One of the best ways to earn more as a freelance writer is to develop niche expertise.

Assignments get easier and easier to do, as you learn where the good sources and statistics are for that niche topic. Developing story ideas gets easier too — as sources catch on that you write a lot on their subject, they start tipping you off about breaking news and emerging trends.

You learn more and more about your niche. Eventually, you find you’re irreplaceable for clients in this niche. Invaluable. Your rates go up and up.

Sounds great, yes?

There’s only one big question to answer:

How do you find your niche?

I’m getting this question a lot lately in Freelance Writers Den:

I can’t decide whether I want my writing niche to be A or B.

As soon as I figure that out, I’m going to get started.

Bad news — you will never discover your freelance writing niche by endlessly pondering what topic you should choose as your specialty area.

There is a proven way to do it, though. I know because it worked for me.

How I found my writing niche

One of my first-ever gigs was freelancing for one section of a newspaper, the real estate section. So I wrote a lot about real estate. I found I liked it. The more I did it, the more different aspects of it interested me — how real estate is financed, for instance.

I noticed there were good-paying clients in this niche — real-estate companies, real-estate trade publications. As time went on, I kept growing my knowledge of real estate so I could get more assignments.

My other early gig was writing about community news for an alternative paper. While I found it interesting, it didn’t seem like there was a lot of money in that. And it was pretty straightforward stuff that anybody could report. As the years went on, I pitched fewer of these types of stories.

Later, I was a beat reporter for a business weekly. I got assigned loads of beats — higher education, arts and entertainment, retail, restaurant, franchising, nonprofits, and more. I wrote a lot on each of these topics.

As time went on, I found I enjoyed some of these topics more than others. I noticed everybody and anybody seemed to want to write about arts and entertainment, so I drifted away from that topic.

As my knowledge got more sophisticated, my articles in these areas got more attention. That gave me more credibility as an expert in my topic.

Since I’m a former legal secretary, I loved the lawsuits. Other reporters didn’t want to read those long legal filings, so I became the go-to person to cover business bankruptcies. I learned to read businesses’ SEC filings and charities’ tax forms, too. Soon, I was an indispensable reporter for stories that required document-based reporting.

I was able to build a stable of great-paying freelance clients who craved this expertise. They were easy to land because I had clips to show them that were about their exact topic. These clients were thrilled to get me at any price, because they found it hard to get anyone who understood their industry.

To sum up:

1. I wrote a lot on many different topics, which helped me improve my writing.
2. As I wrote, I learned which topics I liked.
3. Of the topics I liked, I observed which niches paid well, and wrote more on those.
4. I kept developing more sophisticated expertise in my chosen fields.
5. Good-paying clients became fairly easy to land.

What types of niches pay well

I often hear from writers who despair of finding a good-paying niche because they don’t know about financial services, or technology, or healthcare.

Two things about that: When I started, I didn’t know anything about them, either. You can learn as you go, if you have an interest in an area.

And contrary to popular belief, those aren’t the only good-paying niches around.

Anything technical will do. For instance, I recently met a writer whose passionate hobby is jewelry-making. You think there are a lot of writers who know the technical aspects and emerging trends in metalsmithing?

Manufacturers who use that method and need their products described would probably love to meet that writer. Ditto for trade publications for jewelry-makers and other industries that employ metalsmithing.

The myth of the single niche

My story illustrates another point: You do not need or even want to specialize in one, single niche. If your one industry goes in the tank, then you’ve got nothing.

It’s better to carve out several different specialized writing niches where you can claim expertise. At this point, I have many different areas I write on frequently, including legal, tax, insurance, business-finance, real estate, and jobs & careers.

Want to know your best niches? Start writing, and let them find you. You’ll see what you enjoy writing about.

Analyze where you’re seeing the best pay, and keep writing on those topics. The marketplace will point you to your best-paying writing niches.

What are your writing niches? Leave a comment and tell us how you developed your expertise.

P.S. To learn more about lucrative writing niches, see the Great Writing Niches e-course in Freelance Writers Den.

It’s every writer’s dream: Great clients just call you, out of the blue, and ask you to write for them.

You don’t have to look at job ads, go to networking events, or make cold calls.

Think it can’t happen? I know it can, because I haven’t had to actively market my business for over a year now.

Marketing-types call this “inbound marketing.” In other words, the gigs just flow in, rather than you having to go beat the streets for clients.

How does it work?

You need a strong online presence, so those great clients can find you, check you out, and decide you’re the one they want.

Essentially, you’re going to build a network of information online that draws clients to you.

It takes a little work, but it’s so worth it.

You don’t need to be a search engine optimization (SEO) genius, either. You can start getting found by taking a few basic steps.

Here are the elements you need:

1. A strong writer website. We talked about writer websites already in this series, but it’s worth repeating. Wherever else you’re seen online, prospects are going to trail back to your website to read your work.

So get as many great clips on there as you can. And make sure they can read them, without having to download anything.

Most importantly, stuff your writer website with words prospects might use to search for you. If you take a look at my tagline, you can tell what I’m trying to rank highly for on search.

You may not believe that putting a key phrase in your site’s headline or tagline can possibly make a difference with all the websites out there in the great, big Interwebs. But it really will.

You won’t believe the quality of clients that are using natural search to find writers, either. I’ve been hired by several Fortune 500 companies now off searches on Google or LinkedIn for writers in my city.

To help your writer website pop up high on searches for freelance writers, keep updating your site. I have a “favorites” sidebar I like to put new articles into, to keep refreshing my content. If it’s a slow month, I try to find a static page to rewrite a little.

Many writers have their blog hosted on their writer website, which is another way to keep adding content.

Tweeting your article or blog post URL adds another link back to your site, which helps, too.

2. A strong LinkedIn presence. Fully fill out that bio and stuff your profile’s tagline with search terms. Mine says “award-winning writer, blogger, copywriter, and writing mentor.” Those are the gigs I’d like to do more of, so I’m helping people who need those types of writing and mentoring help find me.

Make sure your LinkedIn profile links to your writer website, or offers a portfolio of clips right on LI.

Also fill out the “skills” tabs available on your profile with the writing types you do. Skills are basically another way for search engines to help prospects find you.

3. A “hire me” tab on your blog. Especially if your blog is your main online site, it’s critical that you put a up a “hire me” tab that spells out to visitors that yes, you are available to write for others. I know more than one writer who has immediately gotten good-paying offers after adding a “hire me” tab.

4. Consider more profiles. While you might not want to bid against the universe for gigs on Elance, oDesk or Guru.com, it can be good to have a profile posted on heavily trafficked, highly ranked freelance portals. I call this strategy “lurk, don’t work.” When I got an ebook-ghostwriting nibble from one quality prospect, I discovered they had come across me from a Guru.com profile I’d put up years ago and forgotten.

5. Keep updating everything. What keeps your website and LinkedIn profile ranking well is continuous updates. Try to get on both your profile and your writer site once a week and change something. Do a status update on LinkedIn once a week or so that talks about a writing assignment or challenge you’re facing. Answer a question on there. Participate in your groups. Keep expanding your connections (with people you know, not everyone who sends you an invite.) Tweet a link back to a clip.

Yes, it’s a bit of work to create and update your website and LinkedIn profile — but not much. Once your site is up, you shouldn’t need to spend more than 15 or 20 minutes in a typical week.

Is that more work than developing customized prospecting emails, or sitting through those Chamber luncheons? I don’t think so.

And there’s nothing like the feeling you get when the phone rings and a prospect says, “I saw you on LinkedIn, and was wondering if you have some availability to write for us.”

Next up on Marketing 101: How to market your writing if you have no clips. Subscribe to make sure you don’t miss upcoming installments of this 21-week marketing series.

Waterfall: MEJones – stock.xchng

Do I have your attention now?

That headline was pretty grabby, huh. Sort of made you have to click on it to find out how to get good clients.

That’s the magic of a well-constructed headline. It works like a magnet to suck readers onto your blog — and not just any readers, but exactly the readers you wanted. The ones who’re interested in just what you have to offer.

If you know how to write a compelling headline, it can also make editors love your query letter.

It can make businesses read your emailed letter of introduction and give you call.

Great headlines get you good-paying writing gigs.

Then, when other businesses and publications see the headlines you wrote for your clients, they call you up. They can’t wait to have you bring your writing savvy over to their website.

You’re done marketing your writing business. Your strong headlines do the job for you.

Why doesn’t everybody write great headlines?

It’s sort of an art form unto itself.

Lots of us who came up through journalism and newspapers weren’t trained to write headlines. That’s an editor’s job, we were told.

Others have been grabbing titles off content-mill dashboards, where the headline is pre-written by the SEO department.

Bottom line: Lots of writers don’t have any experience or training in how to write headlines. And their careers are suffering as a result.

I have reviewed hundreds of writers’ blogs, and I can tell you, bad headlines are an epidemic. I scan a typical blog, and I can’t even figure out the topic. Nothing makes me want to click through and read more. I’m not surprised when I see there are no subscribers, no comments, and nothing is getting sold.

So if you learn to write good headlines, you can really stand out.

What’s wrong with most writers’ headlines?

Three quick headline-improvement tips:

1. Use key words. Headlines like “Watch out for the red flags,” or “Another day” (both ones I’ve recently read) don’t tell me what the post is about, or who it is for. So search engines don’t find it when I search on what I want to know. And I don’t read it.
2. Tell me your topic. What will I learn about if I read your post? Your headline needs to tell me, so I’ll want to click over and read it.
3. Leave a little mystery. The headline of this post told you there’s a way to write headlines that will bring you great clients, but it didn’t tell you exactly how.  You needed to read the post to find out.

I have a confession to make.

I didn’t write that headline — Jon Morrow did.

Jon is one of the best headline writers around. He wrote the Headline Hacks report on how to create sure-to-go-viral headlines that Copyblogger uses as a guide for its writers.

His blog posts often get 1,000 retweets or more. Maybe you read How to Quit Your Job, Move to Paradise and Get Paid to Change the World, or A 7-Step Guide to Mind Control: How to Quit Begging and Make People Want to Help You. Yeah. That guy.

How does he do it? I’m going to find out, and you can listen in.

Come hear Jon’s headline-writing tips on a free call. It’s time for our monthly Freelance Writers Den’ Open House call, and I’ve roped Jon into coming to share his headline secrets.

All you have to do is register over on Jon’s site — we’ll send you the info on how to tune in for the call tomorrow at noon PST/3 EST.

If you’re like me, shortly after 2011 ended you wondered: “How much did I earn from freelance writing this year?”

Last year I did a marketing analysis…and this year I wanted to take it a step further and do an income analysis.

Not because I dream of being inundated by people who’d like to sell me products and services because they think I’m rolling in dough (ha! three kids…college tuition…). No.

It’s because looking at where your writing income is coming from is a very important exercise.

You learn a lot about how to improve your business for the next year. I want you to do this math for your writing business, too, as it will help you make better use of your time and earn more in 2012.

I had a goal of cracking six figures because I had narrowly missed that level in 2010, and that pissed me off. I’m very self-competitive that way.

A quick glance at the reports in my handy Freshbooks invoicing system tells me this year I made it. Still a few small tinkerings to do to make sure every gig is included and everything’s in the right column, but as a rough estimate, I’m there.

Just to be clear, I’m talking about what I earned from freelance writing — not including income from my work here helping other writers earn more. (My net freelance income was also a bit smaller than my gross as I did some subcontracting to other writers.)

If you’re wanting to mention to me that the economy kept right on sucking in 2011…yes, I noticed. Still, the freelance-writing market is so large that if you really go after it, you can still find plenty of business and earn well.

How’d I do it? Freshbooks has this great feature where I can instantly view revenue by client, so I have a ready breakdown for you.

Here’s a description of each major client I had in 2011, roughly what percentage of my income came from each client, and how I found them.

Takeaways:

• Social media is increasingly important. Without my LinkedIn and Twitter activity and working on my writer website SEO, I would have been out about one-third of my entire income.
• Keep marketing. Even though I have a stable of great clients, you can’t ever get complacent and stop marketing. As I look down this list, more than half of this work came from new clients.
• Ongoing contracts help create steady income. You want to target magazines and businesses that are big enough to send you a steady stream of work, rather than one-off projects. That really cuts down your marketing time, there’s less feast-or-famine cycle, and it gives you the peace of mind of starting each month with a good chunk of your revenue already booked.
• Keep growing your network. You can never know enough editors and writers. I got a couple of key referrals that led to interesting, lucrative projects.
• Blog in a high-profile place… I was surprised to see how many clients came from the visibility I get from one of my big blogging gigs. Any time you get a chance to write for a high-traffic website where you think prospects visit, you want to do it. Better yet, target this type of client as a goal for 2012. More than one-third of my clients called me after seeing my other work online.
• But don’t blog too much. In 2010, I had more blogging work and earned less. Blogging isn’t the highest-paying form of writing out there, even if you’re getting $100 or so a post, which is my goal. Blogging is good for visibility and I find it fun (obviously!), but save some room for articles, white papers or other better-paying writing assignments.
• Think recession-proof industries. I was also surprised to see how much of my income was focused in financial-services firms. Between them and hospital — another recession-proof area — that’s close to one-third of my total income.
• Keep stretching. This was a year of breakthroughs for me. I did my first government contract, taking a leap into a writing type and client type I hadn’t done before. I also took on a chunk of a business book, writing 3,000-word chapters that each required piles of research. You have to be willing to take some risks and learn new things to move into new, high-paid areas and keep your income growing.
• There’s lots of good business-writing gigs in articles and blogs. As my chart shows, you don’t have to know how to write longform direct-mail letters or ad copy to earn well as a commercial freelance writer. All my corporate work was articles and blog posts this year, plus an annual-report project.
• It doesn’t take a lot of clients to earn a good living. I made three-quarters of my income off about six clients. If you target quality prospects, you don’t need a huge client list to earn well.
• One-off projects suck. I think one of the reasons I earned more this year is I concentrated closely on driving more business through fewer large clients, rather than doing more small accounts. Each client takes administrative time, so fewer is better. I made a decision about mid-year to drop several small-business clients because I felt it was too inefficient to earn that way, and I think that instinct was dead on. As soon as I cleared those few small accounts out, I got huge new projects from better-quality clients.
• Watch your fees. If your clients pay you via PayPal, you are paying as much as 3% in fees. I saw roughly $9,000 of payments come through on PayPal, but I paid almost nothing in fees, as Freshbooks offers a special deal where I only pay $.50 a transaction. I estimate that saved several hundred dollars of income that might otherwise have been sucked away in transaction fees.

I’m not expecting to earn as much from freelancing in 2012, as I’ll be concentrating more on writing my own ebooks, teaching, and creating useful content and live events for members of Freelance Writers Den. But it’s good to know that if I need to, I can earn a good living just from freelance writing.

Want to earn six figures in 2012? You might want to listen in on a free call I’m hosting Thursday at noon PST: “How to Write Headlines So Irresistible, Big-Money Clients Beg You to Write for Them.” I’ll be interviewing the best headline writer on the Internet, Jon Morrow of Copyblogger, and getting him to spill his headline secrets. Register here.