Why You HAVE To Niche Down as a Travel Creator

Hey Travel Creators! Today we're talking about a hot topic that I believe strongly in and it's called niching down. I feel like there's been a lot of things on the internet in the past couple of years that say you don't need a niche, but I will die on the hill that you do.

I'm gonna tell you why you do and I'm also going to give you actionable tips on how you can discover your own. First, I want to paint you a little analogy so you can get into your head why niches are so important. Have you ever heard of a professional athlete that specializes in two sports?

How about a doctor that is a cardiologist and specializes in dietary health? That would maybe make sense but also be consuming. Or imagine reading a book that covers a hundred different topics. That would probably make you want to lose your mind, right?

Having a Niche Helps You Stand Out

Now, imagine reading a book about three topics, or even just one. That alone is much more manageable for the creator and for the audience. The reality is that we can't be experts at everything. We can't be a jack of all trades and a master of none. There are plenty of people who are skilled in a variety of ways, and I'm lucky enough to work with many of those people, but they aren't professionals at everything they do.

They might have taught themselves how to edit video, but their skill set is writing. Focusing on everything equates to focusing on nothing, and speaking to everyone equates to speaking to no one. And speaking from personal experience, trying to appease everybody is one of the easiest ways to lose motivation and head into a downward spiral towards burnout.

Most of the time we don't need the entire haystack, we're just looking for the needle. That's the mentality I think we can use to help you paint a picture of why niches are so important. Niches allow you to flex a single muscle in one specific area. It's basically like compounding all of your knowledge so that you can become an expert and a go-to person on one topic.

As for me, mine might feel a little bit broad. I'm a content developer for travel creators. But I define my role in two specific ways. The first way is through writing. Everything I do is based around writing. So whether that's writing video scripts, or whether that is writing blogs, or YouTube scripts, or even newsletters, it involves writing.

Everything that I do is writing. That is my specialty for travel creators. And they hire me in different areas of that muscle. It's similar to if you have a road. The road symbolizes writing and there are driveways on the road and some people hire me to write their video script, which is one driveway. We go back on the road and some people hire me to repurpose their content, which basically means I'm rewriting content they've already written, which is another driveway.

But it all comes back to one home base, one road of my expertise and my skills. Then the whole goal of your creator journey is to become recognized as the expert in that one topic or one area. That way, you can build trust and your audience knows that you are the one stop shop for that specific question, pain point, or topic that they want to learn more about.

You might be having a little bit of a hard time thinking about what your niche might be because as a creative person you have so many ideas. You have so many ideas and they could be for so many different people, which is not a bad problem. When you take a step back and realize that you have good ideas and you are creative, you begin to realize that not a lot of people have that. 

Now, as for examples in the travel creator space of niches. I've said this example before and I keep coming back to it because I think it is very clear. If you are a budget traveler, if you're a backpacker and hostels are your places, you are not going to create content for a luxury traveler because that just doesn't align with your lived experience.

You might be more of a budget traveler, but the reality is if you're on that budget, you are not going to be spending that money on luxury resorts. So how can you talk about something that you don't have a ton of experience in to creators?

Think Hard about Yourself and Your Interests

This is also a side note here that most of the time your target audience is yourself. If you're a budget traveler, you're probably going to enjoy making content to show people how they can also become a budget traveler and not make content to show people how they can be a luxury traveler.

One, because maybe you don't even know how to do so yourself. So you have to really think about what type of content do I like to create? Who do I want to create it for? And those are two small things that can help you think about who your niche is or what your niche is.

Maybe you can go in multiple directions with this. There's nothing wrong with that. But having a core idea of who you're talking to, which is also your brand, is so important.

How I Discovered My Niche

Here is a little bit about how I discovered my niche in the hopes that it will help you as well. First, I took a good hard look at what I do every day.

In terms of work and who I do it for throughout my days, maybe it's a week, maybe you take a week or like even a month. I made mental notes of how I was feeling and what work I was doing, when I found myself having fun and time was kind of slipping away. I learned that flow state happens when there is just a little bit of room between your expertise and a challenge.

It’s when you are in the zone and you're like, I know I have the skills to do this, but this is just a little bit challenging. I love being in flow, it’s the best. I've been trying to get more and more into it lately. That's another thing that can help you is realize “Oh my god, this work that I'm doing really sucks.”

Ensure You Love the Work You’re Doing

“I'm dreading it.” That is a red flag that this is not the work for you. So, when I was feeling great about working on something, I noticed who I was doing it for. Because if I like doing a certain project, but I don't like who I'm doing it for, why don't I just go do that project and find somebody else to do it for?

That is definitely way easier said than done. But then I got super specific about the project or work that made me most happy. And as they say, it doesn't feel like work. Content creation makes me happy. That could be producing a podcast, which I'm not a podcast editor. That's why I have Marie.

Or is it editing or slicing up videos? I'm not a video editor. That is not my thing. So what within that broader topic lights me up? Then I also thought about my skill set. So just like I mentioned, am I any good at the work I actually do or am currently doing? And if not, is there room for me to grow?

“Do I want to grow?” Because of course, anybody could sit down and learn how to edit a YouTube video. Do I think everyone should? No. Because, what's in it for you in the long term? This is where you have to think about your long term goals. What do you really want out of this? Do you want to become known as an incredible YouTube editor?

As the travel creator people come to for budget travel tips, these just need to align with your goals and values. For me, I found the work that I really was enjoying when I sat down to figure out my niche a couple of years ago was when I was writing a weekly newsletter for a professional traveler who is really just a travel influencer.

And going through this list of questions that I just read off to you really helped me decide my medium, which was writing travel content. Then I knew that newsletter writing for travel creators and travel influencers was my jam. And I kind of expanded that as my skills and as my interest grew.

I'm not saying I'm a jack of all trades here. I'm not an expert at video editing. I'm not a podcast producer, but I can write the content for you to then give to your podcast team.

So there you go. That's two people already doing the work for you. I will say it does help a little bit to be skilled at what you aspire to do or to make your niche. If you're already loving video editing, then it will probably feel like a natural progression to do more of that.

Hone in on Your Interests and Strengths

And for me, writing was a little bit more in reach because I had a lot of writing experience and I can pound out 1,500 words like nothing. So figure out something that you enjoy doing now. Let's figure out who you enjoy doing it for which I figured out was travel creators. It doesn't mean that I know everything about writing or that I know everything about newsletter writing. But when you discover your niche, then you know where to focus your time.

When I first started a few years ago, I poured all my time into learning newsletter strategies and newsletter creation processes and tips for travel creators because I knew that that's what I wanted to do. So when you figure out your niche, you know you can focus all of your energy onto being the best you can be in that specific project or task or skill.

Okay. I'm going to share with you this little graphic I came across from bestrategyhub.com, which I maybe slightly agree with. If you are a travel creator who is just straight up approaching this from a business perspective, maybe this will help you. Essentially your niche is going to be in the middle of a Venn diagram. In the middle of it is your niche and the rest of the circles around it are high market demand. What do people have questions about high income potential? Is there room for you to make money here and low competition?

First of all, people follow you because of you, but if you're feeling like the market is saturated, I think that's totally not true. There's always going to be room for creators because some of them are never going to have enough time or will to be able to see out their journey for the long haul to make it successful. 

Don’t Procrastinate, Go For It

The best time to start was 20 years ago, and the second best time is now. You might as well start and stick it out. I hope this was helpful to kind of help you see why I think niching down is essential. The riches are in the niches, okay? Because if you're speaking to everyone, you're speaking to no one. If you have more questions on niching down, I would love to give you advice on that.