How to choose your freelance niche: a four-check test

If you can do five things, sell one of them first, and describe it in one sentence the way a client would type it into a search box, saying what you do, who it is for, when it is finished and what it costs. Then check that sentence against what already sells on Upwork (opens in a new tab) and Fiverr (opens in a new tab), with four checks: is it sold as a package, how far apart are the prices, how crowded is it, and would you enjoy doing it fifty times. If the checks come back empty, change the words before you change the skill.

What the client types into the search box

A client looking for help rarely types a job title. They type the name of the thing they are stuck with. WordPress (opens in a new tab), the software behind many small business websites, has ten to fifteen different page builders, such as Elementor (opens in a new tab), Divi (opens in a new tab), Oxygen and Beaver Builder. A client who wants a site built in Divi, or has one that needs fixing, searches for "Divi", because that is the problem in front of them. They do not search for "website developer", and many do not even search for "WordPress".

I see the same thing when I look for work. On Upwork, I search only for Clay (opens in a new tab), the data tool I work with. A client who names Clay in a job post already uses it and knows what they need, so I do not have to convince them to buy it first. Clients like these hire the person whose profile uses the words they searched with.

Why a broad title gets fewer clients: niching down

Most people believe a broad title catches more clients, and I believed it too.

Choosing one narrow service and describing it in the client's words is called niching down. I first heard about it on a course I was doing for a different reason, and I tested it on my own Upwork profile.

An invitation is a client finding you, not you applying. It means someone searched for the tool they were stuck with, and my profile came up. With Divi in the title, I started showing up when people searched for Divi, and the competition for those searches was very low.

I did not learn anything new between those three titles. I could only build websites in Divi, so the narrow title was an accurate description of what I could do.

I often explain niching down with doctors. For an operation on your brain, you would go to a neurosurgeon rather than a general doctor who offers to operate on anything, and you would expect to pay the specialist more.

Step 1: write your service in one sentence

A job title such as "web developer", "accountant" or "video editor" does not tell a client whether you will solve the problem they have this week. A one-sentence service answers four questions for them.

Bookkeeping here means recording a business's money coming in and going out, in the right categories, every month. Tax filing is a different service, so leave it out unless you offer it.

Where you can, start with a job that has a clear end, such as a logo, an edited episode or a cleaned-up database. Some people call this a productised service. A stranger risks less on one finished job than on a retainer, where they pay you a fixed amount every month to stay available. Retainers are welcome, but I recommend starting with a finished job because it is easier to sell to a stranger, and regular monthly work often grows out of one.

Step 2: run the four checks

The first three checks use what you can see on Upwork and Fiverr without paying for anything, and the fourth is about you. Fiverr shows you what the service looks like and what it costs, and Upwork shows you whether anyone is hiring for it this week.

1. Is it already sold as a package?

Type your service into Fiverr's search, then into Upwork's Project Catalog (opens in a new tab), where freelancers list fixed-price packages with a set scope. Packages close to yours are good news. If you see none, your words probably describe a whole department instead of a job, so make them smaller (bookkeeping, not finance; LinkedIn ads, not marketing) and search again.

2. How far apart are the lowest and highest prices?

Note the lowest and highest price for the same package. When the prices sit close together, clients see the work as all the same, and it will be hard to charge more later. When they sit far apart, there is room to charge more as your results build up. Be careful with the very top prices, because sometimes they are for a harder version of the job, and you only learn which is which after doing a few.

3. How crowded is it?

Fiverr shows how many people sell something similar. Many sellers means people are buying, and also that you will need a sharper sentence to be noticed. On Upwork, open a few recent job posts for the work and look at how many proposals each has.

When I help people start on Upwork, I steer them away from data entry, because so many people compete for it, and towards a specific skill. If your searches land in a crowd, go back to your sentence and make it more specific.

4. Would you still enjoy the fiftieth order?

Picture the same job arriving fifty times. If that already bores you, pick something else, because you will be doing a lot of it. This is the only check a screen cannot do for you.

Passing all four checks cannot promise you sales, though it does tell you that people already pay for work described the way you describe yours.

Step 3: follow one seller who has made it

The four checks tell you whether a service sells. Following one successful seller shows you how far it can go, and where that seller's work comes from.

Find someone on Fiverr who sells your kind of service and has clearly done well: hundreds of reviews, at a good price. Fiverr does not show a seller's total earnings, but the sellers I point people to have made $100,000 or $200,000 or more over the years. Then trace their history online: what they did before, what they do now, and where else they show up. You can put what you find into Claude (opens in a new tab) or ChatGPT (opens in a new tab) to see where their work comes from. Searching Reddit (opens in a new tab) and LinkedIn for the same skill shows you who else is selling it, and how they describe it.

Step 4: step back if the sentence is too narrow

The sentence can also be too narrow. If Fiverr and Project Catalog show nothing, and recent Upwork posts never use your words, nobody is searching for it yet, so step back one level. "Divi websites for dental clinics in Ohio" is probably too narrow, while "Divi websites for small clinics" is still specific and still finds buyers. Aim for wording that turns up at least a few packages and a few recent job posts.

Switch to a different skill only when you have described the current one at several levels of detail and still see no one buying. My own profile went through three descriptions of one skill before it worked. Which skill to learn for freelancing? Maybe none yet helps you list the skills you already have.

A worked example

Say you have spent six years building Excel models in the finance team of a mid-sized company. The search results and prices below are made up to show the method.

1. The sentence. "Excel expert" is a job title. You narrow it to "financial models", and then to one service: a three-year financial model for US startups raising their first round, delivered in ten days, for a fixed price.
2. Sold as a package? "Excel" on Fiverr brings up more gigs than you could ever read, but "startup financial model" brings up packages close to yours, so the service exists.
3. The price spread. Say the packages run from $150 to $1,500. That is a wide spread, and the top sellers describe exactly which investor questions the model answers.
4. The crowd. On Upwork, recent "Excel" posts have dozens of proposals each, while posts asking for a startup financial model have far fewer.
5. Fifty times? You enjoy building models from scratch, so yes.
6. One seller. You find a seller with hundreds of reviews for startup financial models, at a good price. Their LinkedIn history shows they worked in a bank before, and they post a short breakdown of a model every week.

Your first quote should sit inside that price range, and the rate calculator shows where your own minimum falls within it. Once the sentence holds up, use the same words in your Upwork profile and your portfolio, and the plan for getting ready to start shows what to do next.