Choosing the Right Freelance Specialty: What You Need to Know

Build your freelance business faster and with less work by choosing a specialty where clients need lots of freelance help. Assess market demand and then consider how your skills, interests, background, and experience fit into your specialty.

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Attract your ideal clients by choosing a freelance specialty that combines what clients need with what you are good at and your background and experience. Focus on what clients need—because that’s how you build a stable, successful freelance business.

Choose How You Want to Specialize

Freelancers can specialize by industry, by project, or by industry and project. Most freelancers specialize by industry, like health care and medical, or technology.  Industry specialization lets you choose industries with lots of opportunities and high-paying clients.

You could focus on an industry, part of an industry, and/or target markets within an industry. Medical communications, for example, is part of health care and medical. I specialize in medical communications, which offers lots of opportunities for freelance medical writers and editors and pays well. But medical communications is a broad specialty, with five major types of work:

• Medical and scientific
• Continuing medical education
• Regulatory
• Consumer health and patient education
• Marketing and public relations.

You can also focus on specific types of projects, like case studies, continuing medical education, journal articles, white papers, and videos. But if you don’t also have an industry specialty, it will be hard to attract any clients, much less your ideal clients.

The narrowest type of specialty combines industry and project specialization. Examples are editing for authors of books and web design for the financial services industry.

Combined industry and project specialization let you focus on specific types of clients and services. There’s less competition because your specialization is so narrow. This type of specialty generally works best if you’re an experienced freelancer and you know your target markets really well.

But unless you’re already working in a strong industry(ies) and providing services that are still in high demand, this narrow focus will limit your opportunities.

Assess Market Demand

Choose industries and target markets (groups of similar clients) that are growing and offer high pay and lots of opportunities. Here’s how to evaluate market demand.

Use online resources

There are plenty of reliable online resources about which industries are growing and which are shrinking. Here are some trusted places to start:

• Bureau of Labor Statistics: Use the Occupational Outlook Handbook to find industries that are projected to grow.
• Statistica: Visit the industry overview page for comprehensive data on industry trends, including growth rates and market sizes.
• Professional associations: Scour your professional associations for content and resources about opportunities in the industry.
• Industry Blogs and News Sites: Follow blogs like Rx Communications or business sections of reputable news outlets and look for industry reports by consulting firms, which often offer detailed insights into industry growth and decline.
• Google Trends: See how often specific topics or industries are searched. Run searches for potential specialties to spot growing interest over time.

• AI Tools: Use tools like Perplexity, my favorite AI took, or ChatGPT to query for growing and shrinking industries. But check the results with other sources.

Attend industry conferences

Learn about trends from experts by attending industry conferences. Professional associations host meetings like annual conferences where you can learn a lot in a few days and network with industry leaders and other freelancers.

Network with other freelancers

Networking with other freelancers is the best way to really learn about freelance opportunities within an industry, and especially within target markets. And professional associations are the best place to meet other freelancers:

• Attend the annual conference and other events
• Use the member directory to find freelancers you can network with
• Participate in the online forum.

Here are a few questions to ask other freelancers:

• What types of projects do you work on most?
• Have you noticed any shifts in demand for your services?
• What type of clients seem to need the most help right now?

You can also do some networking through LinkedIn:

• Read LinkedIn posts by other freelancers in your network
• Write LinkedIn posts asking for advice about specific industries or types of clients.

Research job sites and boards

Job sites and boards like Upwork, Fiverr, and Freelancer are filled with listings that show you what clients are searching for. Review postings in your category or industry. As you do this, ask yourself:

• Which skills appear most often?
• What kind of projects are listed repeatedly?
• Are there certain industries dominating the listings?

 But NEVER use job sites and boards to get clients. Fierce competition for every job and low pay on freelance job sites will hold you back from getting the clients you deserve.

Learn what’s wrong with freelance job sites and what you should do instead.
Why You Should Ditch Freelance Job Sites and Find Your Own Clients

Choose Your Target Markets and Services

Once you’ve done your research and have identified your industry, consider your skills, interests, background, and experience and how they will fit into your specialty. Clients are much more likely to hire you if:

• You have experience with the work they need help with or similar experience
• Your skills or background show that you can do the work.

When you’re launching or building your freelance business, you’ll succeed faster and more easily by focusing on what clients are most likely to hire you to do now. For example,

• If you’re a doctor who wants to be a medical writer, focus on writing for other healthcare professionals. Clients won’t hire you to write for patients and the public.
• If you’re a writer who worked for banks for 10 years, clients aren’t likely to hire you to write about the food industry.

You can change or expand your specialty later.

Choose 2-4 key target markets and up to about 10 key services to focus on in your marketing. Target markets are groups of similar clients within an industry or industry sector. For example, in my specialty, medical communications, target markets include:

• Contract research organizations
• Device companies
• Disease-focused health organizations
• Medical communication agencies
• Medical education agencies
• Pharmaceutical companies
• Hospitals/health systems.

Choose key services that are in demand, like writing or editing blog posts.

Focusing your marketing on target markets where clients are likely to hire you and in-demand services makes it much easier to attract your ideal clients and build your freelance business. You can and should do other work. I have many clients who are outside of my key target markets and work on some projects that aren’t listed in my marketing.

Mistakes to Avoid When Choosing a Specialty

Choosing a freelance specialty is a big step in defining your career. While it’s exciting to narrow your focus and tailor your services, mistakes in this process can hold you back. Let’s look at some of the most common pitfalls so you can approach your specialty with confidence.

Ignoring market trends

Ignoring market trends when choosing a specialty is the worse mistake you can make. If there’s little or no demand in your specialty, you won’t be able to build a stable, successful freelance business no matter how good you are.

Choosing a specialty you don’t care about

At the same time, choosing a specialty that don’t like will make you miserable. You probably won’t do good work and burnout will be a real risk. Look for balance between market demand and your interests when choosing your specialty.

Going too broad

Trying to appeal to everyone is a common mistake freelancers make when choosing a specialty. Many freelancers think this will help you attract more clients.  But it has the opposite effect.

Without a clear specialty, clients can’t see what makes you stand out or how you can help them meet their needs.

Choosing the Right Specialty

Take the time to choose the right specialty. If you do this, you’ll be able to attract the clients you deserve and build a stable, successful freelance business.

Learn More About Choosing Your Specialty

Attract Your Ideal Clients with a Clear Specialty

4 Freelancers Share How They Make More Money as Specialists

The Easy Way to Get Bigger, Better Clients: Your Specialty