Many of my students struggle to pick a niche for their freelance translation business. The idea of boiling all their likes, dislikes, and experiences down to one thing fills them with dread. And that makes sense. You’re people—not cardboard cutouts. You’re allowed to be interested in multiple things. But to be successful, your business needs clarity and direction. Below I’ll outline some steps you can take to stop the analysis paralysis and build a niche that works for you. But, first, we’ll discuss the benefits of niching down and the issue with obsessing over it.

The Benefit of Picking a Niche for Your Freelance Translation Business

I’ve talked about the power of specialization before, so I won’t spend too much time on it here. Just know that picking a niche can:

• Higher rates/income: Generalists are a dime-a-dozen in the freelance translation world. Their lack of specific expertise means that they’re competing with everything from newly graduated students, or bilingual “hobby-translators”, to high-quality machine translation engines. This increased competition drives prices down and leaves them clawing for starvation rates.
• Simplify Marketing: When you narrow down, it will become so much easier to find target clients that really need your services, it simplifies your market research. Picking a translation niche also allows you to adjust your marketing to better fit the needs of your potential clients. This increases the likelihood of a sale.
• Establish Yourself as an Expert: Put yourself in the buyer’s shoes. They want to place an order with someone who understands their industry, not just anyone who can speak their target language. A law firm prefers someone with experience and expertise in the legal field, a digital marketer is looking for someone with expertise in SEO and keyword research. Specializing allows you to build up a portfolio of related work and testimonials. Over time, this builds trust and credibility.

Putting Niche Obsession in Perspective

When it came time for me to specialize, it wasn’t easy. As a marketer, I was being pulled in a dozen different directions. Settling on my niches (English into Swedish translation/transcreation and localization of digital marketing material, software, and websites) took a lot of time and introspection.

But it’s important to note that obsessing over finding the “perfect” niche can be detrimental to your business, especially if you’re multi-passionate. The idea that your success depends on what you pick now as if it’s something set in stone, can lead many people to procrastinate and do nothing. Just know that this decision, like most, can be changed.

If you find out that you can’t support yourself by specializing in translation and localization of dog yoga material, you can always expand your niche. Similarly, if you find yourself spread too thin, no one’s stopping you from narrowing your focus. The ability to change direction at any time is one of the best parts of being a freelance translator.

The idea that a niche must be one thing and one thing only is another misconception. If two or more of your passions are closely related, you can group them under a single umbrella. Or, if you have equal expertise in two unrelated fields, you CAN work in both. Furthermore, picking a niche doesn’t mean excluding your other interests entirely. Using metaphors and stories from other parts of your life can lend your writing character and help set your voice apart from your competition.

At the end of the day, “niching down” is about finding a place where your interests, your goals, and business viability align. Whether this means translating restaurant menus or helping wellness gurus with their website content is up to you.

A Systematic Way to Picking a Niche for Freelance Translators

To find the niche or niches best suited to your needs, you need to look at your interests in a systematic way. Every contender should be analyzed objectively with your business goals in mind. I’ve found using a spreadsheet and numerical scales can help bring clarity to the process.

Start by taking five minutes to jot down the subjects and verticals that interest you, and/or where you have experience. Combine any that are closely related or narrow enough to be lumped into a larger topic. Then, score everyone that’s left with a 1-10 (with 10 being the highest) for each of the following:

• Your Level of Interest in the Topic: You’re going to spend a lot of time researching and writing about your niche. To stop yourself from burning out, it’s vital that you’re interested in the subject at hand. Personally, no matter how profitable, I’d eliminate anything that doesn’t score above a nine.
• How Closely It Aligns with Your Existing Skillset: You might find law interesting, but so do a lot of lawyers. Neuroscience might be your hobby but translating in it is something best left to professionals. Competing with experts is hard if you have zero experience in the field. Comb through your resume for related skills and certifications. Jot these down. While you can consider credentialing up in a topic that scores high on interest, it’s often best to start with something you already know. After all, how passionate are you REALLY if you have taken no steps to learn about a topic?
• The Level of Demand: Google your topic to get a feel for the level of competition and the number of clients. Read articles on industry growth and examine how key players are doing in the field. Are there laws requiring people to translate content? Is it a content-heavy field or a content light one? If something scores low on this factor, it might not be a viable basis for your freelance translation business.
• The Average Pay Rate: What does someone working in your field make? How high are the barriers to entry? You might love working with charities, for example, but you can’t expect them to pay the same as someone in the legal space. While this data can be difficult to obtain, it can often be extrapolated by looking at the barriers to entry in the field, the average pay rate of common professions in it, and how difficult the content is to translate. Did you know that the last one is why literary translators are so highly valued?
• Client Alignment: This is something a lot of freelance translators forget about. They gravitate towards a niche without thinking about the kinds of people they’ll be working with. Some specializations, like software and pharmaceuticals, are largely handled by agencies. The size of many of these companies makes using individual freelancers untenable. Language professionals in other fields, such as those related to very specific products, services, or hobbies, that are the perfect fit for working with individual translators.
• Marketing Demands: Ask yourself how much marketing you’ll have to do to fill your pipeline. The harder it is, the lower the score on this metric. Those who work primarily with agencies rarely have to worry about advertising their services. Often, it’s enough to have an up-to-date website and a few testimonials. Those working primarily with direct clients, meanwhile, have to work a lot harder to get their name out there.

When you’re done, every industry should have a score between 6 and 60. Eliminate the ones with the lowest scores and analyze what’s left. Could you further combine these somehow? If there’s a tie, clear the board on those items and analyze them based on how they score against one another. Do this enough times and you’ll have a pretty good idea of where to specialize.

Related: Episode 127: How to Choose a Niche for Your Translation Business

Related: Six Tips for Choosing a Specialization for Your Freelance Translation Business

Are You Still Struggling to Find Your Niche as a Multi-Passionate Translator?

I’ve been helping freelance translators find and market their passions since 2010. So, if you feel like this exercise wasn’t enough, I can help you “niche down” and find the path that’s right for you. Reach out to me at tess@marketingtipsfortranslators.com for more information.

To help your fellow readers, share how you found your niche in the comments below. I would love to know your niche and story too.