Stress-Free Niche Finding: an alternative approach to stand out without limiting yourself

A niche speeds up your audience's growth. Here's how to find it quickly and constantly adapt it to your needs.

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Most creators are tired of the mantra “the money is in the niche”. They avoid it like mom’s recommendation to “eat more vegetables”.

Even when they feel having a niche is important, they are overwhelmed by its design process.

The result is the same: they don’t find their niche, their growth is too slow, or non-existent, and the audience is less engaged.

But the problem isn’t the concept, nor the process. The problem is in how people definition “the niche”.

Not a topic

Every other day, I stumble into a post in the vein of "I don't want to box myself into a niche". 99% of the time, the author means they don't want to be stuck on the same narrow topic forever.

But a niche isn't just a topic. Much less an ultra-specific subject no one else has covered, as some people think (which, by the way, is almost impossible to find).

The topics (plural) you talk about are just one aspect of your niche.

Not a demographic

Your content will organically attract one or more specific demographics. For example, most of my YouTube’s channel audience is in my age bracket or a little older.

But it's more likely that your niche will include a mix of different demographic groups. Why? Because your content’s purpose is to help people achieve a specific result. And this result appeals to a variety of groups.

Imagine you’re helping people prepare for their first marathon. Your audience can include all genders and a large range of ages, from 18 to over 70 years old.

Demographics are just one piece of the niche puzzle.

Not just psychographics

Psychographics is more of an advanced marketing term. It’s defined as:

"market research or statistics classifying population groups according to psychological variables”

Psychographic profiles are much more powerful than demographics to understand what your audience wants to hear. They include things like desires, fears, interests, habits, and values. They enrich your audience’s identity and tell you what will resonate with them.

A psychographic profile is necessary to have good engagement. But it’s not the only aspect defining a niche.

Not just “you”

If your audience is made of creators, an easy trick to get a spike in your content analytics is to post something like “The niche is you”. You’ll get a 10-minute virtual standing ovation.

Many creators use this hack. Everyone feels constrained nowadays. Especially creative people stuck in a suffocating job and life.

They love receiving the permission to just be themselves. But it’s a lie.

Your personal traits, interests, quirks will surely make you unique. They’ll be the fingerprint of your personal brand. But, if you want to succeed just by posting what interests you, you’ll need a pact with the devil.

So, what is a niche?

Enough with the preliminaries. Most people mistake one of the factors above for the niche. But actually, it’s all of them combined.

That’s why defining it is so complicated. But in this book, I want to make things simple for you. So, here’s a simple guideline to help you think about your niche and guide your decisions as a content creator:

Your niche is a transformation you want to lead your audience towards.

Everything else descends from this transformation: topics, demographics, psychographics.

For instance, think again about the example niche above: helping people running their first marathon. The transformation may be “from never having run a marathon (or never having run at all), to completing a marathon for the first time”.

Here’s how this transformation informs the other factors:

• Demographics - Anyone from 18 to 70 (or beyond), any gender, any race.

• Topics - Training, health, nutrition, self-improvement (mindset, habits, and so on), books, movies, success stories, running equipment, and so on.

• Psychographics - People may want to run a marathon for many reasons, such as health, personal achievement, becoming a professional athlete, and so on. Different reasons will surface different values, interests, obstacles, and ambitions.

So, when you want to define your niche, you first identify a transformation. Then you see which demographics, topics and psychographics it suggests. If it feels too broad, you add qualifiers to the transformation.

For example, you help only people over 50 with their first marathon. Or you focus only on equipment, and so on. Obviously, you can combine qualifiers. But we’ll see the process in detail in the following chapters.

Don’t underestimate this reframe

It may feel too simplistic. Or too vague.

Instead, it gives you a frame of reference to simplify idea generation and validation:

• If you need new ideas for you content you can ask yourself, “What else can I give my audience to help them get closer to the transformation I promised? What resources, tips, exercises, tools, equipment, motivational messages…?”

• And when you are in doubt about an idea, you can ask yourself, “How does this take my audience closer to the transformation I promised?” If you can’t answer, you need a better idea.

That said, I know theory isn’t enough. I’m going to give you more practical steps.