How Niching Down Really Works
Going specific instead of going narrow
“Pick a niche.”
That’s one of the first thing anyone tells you when you start writing online, especially on Substack or Medium.
And sure, it sounds right. Focus on one thing. Become the go-to person for that thing. Let the algorithm reward you for consistency.
So you pick something. Productivity tips. Substack growth. Minimalist living. You write ten posts. Maybe fifteen.
Then what?
The topic is not bad. But one topic might not be enough to sustain a person who actually thinks about more than one thing. Which is… all of us.
The advice isn’t wrong
But the interpretation might be…
Most people hear “niche down” and think it means shrinking. Pick one keyword. One audience. One angle. And never deviate.
But that’s not how any successful writer I’ve followed operates. The ones still publishing two or three years in didn’t pick one topic only. They picked three. Sometimes four. Sometimes five.
Not random topics. Not whatever’s trending this week. Topics they could write about on their worst day. The kind of stuff that comes up in conversation whether anyone asks or not.
That collection of topics, the overlap between them, THAT is a niche.
Your niche is a Venn diagram
Think about the writers you subscribe to. The ones you open every time they land in your inbox.
Are they writing about one single thing? Probably not. They’re writing about a few things that somehow feel connected when they write about them. The connection isn’t the topic. The connection is the person.
A food writer who covers weeknight recipes, eating alone, and grocery shopping on a tight budget, but maybe also some productivity on the side, isn’t in 4 niches. They’re in one. It just happens to have 4 pillars holding it up.
Someone writing about slow travel, language learning, and raising kids abroad… same thing. One perspective. Multiple entry points.
The combination is what makes it original. I wrote about originality before You don’t need a unique topic. You need a unique combination. And you already have one. You just haven’t written it down yet.
How to find your pillars
What could I write about on my worst day?
Not what sounds marketable. Not what has the best search volume. What would you still have something to say about when you’re tired, uninspired, and wondering why you’re doing this at all?
For me, it’s a few things. I could write about them for the next ten years and not run out. (And I have since 2008 pretty much.)
Your answers may not be what you currently write about.
Write your three to five things down. Look at them together. That specific mix.
Why this works better
I think.
Three reasons.
First, you never burn out on a single topic. You rotate. Monday you write about one pillar, Thursday another. When one feels stale, you lean into the others. The variety keeps you going.
Second, your content stays a bit unpredictable. Readers don’t know exactly what’s coming next, but they know it’ll be somewhere along the lines of the 3–5 topics. That’s a much better reason to open an email than “oh, another post about the same thing.”
Third, you attract people who share more than one of your interests.
The downsides
Multiple pillars make your publication harder to describe in one sentence. “I write about X” is clean. “I write about X, Y, and Z” not so much.
It also means your growth might be slower at first. Single-topic newsletters can ride a trend hard and fast. Multi-pillar publications build slower because the audience has to buy into you, not just a subject.
And if your pillars don’t connect and there’s no thread between them, it might not work as smoothly. Some overlap definitely helps. Not forced. But natural overlap.
The bottom line
Niching down doesn’t mean shrinking your world to one topic or keyword. That would be effing boring.
It means getting specific about WHO you are as a writer. Your two, three, four things. The combination that nobody else has, because nobody else is you. Especially not AI.
Stop picking niches. Start picking pillars. Stop dying on the idea hill. Write about what you’d write or talk about anyway. I bet someone wants exactly that.