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You’re a badass, creative, and unconventional person itching to start making some money online and go live up a dream like living in an off-grid forest cottage or escaping to another country…
Maybe you’re doing tarot readings, crafting gothic chainmail jewelry, molding devilish skull-shaped soaps, or selling witchy hats on Etsy or Stan…
But there’s this big question hanging over you — is my online marketing niche TOO niche?
Or is it NOT niche ENOUGH?
And more importantly, what makes a good online marketing niche that’ll help me make enough sales to give me a comfortable, secure, and LIVABLE income? 🤔
How do you know what online marketing niche is right for you?
I had these same questions in my mind before I ever started my witchy business, HEXOTICA, for MANY YEARS.
And I’m here to give my fellow unconventional and neurospicy entrepreneurial creatives some good news that’ll put your mind at rest!
Today, I’m breaking down the truth about online marketing niches for subcultural creatives like us.
By the time you’re done reading or listening, you’ll know exactly what a good online marketing niche is and how to choose yours (or feel satisfied about the one you’ve already chosen!)
I’ll help you get clear on your niche, how to position your brand, and why a strong aesthetic can be your secret weapon.⚔️
Continue reading, OR if you prefer making your car, daily walk, workout, or crochet time your listening and learning time, click below for the podcast version. 🪄 🎧💫
Prefer to watch instead of read? Watch the YouTube version here, where you can leave a comment and tell me what biz niche you are in or are considering!🪄 📺💫
What Is an Online Marketing NICHE Anyway?
Let’s get the basics out of the way in case you’re unclear about what exactly we’re talking about here…
An online marketing niche is a specific, clearly defined segment of the market that a business focuses its products, services, and marketing efforts on.
Instead of trying to appeal to “everyone,” a niche hones in on a particular audience with shared characteristics, needs, interests, or problems.
That’s the formal way to define it, although many people would start with a THING being the niche.
That’s ok too, but technically it’s always going to be a group of people.
One way to define it is through your target audience or tribe.
Why Everyone Says: “Narrow Your Niche!”
I’m sure you’ve heard over and over that you need to “narrow your niche.”
And there’s a good reason for that.
Because if you try to appeal to everyone, you end up appealing to no one.
Imagine a tarot reader who says, “I read for everyone.” And their site says they offer tarot, but the way they say it kinda feels…generic.
Nothing stands out, right?
No one feels special reading generic copy; no one feels seen by that.
Or like the tarot reading is made by someone like them, which can be a huge factor in how people purchase something one-on-one like a tarot reading.
And nothing is unique about the reading service, either.
Now compare that to, “I do tarot readings for occultists, seekers, mystics, and practitioners in lux or light (LVX).”
That’s specific, and it speaks directly to people who understand that type of practice.
It’s so specific, it may even repel people who are not seriously into tarot, which can be another strong point of difference from online competition.
Now you’ve got a tribe.
You’ve got a message that speaks directly to them.
That’s the selling power of a well-defined niche.
Online Marketing Niche Example: A Tale of Two Soap Brands 🧼
Take, for example, two soap brands.
Brand A: Generic white label, plain packaging, and a website that says, “Natural soap.” Sure, the product might be fine, but nothing about it sparks emotion. Or images, memories, or greater purpose or ideal.
It’s just BLAND.
Then there’s Brand B: A witchy, eco-luxe soap company that wraps each bar in hand-illustrated moon phase designs, writes playful copy like “Cleanse away the day’s chaos”, and shares self-care rituals on Instagram.
When someone buys from Brand B, they’re not just buying soap. They’re buying into a whole vibe that says, “This is my kind of people.”
That’s the difference. The vibe creates the connection. The niche makes it feel like home. And that’s what transforms casual browsers into loyal superfans.
A well-defined online marketing niche and brand vibe help sell your stuff!
Cha-ching, darling!
Why Niching Down Doesn’t Mean You Have to Limit What You Talk About or Sell! ⚡
Now, in my experience over 9 years as working as a freelance social media manager and marketing consultant, the thing that I saw freak people out the most about the idea of ”niching down” was that they would no longer get to talk about all the things they are interested in.
It basically sounds like creative DEATH to creative, neurospicy people! ☠️
I know it certainly did for me!
Hexotica’s blog has 7 different topics, all the things I love:
- Self-Transformation, including daily rituals, self-improvement and productivity
- Building a creative business and exploring all the ways to make money online
- Digital Marketing
- Writing, especially diary writing and copywriting
- Alternative lifestyles, like the goth subculture, living childfree, and rejecting religion in favor of manifesting witchcraft
- The Law of Attraction – which I was the MOST hesitant about keeping… but has turned out to be my number 1 traffic generator!
- And Digital Nomadism, including living rent-free as an international pet-sitter!
I chose to flat-out ignore the niche down advice I heard and continued to blog about all of those topics. I just knew that if I niched down too much, I’d lose interest and motivation to do anything. ADHD brains CRAVE novelty like an adrenaline junkie craves cliff jumping.
If your AUDIENCE is niche, your TOPICS can be more general.
As it turns out, I realized that I was already niched from the start when I chose to rank the blog for ”alternative lifestyles.”
And if anything, all I needed to do to increase my online traffic was be less hesitant to talk more directly about goths, manifesting, and witchcraft.
And how much I despise fascist Christian Evangelical BS. 🤘
You absolutely can lean hard into your weirdest, most wonderful niche interests and make a living with it online.
So long as you are still creating value for people.
Go read Seth Godin’s ‘Purple Cow‘ if you want to learn why standing out in wildly innovative, alternative ways can help your brand stand out and be remarkable.
Anything by Seth Godin is amazing, but reading ‘Purple Cow’ is like releasing your imagination into a jumping castle for marketing ideas! I never wanted to leave! 😂
That book will help you understand how different can equate to good marketing. It’s less about just standing out and more about creating amazing value and experiences for people.
Especially your people, the ones who will get it.
Now let’s drill down on HOW to choose a niche.
How to Choose a Bangin’ Online Marketing Niche For Your Creative Business🪄💸
The good news is, there are two paths you can go with when you niche down:
The first is that you can SELL a very niched down thing to a very broad audience. This works especially well for brands that have very few actual products because they specialize in the one-niched thing.
An example of this is the ‘Who Gives a Crap’ ethical toilet paper brand here in Australia.
The other way you can go is to sell to an extremely narrow segment of people in an available market but sell many different types of products to them.
So, for example, Hot Topic in the U.S. is a huge corporate gothic clothing chain store with a large variety of products.
But they are all very, very, tightly targeted to alternative subcultures. And mainly youthful, at that.
So this is great news for you if you’re a creative with a strong alternative lifestyle aesthetic! If you’ve been wracking your brain over what to niche down on, you don’t have to!
Just niche according to your aesthetic and GO WILD with whatever you want to make, sell, and talk about online.
So let’s walk you through each decision point from the top, so you can work out which direction works best for you.
Here’s a quick 10-step pathway to working out what niche might suit your creative interests best:
1) List Your Passions
Write down what lights you up creatively (topics, mediums, communities, and aesthetics). Pinpoint quirks, obsessions, or subcultures you’re part of—this is often your secret sauce.
Examples of great niche interests may be a type of alternative healing, childfree living, or digital nomadism.
Or one of the dozens of ”core” aesthetics like cottagecore, goblincore, or lovecore.
2) Identify Your Strengths
Note what people often praise you for (your style, ideas, vibe, or skills).
3) Define Who You Want to Help
Think of the kind of people you’d love to serve or hang out with in your business.
4) Pinpoint a Problem You Can Solve
What struggles or desires does your audience have that your creativity can answer? Most creatives sell what they want to sell and not what other people are actually asking for or seeking out. That is fine if you want to run a hobby business. But if you want to make a LIVING, you need to work the other way around.
I’ll explain in a bit why every product and service solves a problem for someone, even a luxury item.
5) Check Where Your Passions & Problems Overlap
The sweet spot is where what you love creating also solves a need.
6) Research the Market
Look at competitors, online communities, and trends to see what’s working and what’s missing.
7) Test Small Offers or Content & Determine How Many Products or Services You Want to Offer
Create something bite-sized (an e-book, workshop, art print, or post) and see how your audience reacts.
If you want to express your full creative range and you’re not as financially strapped, go wide with multiple offerings. Test out which ones your audience loves and which sell best.
If you want to keep it simple and make money faster, pick one product or service and stick to it.
This is by far the best way to start a new business. You can go wider once you’ve got at least one great ”best seller” to rely on.
8) Refine Through Feedback
Notice what resonates most and adjust. And I mean this on a granular level: what exact type of images get the best feedback? What words? What ”mood” of content?
And what topics, messages, and stories?
Your marketing will sharpen through practice, not theory. There needs to be a perpetual feedback loop where what you put out is evaluated by how well it’s received by your target audience.
This is the essence of effectively niching down.
If there’s no VIBE, your brand is not ALIVE!
9) Commit (but Stay Flexible)
Pick a direction and own it, knowing you can evolve as your creativity grows.
Once you get some positive feedback, amplify what you did that worked.
Getting started selling something will give you a lot more answers and insight than waiting to think about what the perfect niche is.
10) Keep a Consistent BRAND VIBE
Weak, inconsistent branding looks like a lack of commitment, and that stinks of untrustworthiness.
Instant sales repellent.
So whatever you choose to do, I recommend investing in your vision to strengthen your brand from the start.
Invest in a graphic designer to create a brand guide for you.
A brand guide is like a visual identity cheat sheet, making sure your brand always looks polished, professional, and instantly recognizable.
It’s what you give to any contractors you hire to help you work on your business. Contractors like a Virtual Assistant, Social Media Manager, or Copywriter.
It consists of a logo, a set of fonts that reflect the personality of your brand, a brand color palette, and graphic design. It may include all the templates for all of your social media accounts, banners, cover images, and thumbnails.
Next, invest in a professional copywriter.
A copywriter can help you turn your ideas into clear, compelling messages that attract the right people, build trust, and inspire action.
This is crucial for a distinctive, vibe-driven niche brand.
Additionally, invest in a marketing strategy so that your niche brand grows with purpose instead of relying on guesswork and luck.
Strategic marketing centers your transformative message to best serve your audience, which is what a narrow niche brand is all about.
These investments will help keep your brand aesthetic and messaging consistent.
Now let’s talk about the risks of going either too narrow or too wide.
The Risk of Going Too Narrow & How to Know if You Have🚩
Going in too narrowly could obviously shrink your audience too much.
But the true risk of a niche that’s too narrow is that it’ll make your brand seem like a commodity in the market.
It will be useful for a very short period for only those who need it at a certain time.
Then, once people extract from you what they need, they will move on.
I noticed this in the years I’ve studied online marketing.
I moved from one teacher and content creator to the next.
The ones who only focused on one software and how to use it, for example, were only useful to me so long as I stayed subscribed to that particular software.
Or the ones who only helped ‘service providers’ were only useful to me while I remained a social media manager.
But focusing down on a software or a type of avatar is still an extremely savvy way to gain an audience. That’s not the mistake.
The biggest mistake with going too narrow is that your audience may outgrow you.🐣
People online love to extract and extract fast.
They will take what they need from your marketing and move on unless you know how to entice them to stay longer.
Noob marketers make the mistake of giving people all the pain-killing pills they need all at once.
Marketicians release painkillers slowly and in small increments over time. They are experts in how to leave open story loops, anticipation, and agitation for more content, more new products and services.
When your online marketing niche is TOO narrow, you set your business up for speedy extraction, followed by dismissal.
So, for example, if you are niched down to helping women learn how to use Etsy, you may not want to make every single piece of content you create around how to sell on Etsy.
Because at any time, you may lose all of the people who decide they are sick of Etsy’s fees and want to close up shop.
Instead, it may be a good idea to expand on other topics that are still relevant to both using Etsy and to those who are not.
SEO, for example. Or how to write persuasive sales copy for shop listings.
If you’re selling niche products, you could have your best-sellers front and center, leading the way in gathering an audience. Then, in your email, you can direct subscribers to the benefits of your other products and talk about relevant topics to those as well.
So the idea here is to niche down to gain an audience, then expand in order to keep them.
Or, let’s say you are an acupuncturist. A great online marketing niche could be migraine relief. So you focus on migraine-relief optin offers, special offers, and content. But then, after people follow or subscribe, you introduce and educate them on all the other ways that you can help them with acupuncture.
Now that they know how helpful you were for their migraine, they trust you. They are actively listening and seeking more to consume from your marketing.
This is how you create a world for people to maintain their interest in your brand.
A playground of content and offers for them to explore, from which to continue to learn and enjoy.
The concept of ‘world-building’ in online marketing is a personal favorite of mine because it’s the core of cult brand building.
So stay tuned for more of that here on Hexotica! 😉
You’ll know if you have gone too narrow if you are unable to keep followers or subscribers in your world.
Some of the signs of a niche that is too narrow look like literal extraction.
People signing up to your optin then unsubscribing as soon as they get it, for example.
Comments on how helpful or amazing your content is, but nobody is hitting the damn follow button!
That’s not getting the loyalty you want; that’s a sign you’re just giving symptom relief.
You’re giving them too many painkillers and not enough craving for the cure.
A juicy, enticing, Marketician-style social media sales funnel will tickle and tease people with the promise of transformation.
It seduces and hints at so much more to come.
So much more that they could learn that’ll help improve their lives. All they gotta do is stick around. You’ll deliver.
That’s the difference: no extraction, just magnetism.🧲
There’s no extraction happening here, darling, if you want the goods, you gotta stick around!💋
The Risk of Going Too Wide & How to Know if You Have🚩
On the other hand, the risks of going too wide and trying to sell to everyone will get you nowhere.
Unfortunately, this is the majority of online businesses!
Over the years, when I worked as a freelance social media manager, it was sometimes very difficult to get my social media consulting clients to understand that just because everyone could use their product or service, it didn’t mean we should market to everyone.
Brands that try to market to everyone come off as generic and forgettable.
They use the same free stock images from Pixabay that everyone else uses.
Social media managers who have seen all those free images a million times before get embarrassed for them, no cap. Cringe AF.
That’s why there are so many boring sites, dead social media profiles, and frustrated social media managers feeling like they are getting paid to polish a turd.💩
It never works.
EXCEPT in cases where you are the pain relief to an acute pain point.
So, for example, doctors, plumbers, and pest control. They can often get away with being bland as plain oatmeal because their services are not optional in life. They are necessary painkillers.
The problem with an online marketing niche that is TOO wide is that it’s going to be ineffective.
It’s watered down, boring, unclear, and it does not sell.
People want to see what’s in it for them before they follow a brand. If they can’t self-identify or relate to anything in the content, they ignore it.
Bland marketing doesn’t recognize them or speak to them in any way that adds value to their lives.
You will know if you have gone too wide if you struggle to get ANY subscribers or followers.
How To Stand Out in a Saturated Niche🔥
By far, one of the biggest fears I’ve seen creatives have that makes them hesitate starting a creative business is that they fear that the business they want to start will just be another grain of sand on a beach.
My answer is simple: when has anyone EVER said, ”OMG, there are TOO many songs, there will NEVER be another hit!” ?
We never say there are too many songs because every song is unique in some way. Whether it’s the voice of the singer, the mood, the instruments used, or the lyrics. Every song is a unique combination, and there’s always room for another.
Creative people should think of themselves as artists or musicians.
Always capable of sharing a unique gift to the world that no one else has ever offered.
Saying that, making another song might not help you make a living, but you know what will?
Solving problems!
A well-defined niche + a well-defined problem = money-making potential!
If you make whatever it is you are selling feel like pain relief, you’ll always keep people interested.
So here’s the thing to remember, and that’s easy to get confused about when you’re selling within a subculture, like ‘witches’ or ‘cottagecore’ enthusiasts:
It’s not just about who your audience may be.
It’s about what they want and what problems you solve for them.💥
So when we’re talking about an online marketing niche, even though you’re starting with a narrow group of people, you still need to be asking, How can I solve a PROBLEM for this group?
Do this no matter what you sell. Discover all the ways your product or services offer any kind of RELIEF.
For example, you might start off by saying that you do:
- “Tarot readings for witchy women and gender diverse creatives.”
- “Handmade gothic jewelry for goths (obvs!).”
- “Scented skull-shaped soaps for alternative folks.”
But that’s still just too vague, right?
The mistake made with stopping at this point of defining your niche is that you’ll struggle to stand out from your competition.
A great online marketing niche goes one step deeper.
It also defines the problem it solves.
You’re group or people and product or service are niche AF, yes, but what’s the niche PROBLEM you’re solving?
A good niche is a specific AF PROBLEM that you solve for a specific AF type of PERSON.
So, using the same marketing niche examples as above, let’s rework ’em with a problem in mind.
- “Beginner-friendly Tarot readings for witchy women and gender diverse creatives.” 👉 With one instant tweak, you solve the problem of people who may know absolutely nothing about tarot or what any of the cards mean. It lowers the intimidation and fear barrier for anyone excited to get a reading who may be too embarrassed that they are total noobs. It invites them to ask all the ‘silly questions’ about the reading that they may have.
- “Handmade ethically sourced gothic jewelry for goths 👉Many people do not want to buy anything made of materials that aren’t vegan or that can ensure no animals were harmed. Glue, feathers, or taxidermy jewelry, for example.
- “Scented skull-shaped soaps for alternative folks with sensitive skin.” 👉Targets all the people who suffer from high sensitivity to chemicals or perfumes commonly used in soaps.
In each case, the type of person targeted is already crazy-niche, but with one small additional shift in targeting a problem, the product or service gets rocket-launched above the competition.
This is online niche marketing positioning.
Positioning can be that one small difference that helps your brand always stand out. Your product or service becomes the saviour for the person with that unique problem.
So, even when you think, well, hang on, Christine, my art is wire-based images of cauldrons and mushrooms, what kind of problem is that going to solve?
Listen to what your customers and admirers are asking for and you’ll soon find out!
Do they ask, ”I NEED IT ASAP FOR A BIRTHDAY, CAN YOU EXPRESS POST IT?” That’s a problem. You can add, ”Expressed delivered with love” to every mention of art and instantly stand out from your competition.
This is exactly what the owner of Berserk Clothing did here in Australia many years ago, and one of the reasons her online alternative clothing shop became so successful when many others failed.
She never even bothered with normal, slower postage rates; everything was going express, end of story. Fn brilliant choice!🙌
20 years later, Berserk has become the largest online alternative clothing retailer in all of Australia.
Ready to create your online marketing niche and build a bada$$ alternative business?🪄💸
Over the years, I’ve seen so many brilliant creatives wrestle with trying to find their niche.
It’s not that they aren’t talented. It’s that turning all their creative ideas and various passions into a clear, confident direction can feel overwhelming.
That’s why I created the SWAN Academy. 🪄🦢
It’s your space to get the clarity you’ve been craving and the confidence to finally own your voice.
Together, we’ll uncover and CREATE your niche, dial in your unique vibe, and craft a transformative message-driven marketing strategy that doesn’t just sell, but that feels like you.✨
A brand that not only attracts dream clients and customers but that also feels deeply authentic and aligned with your creative spirit.
Something you can throw your heart into, keep nurturing with joy.
And have FUN watching as it flourishes for years to come. 💜
So if you’re ready for personal support, my one-on-one mentoring through the SWAN Academy is waiting for you. Apply to work with me now here.
Or, if you want to dip your toes in first, grab my FREE SWAN Transformation Marketing Strategy Guidebook.
Kickstart your online empire today!👑
It’s a FREE 30-page PDF printable resource guide of every single step to help you start, grow, and run an online business – in order!
I’ve also included all the mindset, goal-setting, and weekly self-coaching steps you’ll need to build self-trust as you scale your business.
Download the FREE complete step-by-step guidebook by signing up for the form below! 👇
