Define Your Freelance Niche & Services

Once you’ve made the decision to pursue freelancing, the first question you should ask yourself is: “What’s my niche?” A niche is a specialized subsegment of the industry you work in, like the difference between being a photographer and being an outdoor wedding photographer. 

Identifying early on what you uniquely have to offer and which audience would most benefit from your services will set you up for success as you build your freelance business. Read on for tips on how to discover your freelance niche, define your audience, and develop your services. 

Discovering your freelance niche

To stand out as a freelancer in your industry, it’s important to figure out what specific type of work in your field you’re best at, then capitalize on what makes you the clear choice for prospective clients. For example, there are a lot of freelance copywriters out there, but maybe nobody else specializes in high-conversion calls-to-action with the flare and success rate that you do. Or there are plenty of a freelance web designers, but you focus on websites for restaurants.

To explore what makes your skill set unique, start by asking yourself these three key questions: 

• What am I an expert in? 

• What are my marketable skills that I’m passionate about? 

• What’s in demand in my field that I have a unique perspective on? 

Let’s look at that exercise in action, from the point of view of a hypothetical graphic designer who: 

• Is an expert in hand-drawn lettering because they studied it in school and have been practicing professionally for at least five years. 

• Has a well-rounded graphic design skill set for their field, but they’re most passionate about logo design and visual brand development, and they know that those skills are in demand among small businesses and emerging entrepreneurs. 

• Has experience with those audiences because they helped redesign the branding for the last company they worked for, plus they’ve designed logos for their friends’ side gigs for fun before. 

After taking into consideration all of those factors, maybe the niche that makes the most sense for that hypothetical graphic designer is bespoke visual branding consultation, with a focus on hand-lettering and logo design. 

However that exercise looks to you and your specific situation, it helps to drill down until you’ve uncovered the niche that seems like it’d be the most compelling to you and prospective clients. 

See some examples of service-based businesses

Defining your target audience 

Defining your target audience will help you to direct your marketing and networking efforts toward finding clients who are most likely to need your services. That will help you minimize the time and effort you spend looking in the wrong places for clients who aren’t in need of your services or don’t fit your core brand values. 

Before doing extensive audience research, it helps to get an idea of what type of audience you actually would like to target. Here are some starter questions to ask yourself: 

• Who do your niche skills naturally benefit: individual entrepreneurs or businesses? If both, are you more interested in working with individuals, businesses, or both? For example, maybe you like working one-on-one with individual entrepreneurs, more than you like working with teams, or vice versa. 

• Do you want to work with a particular industry, or broaden your opportunities by staying open to a variety? For example, you could have expertise that’s best suited to tech companies, or an existing network in the beauty industry, so you might want to lean into audiences among those industries. 

• Is there a particular demographic that you’re more interested in working with over others? For example, maybe you want to brand yourself as someone who uses their skills to focus on under-served LGBTQIA+ audiences. 

Once you’ve answered those basic questions about your ideal audience, dig deeper with our guide on identifying and understanding your target audience. 

Developing your service offerings

Once you’ve figured out your niche and target audience, you can narrow down what types of services you’d like to offer as a freelancer. If you’re not sure how to begin to develop specific services, a useful question to ask yourself is: “What needs can I fulfill or which problems can I solve for my target audience?” 

Take that same graphic designer, for example. They’re niching down to logo and hand-lettered visual brand identity development for entrepreneurs and creators. They know that their target audience often needs help with a variety of projects, from one-off details like logo design to fully immersive brand strategy and design. 

With that research in mind, that graphic designer could offer services that include: 

• Bespoke Logo Design

• Hand-Lettered Brand Name Package

• Hand-Lettered Font Package

• Visual Branding Strategy Consultation

• Complete Visual Branding Package

Once you’ve settled on the types of services you’ll offer, it’s important to write descriptions that set expectations about what’s included in each service. A high-quality service description should not only describe the scope of that service offering, but highlight what the resulting benefit will be for the client. 

For example, that graphic designer’s “Bespoke Logo Design” service description could say something like:

“Bespoke Logo Design: I’ll work with you to understand your brand’s mission and vision, then design an iconic logo that expresses your brand. This service includes two collaborative strategy sessions, two rounds of revisions, and a final logo with four variations. Best for: brands who are ready for a stand-out logo redesign, or new brands who need a logo to help boost brand recognition across touchpoints.” 

Knowing exactly the types of services you’d like to offer will help you figure out how you’ll organize your time for the scope of each service and what freelance rates you’ll charge, which might vary depending on the service type. 

Once you’ve landed on your niche, audience, and services, it’s important to create a home for your business online that showcases and differentiates your brand and services. Creating that home is simpler than you think—Squarespace is here to help you get started with a checklist for how to create your freelance website in nine steps.