The thing about Niche Professions

On my drive to work the other day, I listened to an interview of someone who does copy-writing for artist websites and blogs. I absolutely LOVE getting to know about niche professions, and I don’t think you could get any more niche than this. Her name is Hannah Scott and her website is clarityandflair.com. Basically, if you’re an artist (or any creative entrepreneur) and have a website, you can hire her to write the text part of your website and compose blog posts for you. Her process seems thorough because she spends time understanding your process, your goals, your branding, your product, your thoughts and ideas, and then crafts her words in a voice seemingly close to yours, which is brilliant!

As I was thinking about her profession, I realized that this woman has not compromised on any aspect of her passion to make a living. She is the true example of doing what you love doing. I’ve seen people who love to write, who work for editorials or advertising agencies. As day job, they write whatever is the assignment, whether it is the copy for a washing machine brochure, or the delectable description of a gourmet cookie. They might enjoy doing it, but they don’t get to choose what to write about. Any writing that they do purely out of pleasure has to be done outside of work. For many people, this is enough! At least you get to write for a living, and that’s what you love to do, which is fair. But Hannah, she loves writing, and she’s really good at it. At the same time, she’s an artist, interested in interacting with artists, and more importantly she understands the business of art. I didn’t even know “Copywriter for Artists websites and blogs” was a profession. And maybe she didn’t either? She just combined all of her passions, and created this new “position” or profession for herself.

What amazes me is not her ability to create a profession for herself like this. What amazes me is that she’s able to find an audience for it. She’s able to make a living off of it. (I checked the prices on her website, and you’ve got to be fairly serious about your business to be able to afford her). And that led me to thinking about how evolved the consumer is, only if you are able to find them!

On one hand I see someone offering something as niche as textual communication elements for an art business, being able to find clients, yet on the other hand I see people with skills as broad and generic as “General Management” (which could theoretically be useful for thousands of companies) having a hard time finding a job. Maybe it’s not about the size of the market. Maybe it’s about identifying that niche group of 100 people who want what you’re giving, and making sure 60 of them come to you. It’s not about being in a popular profession. It’s about being popular in the profession of your choice, no matter how small it is.

P.S. I don’t even know if the profession “copywriter for artist websites” has a niche market or a huge market. For all I know, there could be thousands of people doing this, this is purely based on my assumptions