what you really want to build or achieve could take a while. For me, it required exploration, cultivating self-awareness, and having deep conviction about life.
But is all of this really worth it?
I’ve said my piece.
Your call?
Let’s go!
Thank You for Reading
Explore to Thrive Newsletter is part of my personal mission to walk alongside fellow creatives and show that it’s possible to build a sustainable online business from your lived experiences and passion. It’s completely free and open to everyone.
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I share honest insights from building an online business with a blog from the ground up, lessons from my mistakes so you can avoid wasting time, discoveries that lead to wins, and methods that support long term success as a creator.
Progress Tracker
This section is where I share what I’ve been working on with Explore to Thrive Blog since the last newsletter. My goal is to be transparent about the process. And also to give a real sense of what building a creator business actually looks like.
What did I accomplish?
Between the time I sent my last newsletter and started this one, I published two blog posts.
The first covers our visit to that mini amusement park on top of a building in Cebu, specifically why I skipped the activities at the Sky Experience Adventure in the Crown Regency Hotel. The second post details our takeaways from renting a car during our trip to Cebu and why hiring a driver for our South Cebu adventure was the right choice.
Both are attempts to write in short form, which I have been practicing since January. I want to move to short form because it provides a better reading experience. Readers do not have to go through other details that are not really related to the topic.
(If the reader gets interested in reading related topics, they should be only one click of a link away.)
The first post finished at under 1500 words. The second post concluded at slightly above 1500 words.
I admit, I found it difficult to write them that concisely because I had to include essential components like context regarding related posts, the motivation for writing the content, practical tips, a personal touch, primary takeaways, and a call to action.
But yeah, writing at that length helped me realize I am capable of publishing a blog post in a single day, provided that I do not require extensive research.
For the second post, I wrote it across a few days because I had to work on something else outside the project.
Anyway, this post is supposed to have no photos because I am just enumerating the reasons why a traveler should rent a car when they travel to Cebu with a group. Also, I did not find any photos of us with the vehicle we used during the trip.
Still, I added photos that I grabbed from other posts. That way, I can prove at least that we traveled as a group and I am telling the truth.
After publishing these two posts, I could have started drafting the last post for my Cebu Travel project: How to Plan the Perfect Southern Cebu Itinerary: Lessons and Tips from My First Visit. However, I did not proceed. I decided to not write it at all because I think the post is pointless. I mean, how can I plan the perfect itinerary if I have been in Cebu once?
Besides, this post aims to wrap up all the posts I have written previously. My 4-Day South Cebu Itinerary and 1-Day Cebu City Itinerary already served that purpose. Because of this, it is official.
My Cebu Travel project is officially complete!
Did I do anything interesting?
The last two posts I published actually have two contrasting goals. The first post about the Sky Experience Adventure warns travelers not to visit the attraction. The second post convinces travelers to rent a car like we did during our trip.
That said, I made sure that they do not only warn and persuade readers. I tried to balance my opinion by giving context and a different perspective. That way, I may not put the concerned attraction in a totally bad light, despite our experience. Also, that way, I may not sound like I am only selling the car rental service.
Did I run into any problems before this letter?
Nothing much, apart from my usual problem: divided attention. I have been very busy this weekend doing other things outside my project.
For example, since my friends and I are going to have a trip this coming August and I am the one accustomed to creating travel itineraries, I was asked to create our itinerary for that trip. I also compared different hotels and Airbnbs so my friends can easily decide where to stay for our trip.
I also had errands from our family business. We bought a new house and renovated it so we can have others rent it. I replaced doorknobs. I added a smoke sticker to the windows. I was also the runner to buy materials like paint, brushes, and so on.
Anyway, I still managed to be productive with Explore to Thrive. I used time management by working on lighter tasks when there were more interruptions. Tasks that need deep focus are done at night or when I am away at the coffee shop where errands cannot reach me. LOL.
What do I plan to achieve next?
Since Cebu Travel project is complete, I will go on to the post-project tasks.
Do the last review for the posts, checking whether they are readable and properly edited. Check if affiliate product copies are engaging. Check if the buttons and links are properly pointing to posts and pages. Check if there is no misaligned or contradicting content between posts, and so on.
Then, I will go on to project cleanup for drafts, photos, notes, and so on so I can archive the project properly.
The next newsletter, I will launch another project and probably start writing a new post. Exciting times.
That’s all for now, and thank you for reading!
See you next week.
Hiraya Manawari!
Ciao.
I've learned to use this approach as well. I don't focus on a specific niche because I believe "you are the niche."
What that means is since you keep learning new things and your interests keep on changing as a person, so will your niche and content.
I find it quite impossible to talk about one thing for the rest of your life especially if you're a creative.
That why, like you've mentioned, it's better to center your content around one ultimate goal and let that guide whatever you talk about.
An example of this is what I'm doing with Project Self. The ultimate goal with it is to become the best version of myself while I make money from the process. So whatever content I put out has to align with achieving this goal. And so whoever wants to become their better version while earning from it will become part of my audience and will resonate with my content without having to box myself in a box.
I could go on explaining but I think you've already done a good job.
Great article 💯
I think niching is not the same thing as “forcing yourself to fit into a box.”