I Don’t Have a Niche, and I Love It That Way

As a writer and a freelancer, there’s one piece of advice that you’ll hear again and again: figure out your niche.

It’s not bad advice. In fact, it’s the way countless people have built their careers. Back in the day (as in, pre-2020s), it was certainly the norm for the most successful freelance writers.

However, we don’t live in the same world that we did before the pandemic. We don’t write in the same environment that we did before the rise of social media and consolidated papers. We basically exist on another planet from the days before the internet.

So, where does that leave freelancers?

Watching a Niche Disappear Overnight

When I first started freelancing in 2022, I had no idea what I was doing. A great mentor suggested I find a niche I liked so I could focus my pitches on that, and it eventually led me to the world of product testing and reviews.

For two years, it was a great niche. I got steady work, built up my contacts, and was feeling really good about the future overall.

Then, in the summer of 2024, the work started drying up. Editors who had been giving me regular assignments suddenly weren’t accepting pitches at all. That fall, USA Today decided to shutter their product site, Reviewed, and layoff the entire staff.

In December, a new editor who had been enthusiastic to work together reached out to let me know that all assignments were paused. By January, nearly every paper I wrote for reached out to tell me that they were severing their ties to freelance writers.

This was too weird and coordinated to be a coincidence, so I did some digging. Turns out, Google quietly made a change to their algorithm that essentially destroyed the world of commerce and product journalism overnight. Their aim, as near as I have been able to tell, was to penalize sites that slapped a prominent newspaper name on a company that was otherwise in no way affiliated. However, the ambiguous wording and fear meant that most papers interpreted this to mean any outside party involvement—including freelancers.

I like to think that this wasn’t what Google was going for. After all, as a freelancer, I worked directly and closely with my editors and their staff. The only way that my review work was different from a full-time worker was that I was being paid by project rather than a salary. All of the same systems were followed and programs were used.

Unfortunately, most sites won’t take a chance on displeasing the behemoth that is Google, so they played it safe. They fired or stopped hiring all of their freelance writers. They even went so far as to remove previous articles or scrub author names from those articles so that the algorithm wouldn’t detect any whiff of freelancer involvement.

This meant that this single change in the algorithm didn’t just get rid of new work opportunities for freelancers—it destroyed their entire portfolio, too.

(Briefly) Pivoting to a New Niche

Though I loved my time focusing on commerce journalism, it became pretty quickly apparent that I was in an “adapt or die” sort of situation. My other work centered around accessibility and topics related to diversity, equity, and inclusion, so I started pitching in these areas more heavily.

Then, Donald Trump took office for a second time in January of 2025, and I watched the whole thing happen again. One by one, every site I wrote for started avoiding anything and everything DEI. I watched numbly as again and again, the papers and sites that I once deeply respected and loved decided to obey in advance and shifted their strategies, ethics, and morals to appease a man who hates them. Even knowing that these changes were being made by the billionaire buddies of Trump who own all of the papers, it was still a hard pill to swallow.

Plus, there was that not-too-minor issue that I was once again watching my work disappear at record speed.

Another One Bites the Dust

That summer, I lost one of my last clients. Though I’d been writing for them for months and created some articles I’m deeply proud of (many of which were about diversity-related topics), I once again saw the alarms start flashing.

My editor assigned less. Soon, nothing at all. Then, she left the company entirely.

There was an announcement about the magazine changing direction and embracing a new strategy under new leadership. Shortly after, I got an email informing me that I would no longer be writing for the magazine.

The funniest, weirdest part of this, of course, is that freelancers aren’t employees and you don’t need to fire them. You just stop assigning things or stop taking pitches. Ironically, I’d already stopped pitching by that point because I could feel the pro-AI and anti-DEI winds blowing, and it was no longer a magazine that I aligned with ethically.

Even so, that email was the final official nail in the coffin of my second niche.

Wonderful Stuff Can Happen When Things Get Weird

While I was navigating the second niche loss, I was still doing everything I could to broaden my work and find new sources of revenue. The most effective thing I did wasn’t a clever pitch or some new ground breaking idea.

It was simply being good at what I do.

Because I was slowly starting to understand it now. I wasn’t just a “product reviewer” or an “accessibility advocate.” I was a writer and a storyteller, and there was no amount of AI or government bullying that could change that.

Humans innately love stories. They respond to the feeling that a person has been through what they have. They cling to creations that feel authentically human in a way that no machine will ever truly replicate. It’s not about what is the highest level of craft or speed, but what has the most heart.

Which, to be clear, is all well and good, but still didn’t pay the bills.

That’s where the human part comes in, though. A full year before, I’d reached out to two editors at two of my dream papers just introducing myself, sharing my portfolio, and asking if they worked with freelancers. I sent one a few pitches that they ultimately rejected (but did respond to, which is huge within itself as a freelancer used to silence).

Then, a year later as everything was looking truly bleak, both editors reached out to me. They both weren’t just interested in hearing more pitches, but were actively offering me assignments for stories that they were ready to commission.

To be clear, most editors claim to keep writer intros in their files in case they ever have future assignment needs, but this was the first time I’d seen it actually come to something for an editor that I hadn’t previously worked with. Sure, two stories weren’t enough to fundamentally change my niche problem, but they were enough to restore my confidence.

Plus, the fact that they were in two of my dream publications (National Geographic and Consumer Reports) certainly didn’t hurt, either.

That same summer, I was ramping up with a brand new client—Domis, a home improvement app created by a small but mighty startup. Suddenly I wasn’t just writing articles, but found myself directing all UX writing and editorial content for the app. I determined how basic home maintenance tasks were best explained to newbies and pros alike and helped craft the vision for what the future of Domis could be.

What’s in a niche?

These days, I’m still writing articles, testing products, and pitching ideas. I’m also working on an app, figuring out how to market, and still working on my writing career with my literary agent in-between.

At this point, I honestly don’t feel like I have one specific niche. But you know what? I kind of love it that way.

Every piece of writing I do is in a different voice with different goals and different guidelines. Each day is a challenge and a puzzle, and my ADHD brain honestly couldn’t be more engaged by that.

Sure, it’s not all sunshine and daisies. Cold pitching without a niche is sort of like trying to fish with a piece of string in the middle of the ocean. It’s not impossible to make contact, but a lot of it comes down to timing, luck, and a whole lot of perseverance.

Luckily, perseverance is something that I’ve always had in spades.