Your niche [specificity] will be a big deciding factor in your newsletter business model.
It will determine how easy it is to:
- Build Authority
- Sell Info Products
- Shoot For Massive Volume
We have already discussed this in a couple other deep dives, including one that took a full look on the topic of Niche Down VS. Stay Broad.
If you missed those, they are going to be great deep dives to pair with this one:
But before I get too far ahead of myself, I want to discuss what Niche Down X Brand Wide means, and what we're looking to accomplish with this deep dive.
📬 What does Niche Down X Brand Wide mean?
- Niche Down: Niching down means getting more specific with your niche.
- For example: Instead of "Marketing" as a niche, you may go one layer deeper into "Marketing Psychology", or even a layer deeper than that into "Marketing Psychology of Paid Ads."
- Brand Wide: Branding wide means you leave yourself room for future growth [for your niche] within your overall branding.
- For example: If you niched down into Marketing Psychology for Paid Ads, but some of your social content focused on growth was in a broad "marketing" or "marketing psychology", it wouldn't seem out of place, and you could even eventually grow into that as an overall niche.
I will go deeper into an example of Niching Down X Branding Wide as we make our way through this deep dive, and give you some other examples, but for now we're discussing niching down with the opportunity for future growth.
📬 What Is The Goal Of This Deep Dive?
We have already discussed your niche in multiple deep dives (and it has come up in a lot more than just the couple I linked); so why are we discussing it again here?
In my first deep dive on Niching Down VS. Branding Wide I showed you the perspective of creators taking both approaches so you can see the difference in styles and business models.
In our deep dive on how your niche affects your monetization we took a look at the different Newsletter Business Models and how your niche plays a big part in how you'll build out your monetization plan:
- Creator Newsletter
- Hybrid Newsletter
- Media Brand Newsletter
But in THIS deep dive I want to come in from the perspective that I teach specific for creators looking to follow the most ideal Creator Newsletter Model.
Those of you who would love to write 1-2 hours a day, sell info products passively, and be able to diversify your income with sponsorships without having to force scaling in order to make money.
(Quick Recap: Creator Newsletter Biz Model primarily makes income from selling info products, with the ability to earn 10-20% or so diversified from sponsorships. This is most similar to Justin Welsh or Nathan Baugh, who we have seen in our deep dives.)
The reason for this is because I'm noticing that the phrase "You Are The Niche" is literally paralyzing people from taking action.
You Are NOT The Niche...
Creators like Alex Hormozi, Dan Koe, and Gary V are saying "You are the niche." and teaching it in a way where you should stay a generalist and NOT niche down (and even if this isn't what all 3 mean, this is how creators are taking it).
But they all started with a niche...
- Gary V - Wine Library
- Dan Koe - Web Design
- Hormozi - Gym Launch
So what are you supposed to do...?
As you can see from my image above you have creators that are becoming paralyzed from making a decision on how they should position themselves.
So this is not an argument on the MEANING of "You are the niche", but rather an argument to not use it being that it's doing more harm than good, and confusing creators for no reason with an ambiguous, unhelpful wording.
I have spoken to countless creators regurgitating "You are the niche" (ironically niched into the identical niche areas as Dan Koe), and each and every one of them has had a different definition and explanation for the meaning.
This is bad...
And while I don't absolutely hate it (when used in a certain way), I also think people need to stop just using it..
Here's a quick cheat sheet for what I'm looking to say:
- If you see "You are the niche" as a statement that tells you to explore your own interests and continue pivoting until you find your obsession, then keep going.
- If you see "You are the niche" as a statement that tells you NOT to niche down and be a generalist around ALL your interests .. please take a step back and keep reading.
Quick Recap: Niching Down VS. Going Broad
In the image above you can see Justin Welsh's Audience Size and Niche Axis.
You can note:
- Broad Audience VS. Niche Audience
- Small Audience VS. Large Audience
Before I even start breaking it down a bit more, I want to make a massive note on one specific thing:
Justin is placing Dan Koe, who is telling everyone "You are the niche.", "Don't niche down." and "Become a generalist." on the NICHE AUDIENCE category.
That's because Dan Koe's audience is actually fairly niche.
It's a "One Person Business Model", how to make money online, writing, etc.
He just happens to also talk about a few overlapping topics.
📬 Back To Niche Down X Brand Wide
If we look at Justin Welsh's graph above we notice that you can still have a large audience, while being niche.
So let's break it down a little bit more:
- Broad and Large Audience: Ben Meer and Sahil Bloom have an extremely broad niche, and have a harder time selling info products (and without an absolutely massive audience, this generally results in a harder time making money overall).
- Broad and Small Audience: Struggles to make money. Lack of authority. Stuck selling info products for next to nothing.
- Niche and Large Audience: Has the power to diversify their income, sell tons of info products with lots of authority, and still leverage extremely powerful sponsorships.
- Niche and Small Audience: Can still sell high ticket by starting with services, coaching and other offers because they have the authority to do so by being niched and specialized.
So, to recap really quickly, here's what we can conclude:
Both with a SMALL and a LARGE audience, being niched and specific is more powerful.
Insert the mind blown emojis.
Again, you can go back and also read through my deep dive on how your niche affects your newsletter monetization as well.
What Happens When You Niche Down?
This is a picture that comes directly from Alex Hormozi's book "$100M Offers".
So while he says "You are the niche." he actually teaches people to niche down in order to have an easier time selling, and at higher price points.
(See what I mean by it being confusing when you have Dan Koe saying the opposite?)
Niching down allows you to:
- Stand Out
- Specialize
- Charge More
Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income says "The riches are in the niches."
In a video breaking down how to sell ANYTHING online he discusses how he always recommends that people niche down a few layers to start.
Here's the example he gives:
- He says “Running” is not enough (to start).
- Nor is “Ultra Marathon Running”.
- He uses “Ultra Marathon Runner’s over age 50.”
He says the specific problems the audience has become immediately more clear.
He also says you can start here, address the specific pain points, and make it easier to find your audience and solve their problems.
Oh, and the best part?
Pat goes on to say that from there you have room to grow into broader niches, but a lot of the time his students never end up having to branch out because they build so much authority and become the GO-TO person in that specific niche.
Examples With My Personal Newsletters
I run a handful of newsletters, but I want to talk about two specifically.
- Superhero Jacked: Fitness meets nerd and pop culture. Thousands of celebrity, anime and superhero workouts.
- Has earned over 7 figures online, and makes multiple 6 figures a year while working less than 5 hours a week.
- Has a hyper-niche audience and has made more money each and every time I have niched down further (even though I had room to expand).
- Text Based Creator: I help creators build their freedom business writing online by using SuperThreads as their fuel and newsletters as their engine.
- On pace to earn 6 figures in my first year starting this newsletter, while enabling me to build tons of authority in a hyper specific niche.
- Also leaves me room to expand into broader niches if I want to in the future, but I don't have to if I choose not to.
Starting to see where we're going with this?
Let's start with Superhero Jacked...
Case Study #1: Superhero Jacked
Superhero Jacked started as a newsletter and website breaking down celebs workouts and diets that got in shape for superhero roles.
This was already fairly niche, but I technically could have stayed broad as a "fitness guru" and still wrote tons of celebrity workouts.
Instead, I dove deeper into the niche and made it geared towards nerds and people who love superheroes and superhero moves (hence Superhero Jacked).
A few years in, I had written hundreds and hundreds of celebrity workouts, and even started expanding into superhero inspired workouts.
But I was at a turning point.
I need to decide whether or not I wanted to:
- Expand More Broad: Expand back into the overall celebrity niche and pull away a bit from the niche audience of superheroes, nerds, and fandom.
- Niche Down Further: Niche down into more fandoms and expand by niching down MORE. Write Dungeons & Dragons, video games, and anime inspired workouts.
I opted to stay niche, and dive deeper into the world of fandoms, and get further from the broad "fitness and celebrity training" niche.
And guess what happened...?
My business exploded and began reaching MORE people than ever before...because I specialized and niched even more.
Mini Case Study Timeout: The Restaurant Launch
Just so you don't think this only works when you are able to hyper-niche into an audience that has TONS of volume, I also want to add another business in here.
We scaled my brother's audience to $100K/MONTH within 2 years, while being hyper-specific to teaching servers and bartenders; teaching them to provide better service and make more in tips.
This allowed us to sell high ticket services to restaurant owners, WHILE going fairly broad into the server/bartender niche and growing a large newsletter.
Case Study #2: Creator Newsletters
It's easy to tell the full story of Superhero Jacked now that I have already lived it ... but what about an example from a business that hasn't done it yet?
To break down an example of what this could look like we'll be taking a look at my personal brand (the newsletter and deep dive you're currently reading): Creator Newsletters.
NOTE: Creator Newsletters is a PERFECT example for this entire deep dive. This is how I started building authority before eventually expanding into my personal category as the text based creator you see now.
Right now I am hyper specific to creators who are looking to create content online and build their business around a newsletter.
Is there room to expand...?
Absolutely.
Let me just repeat the fact that being this specific with my niche has allowed me to:
- Be on pace to earn 6 figures in my first year.
- While only working 1-2 hours a day.
- And build tons of authority.
- All from being specific.
If that doesn't look enticing, I'm not sure what will.
Note: I break down this entire process in my course The 6-Figure Creator Newsletter Blueprint if you're looking to replicate what I have been building with Creator Newsletters with your own brand and newsletter.
Okay .. but what if I eventually wanted to expand into a broader niche?
I actually have a few different options:
- Writer Focused: Teach specifically writers to grow an audience online and grow their newsletter. This is a small shift from newsletters being the big focus and makes writing the large focus, but keeps newsletters at the core.
- Spoiler Alert: This is the direction I decided on. I am a Text-Based Creator.
- With that inherently comes minimalistic business (the next on this list), but first and foremost I have always been a text based creator who creates with written content (Threads, newsletter, articles, SEO, etc.).
- Minimalistic Business: Similar to Justin Welsh and Dan Koe I can also go to one person / minimalistic business model, having achieved that with multiple businesses now, and they all run with a newsletter at their core.
- Broader Email Marketing: I can also work my way into a broader email marketing niche while keeping the focus on newsletters; but allowing myself to reach people on different platforms that aren't always focused on writing (and don't always know what a newsletter is VS an email list.)
Of course these aren't fully fleshed out niches, and just right off the top of my head to give you an example...
BUT, this shows you the idea of Niche Down X Brand Wide.
(And I actually much prefer the first two options and may very well end up expanding into them eventually.)
Should You Niche Down Or Go Broad?
Let me just start by stating his:
I am not telling you that Alex Hormozi, Gary V and Dan Koe are intentionally trying to get people to NOT niche down by saying "You are the niche"
(Although that IS what Dan Koe is teaching people in general).
What I am saying is:
The phrase itself is confusing people and causing them to not take action.
At the end of the day: whether you choose to niche down or start off extremely broad is completely up to you.
But what I want you to get from this deep dive is that:
- Niching down allows you to stand out, specialize and charge more.
- Niching down also allows you to build authority faster and earn faster.
- Niching down does NOT mean you are stuck in a specific niche, and you can always pivot or expand into a broader audience over time.
- Often times the same people who are teaching you to stay broad and general actually either started very niche, or ARE still niche...
- Creators earning MILLIONS of dollars a year online like Pat Flynn, Justin Welsh, and Nicolas Cole (among many others) are still teaching people to specialize and become the Go-To Authority in a specific niche.
If you know this going in, but prefer the business model of a broad audience, then all the power to you!
There's money to be made there, and you can always choose to pivot into a Hybrid Biz Model or even back into Creator.
That said, for my aspiring text based creators (AKA, those of you who like the idea of writing 1-2 hours a day and selling info products completely passively); the BEST way for you to do this is to Niche Down X Brand Wide.
