How to Find Your Freelance Specialty

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How to Find Your Freelance Specialty

Posted July 22, 2010 in Getting Started, How-To

There have been several debates on whether or not you should specialize your services. It’s almost as heated as a debate as whether or not you should charge hourly or project rates.

However, I firmly believe that specializing my services and clientele was what really allowed my own business to take off and succeed.

Being a Generalist

Before I specialized, I tried to do everything from consulting to design to development, backend programming, SEO and copywriting. I targeted every and any kind of client, not caring if they were a large or small business, agency or single entrepreneur.

I quickly found myself in a predicament. First-off, I was not busy at all. I barely had any work coming in. Also, the work I did have coming in really sucked. The budgets sucked, the project ideas sucked and the type of required of me sucked. I hated design, SEO, copywriting and anything not related to front-end development.

I finally decided on a risky move–I wanted to specialize both my services and the kinds of clients I would work with. I would only offer front-end development and WordPress services only to agencies, freelancers and designers.

This move was risky because it seems logical that by narrowing your field of clients and services, that your narrowing your chance for work. However, it only increased my work!

Why You Should Specialize

So why should you specialize? Basically, no matter how much you learn, it’s impossible to be great at everything. And to be a really successful freelancer, you have to be great at what you do.

Specializing allows you to become an expert in your field. You’re also more likely to be perceived as one by potential clients. Just by offering front-end dev and WordPress work, I became known to my clients as “the” WordPress expert.

Specializing also allows you to focus on honing your skills and is easier to keep up with new developments. This allows you to quickly become better at what you do than the generalist.

How To Specialize Your Services

In order to specialize, you need to decide on two things:

What you’re really good at
What you really enjoy doing

Normally, the answer to those two questions is the same, but not always. If not, I suggest going with the work you really enjoy doing, as you’ll eventually become better at it the more you practice. After all, you did go into business for yourself in order to do the work you really loved, right?

How to Specialize Your Clients

Specializing your clients is equally, if not more, important as specializing your services. Deciding what type of clients you want to work with will make you happier in the long run and will increase the effectiveness of your marketing. It’s much more effective to get your message to 10 perfect-fitting clients than to get your message to 500 clients who won’t work for you.

So, how do you choose who you want to work with? Ask yourself:

What type of services are you now offering?
What kinds of clients are the ones who’d need those services?
What is your ideal working relationship and which clients from above would fit that idea?

You Just Need Time

Just remember, as with every other kind of marketing effort, it will take some time for clients to notice that you have specialized. Just remember, if specializing doesn’t work for you, you can always go back to offering everything to everyone, but I seriously doubt that will happen.

Your Thoughts

Have you specialized your services or clientele? How did it work out for you?

Image by Davide Restivo

About the author: Amber is a freelancer with over 10 years of experience and specializes in clean, semantic and valid HTML5, CSS3 and Wordpress development. She also writes a web development blog at www.amberweinberg.com and just launched a web app for developers at www.codesnipp.it.

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64 Comments

Web design portfolio
July 22nd, 2010 at 8:38 am

I agree that you need to specialise. After all, if it’s what you’re good at and hopefully enjoy, then why not?

I enjoy design over anything else but that doesn’t mean I don’t or won’t need to take on other jobs such as front end dev, production, newsletters, seo advice and so on…
Jordan Walker
July 22nd, 2010 at 8:53 am

I have specialized in programming, and it has worked out very well.
George Passwater
July 22nd, 2010 at 9:14 am

Wonderful post Amber.

Yes, specializing gives you the type of work and clients you want. When you are the expert, they come to you more and not the other way around. There might be clients that pass you by, but it’s not about numbers – it’s about the quality of client and the work you will do.

I have specialized some with my copywriting and marketing business, but I am actually working even more on narrowing my specialties now. I know what I need to narrow down to and am working on how to accomplish that now.

Thanks again for this post – it’s something all freelancers should look at.
Dave Yankowiak
July 22nd, 2010 at 9:52 am

Yes yes yes! I’m convinced that the more you drill down to a specialty product or service, the better you’ll do as a freelancer. And really it doesn’t have to take very long either. A few months back I decided that I wanted to specialize in tweaking existing WordPress themes so I launched a service dedicated to that specific task. It took me a single Saturday to build a separate website for the service (TweakMyTheme.com) and with a small Google Adwords budget I was already taking in business by Monday. Now 75% of what I do is WordPress theme-related. And I love it!
Josef Scarantino
July 22nd, 2010 at 10:51 am

Great post Amber. You raised some really good points and caused me to do a little introspection on my blog about this very subject. I look forward to your future posts.
Scott
July 22nd, 2010 at 11:22 am

I think specialising could be the way to go, but only after your certain what your specialty is and after some proper experience of it. It would be far too easy for someone to think there great at something where in reality there not. Also I think someone like my self who is just starting out, would be crazy to turn away clients (work) when there trying to make a name for them selves.
Steve Avery
July 22nd, 2010 at 11:33 am

Great post Amber.

I’m currently having this predicament.

I have 10 years experience in the digital industry as a front end developer. I have worked for two of the world’s largest marketing/advertising agencies, producing great sites for great corporate brands in the UK.

Recently, April of this year, I was made redundant. Having spent three solid months looking for a replacement full-time position, and finding nothing due to the current global climate/recession, I decided to have a go at freelancing. Possibly not the best time to decide to do this but as a father of three with mortgage and bills to pay I have to bring in an income – and I want to do so doing what I do best.

Freelancing is something I’ve always wanted to do. Be, my own boss, work the hours I want to work, work with/for clients that I wanted to. However, I’m actually finding it very hard finding work in the front end area. It seems that most offerings in freelance require front & back end. Now I know that as a front end developer I can of course outsource the back end to another freelancer but I feel very vulnerable to do that at this early stage in my freelancing career due to not having any solid/trustworthy relationships with fellow developers. My concern would be for me to accept a project knowing that I would need to outsource some of it and find that they let me down meaning I will not be able to deliver on time and on budget.

My main skills are HTML, XHTML, CSS, Usability, Accessibility, SEO and implementation of JQuery. I have a good eye for design but feel that I couldn’t class myself as a web designer. Here is another aspect of the project I would need to outsource.

So for me, I agree with what your saying with regards to specialising in areas that you feel you are an expert in. But actually finding clients/work that only caters for your skill set is hard to come by.

For example. For someone like myself, how would I find clients/work that require just front end development?

I’ve looked endlessly with the help of our friend Google but seem to only find a lot of sites where you have to bid in order to get some work. And at that the bids seem so low that it just wouldn’t be worth my time & effort.

And finally, in my case, I’m just starting out as a freelance front end developer yet I have no work I can show in any form of a portfolio even if I built a site to try and get work. I have my cv site (http://www.steveavery.net) that has a portfolio of work that I have produced when I was employed but for obvious reasons I cannot show any of these sites in my freelance portfolio. So I guess what I’m trying to say is how do I sell myself and my skills if I have nothing to show but yet I know I’m more than capable of doing what’s required?
Ronald Thompson
July 22nd, 2010 at 12:22 pm

What a great post with very relevant information. i can say that when I was launching my Freelancing career, it was incredibly difficult at first; meeting deadlines, sampling various aspects of projects, and determining what is a good fit for me. I have an MBA in Management and decided a Freelance career change was right for me. After all, I discovered that focusing on technical and SEO writing was the way to go for me. Choosing a specialty is the way to go and I have found that keeping your mind open will open up more doors for you as well.
Brandon
July 22nd, 2010 at 12:36 pm

im currently making the change to specialist. from “graphic designer” to “logo designer”. i wont turn away any web or print work, i love doing that too, but my real passion is in logos and branding. *fingers crossed*
Ashley Hill
July 22nd, 2010 at 12:50 pm

AHHH specialization! I LOVE print design, but I also love web design, as well as dabbling in social media management…right now I’m working in all sorts of things, but I’m guessing I’ll start getting more of a specialization soon enough as less people want print, and more people are doing their own social media stuff. I’ve started using WordPress for everything as well, but it’s not on my list of services yet because I want to get to know it better.
Jason Gross
July 22nd, 2010 at 12:59 pm

Specializing is definitely the way to go. However, I feel as though you could get away with finding a focused group of clients if you don’t agree with finding a focused group of skills. Being an expert in designing web sites for medical products or restaurants can be just as effective as being an expert in XHTML/CSS or Typography.

Either way, remember that a jack of all trades is a king of nothing.
writing freelance jobs
July 22nd, 2010 at 1:25 pm

Be King in our own area! that’s proverb, definitely we will have good knowledge in the area of service then only we’ll full fill customer needs. Who are all looking for part time and home based jobs, Visit the website: https://greatlance.com/.
In this website you can freelancing jobs as well as you can find number of freelancers for home based working.
Freelance FactFile
July 22nd, 2010 at 1:59 pm

I know writers who specialise in a particular market sector (eg: pharmaceutical, telecoms etc). I work across a range of market sectors and my specialisation is in the TYPE of writing I do: marketing copyywriting. So, although that takes in a range of activities (websites, brochures, email campaigns, e-newsletters etc) it DOESN’T include writing projects such as feature articles, speeches, tender documents, or reports.
Freelance FactFile
July 22nd, 2010 at 2:01 pm

Guys, I keep on writing comments that don’t show up! Am I caught in your spam filter again?? And will this comment show up?
TheAL
July 22nd, 2010 at 3:55 pm

Specializing can be an effective way to establish and propel yourself, but I still don’t think it’s for everyone. It depends on the thing(s) in which you’re specializing.

For starters, if you’re going to specialize, do it in an area in which specialization is legit. Meaning, don’t say “I specialize in HTML/PHP/CSS/Javascript.” If you’re a web designer/programmer/developer, of course you should be damn good at those. That’s just stating the obvious and being another knot in the industry’s rope. Think more “I specialize in e-commerce solutions for small to semi-large companies and I work exclusively with ad agencies in the mid-west.”

And make sure the things you’re specializing in are “in” and prolific, and that you get involved when the door is open. Don’t wait. I specialize in coding and designing for social networking sites. I make insanely customized Myspace profiles, FBML tabs, and Twitter backgrounds. And I know kids with far less skill who get a lot more biz in those areas than me, especially Myspace. Why? ‘Cause of past circumstances. My primary clients for Myspace were companies and people, not bands. Now Myspace is fading out and bands are about the only reason to ever go there. So things like Bandspaces.com and literally 2-3 freelancers (almost all of which were photographers close to bands who had easy access) have cornered that entire market. And I’m finding it very challenging to break back in, despite my tenure and rep in that community.

So pick your specialties carefully, get your foot into that area when you can, and plan for future changes.
Laura Spencer
July 22nd, 2010 at 5:42 pm

Good post Amber!

You make a lot of good points.

Freelance FactFile–I don’t know why your comments have suddenly started going into the spam folder, but you’re not the only one. It seems the spam filter has become more aggressive lately. Yesterday I even fished one of my own comments out of spam.
Eric Zentner
July 22nd, 2010 at 6:04 pm

Some great replies…and a great post Amber.
I’m still struggling with finding a specialty that both suits my taste AND my abilities. Rather than specialize in one type of work, I’m trying to specialize in one field…ie. Small and Start-up businesses. Smaller budgets, smaller teams, but more flexibility and more options for creativity. I’ve been very lucky about finding clients up til now, but I feel as though narrowing my focus will also help me eliminate doubt. So far the best way I’ve found to help eliminate the options I DON’T want is to take on a good mix of projects. As soon as you finish a “bad” project, you can very quickly do a post-mortem on it, and figure out what aspect of it went wrong. Use this to help you eliminate options until you are left with a golden nugget of freelancing goodness. Just don’t stop learning… regardless of your specialty, each successfully completed project is a valuable step in the learning process. A friend who’s been in the biz for 10 years recently told me that he still learns a few “hard lessons” even after 10 years… so don’t sweat it if you’re making them after 1 or 2.

Good luck!
Amber Weinberg
July 22nd, 2010 at 6:06 pm

@George You are absolutely right, it’s about the quality, not the quantity of clients you get :)

@Steve I do the same thing you do and am able to find plenty of clients to match my skill set. It’s about where you’re looking for those clients. You probably won’t be able to find many normal clients just by offering XHTML/CSS work, but there are tons of agencies looking for XHTML/CSS. Thats where most of my clients come from.

@TheAl That’s not necessarily true. I specialize in XHTML/CSS/WordPress only and get a ton of work bc of the quality of the code I produce. Anyone can do HTML, but not everyone can do it properly, semantically or validate-y (is that a word? lol)
Yaritsa
July 22nd, 2010 at 6:55 pm

I especially like when you say that if you have to choose between doing something you’re good at or something you enjoy, you should pick what you enjoy. It’s so true, you can get better with practice and you can always learn more. You won’t always learn to love what you dont.
TODHD
July 22nd, 2010 at 6:59 pm

The best thing to do is ask other people what you are good at that might not come natural to them
TheAL
July 22nd, 2010 at 10:05 pm

@Amber – The difference in quality of those things is a good point. And if you can do them well and just stick to those, you can definitely be successful. You can be successful just making ad banners if you found the right niche. Not knocking that aspect. But since they’re required to be a good web designer/developer at all, and since writing decent HTML/CSS that validates and is ‘semantic’ is pretty easy, it’s hard for me to see them as specialties of any kind, and it feels kinda weird to me to emphasize them as specialties instead of obvious requirements.
Luke Balson
July 23rd, 2010 at 12:37 am

Great article Amber.

I myself am in the middle of changing to just specialize in front end dev and WordPress. I always felt I was too much trying to do everything including print work. It takes quite a load off not having to think about any of that other stuff, trying to please everyone. Now its just a matter of finding work only in this…
Bravewe
July 23rd, 2010 at 1:38 am

Doing so one may loose potential client/s requiring the full we design service at one place, as for the client who come to the freelancer would be in impression that the core expertise is only with html, and perhaps this way we may loose other work i.e. designing, graphic etc… etc.. as one already have presented his/her self as html expert!

SO…client will see you only as “html/css expert” and will not consider you for anything else.. most of the time…
Freelancers
July 23rd, 2010 at 3:33 am

I have had the same problems when I got into freelancing and sourcing for freelance projects, it is always a better preposition to be a specialist in a particular domain with an ease of projecting one’s expertise. Also, is quite helpful in retaining clients who have outsourced their work and it is good to see them coming back to you for more.
Stephanie
July 23rd, 2010 at 6:06 am

I tried specializing by letting clients know in my online profiles and my personal sites that I only do certain types of writing such as copywriting, niche blogging, and product/category description writing. I also wrote in those profiles and sites that I am not interested in doing SEO article writing anymore and I personally did this because I was sick and tired of writing about all kinds of topics knowing that people won’t read these articles from top to bottom.

Sadly, clients still seem to want to hire me for SEO writing services despite my telling them this. And about a couple of them have left since my specializations are not what they’re looking for.
Tuncay Demirtepe
July 23rd, 2010 at 12:21 pm

@Steve Avery

I lost my job at May’09 and I could not find a new job in next 2 months.

After 2 months with finding nothing I decided to end my W2 carrier. I was already working as freelancer at evenings and weekends (I was doing small projects or bug fixings, etc.)

Getting work is hardest part of freelancing (especially at beginning) First I sign-up couple of freelance work sites (odesk and rentacoder). You are right most of works are too small and not worth for your effort. But after finishing couple works and good review you can get better works. After a year I’ve a lot clients now and they are giving me projects continuously. I’m not following that sites very often no longer.. I wrote a web service for myself, it’s sending a notifications about new works which fitting my keyword filters. I’m only making bids for big projects (>$1K) now.

After a year as a freelancer I’ll never return W2 jobs again unless they offer 10-15K/month :)

If you want to follow these sites I can create an account for you to get notification.
Tom Hicks
July 26th, 2010 at 6:30 am

Totally agree here. In fact, I’d say that the more you specialise the better in some cases. If you position yourself as a pro WordPress blog coder who has produced 300 blogs, anyone looking for a WordPress blog is much more likely to go with you because they see you as the expert in that particular thing.

I think we will see this trend all over the web, with websites dedicated to one product or a very specific niche and freelancers specialising in ‘corporate copywriting’ or ‘PHPbb’.
azul
July 26th, 2010 at 8:21 am

nice tips for me as freelance web developer that must have some programming language skills
kathryn barlow
July 27th, 2010 at 10:13 am

I’m finding specializing in a specific area difficult since so many of my clients say they love that I design and develop the websites, so they don’t need to find a developer to finish off the site I design.

Like some of the other commenters, I’m trying to specialize in smaller businesses as it does give greater creative freedom, but the smaller budget can pose some problems as well.
Owen Peeery
August 11th, 2010 at 2:15 am

It just doesn’t seem logical but it is! Don’t look at my site, I offer a million services, but when I decided to specialize in screencasting I have had so much work that I haven’t even been able to update my site, I may have to outsource that.

It is true that you have to have a certain experience to know what it is you are good at and like. I had been doing screencasts off and on for a client for 3 years and as the other variety of jobs came in doing all the other things, I just wasn’t as interested, little by little I accepted fewer of those jobs, took on more work for the screencasting client, then I had a body of work thousands of hours of experience, AND excellent references for telecommuting, so I started looking for other screencasting work, and it came to me.

This economy has meant that I didn’t have much of a choice but to make it work, but it did, I have one word for you, it’s not plastics, specialize!
Adrian Bornea
August 15th, 2010 at 12:11 pm

Freelancing is not easy. It’s hard to get work in the beginning. Narrowing your services is a good thing, but not in the beginning.
proxy list
December 15th, 2011 at 7:18 am

Blog moved out in chrome
frontman
February 3rd, 2012 at 2:13 pm

Fantastic blog! Great!
marshall vintage modern
February 9th, 2012 at 4:44 am

Fantastic blog! Great!

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