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Finding a niche can be hard. Solving problems? Not so much.
Selling eBooks on Gumroad is profitable and easy. Here’s a guide to making your first $1K.
You’ve seen it, right?
One guru swears by their method. Another guru says that exact method will destroy you.
Same day. Same platform. Opposite advice.
I got caught in this trap hard.
The big advice everyone pushed: “Niche down until you can’t niche any farther.”
Pick one thing. Get specific. Own a tiny corner of the internet.
So I did. I picked a lane so narrow I could barely turn around in it.
And it sucked.
Turns out, my experience doesn’t fit in a neat box.
Twelve years in the Air Force, construction management, technical writing for Google, factory work after losing everything during COVID. How do you niche that into “email marketing for solopreneurs” or whatever?
You don’t.
Instead, I built something wider. A lane based on my actual lived experience that no one else can recreate. Hence, Niche of One.
Here’s what I realized: all that advice was good. Just not for me.
The gurus weren’t wrong. Niching works for lots of people. But I’m not lots of people. Neither are you.
So here’s what actually works: take the advice, then adapt it.
Ask yourself three questions before implementing anything:
Does this fit my actual situation?
What part of this resonates?
How do I need to bend this to make it mine?
Use advice as a starting point, not a finish line. Build your own version. Make it fit your messy, complicated, uniquely yours experience.
What’s one piece of popular advice you’ve had to completely flip to make it work for you?
Man, preach.
The thing I see most often is folks who don't know who they are, much less where they want to be, glomming onto and following this advice . . . then that advice . . . then something else flashes over there.
While I do think it's good when you're new to have some training wheels to keep you upright, at some point you gotta take those off and pedal how you want. I don't trust any of the gooroos who are "do this always." The ones who say "Start here and master this THEN figure out what works best for you" are worth listening to now and again.
You gotta understand you before any of the advice will work for you. Currently following some ghostwriting steps, some of it against my own inclinations. But, I know why I'm doing it and I know that at some point I'll take the advice and steps and adapt it for myself.
The sad thing is most folks ignore even the good advice anyway because it's hard and sometimes dull and often repetitive. "Do the work" is much less sexy than "implement this magical plan that will solve all your problems by tomorrow."
Great post, Joe!
I’ve been told so many contradictory info about creating how to treat clients
It’s not easy but you have to find your lane and commit yourself to it
That’s the true lane to lasting success