How do you find your photography niche? I’m sure you’ve heard how important it is to narrow down your niche if you want to make your photography business successful. Choosing our niche means to pick the specific kind of photography that you specialize in and become known for. 

You might be wondering, “Do I have to choose just one?” and if so, “How do I choose?” It can be hard to find the perfect niche and decide whether to go with a profitable niche or the one you love the most.

If you’re having a similar dilemma, I’ve got your back! In this video, I share 3 Simple Tips you can do today to bring you closer to discovering your specialty:

 

Do I Have to Have a Niche?

You may be asking, why is niching even that important, is it REALLY necessary?

Niching can feel like a big commitment. But if you find yourself having a hard time getting inquires, your lack of a niche could be a big part of the problem. Narrowing down your niche can help you to grow fast, raise rates, and be more desirable to your dream clients.

I started my photography business doing many kinds of photography from nature, portraits, babies, families, to couples – I’ve done it all. And I don’t think trying out different specialties is a bad thing in the beginning. It allows you to try different things and find the areas that you’re most drawn to. However, once I started to specialize, I saw that people began to take me and my business seriously. It was then that I was able to quickly scale my business.

The truth is specialists are viewed as more valuable – they’re able to charge a premium for their services. Think about it: If you had a serious medical problem, would you want just any old town doctor? No – when something is important, we turn to specialists we know we can trust. The same is true for our favorite kinds of photography clients. The ones that value what we do and are willing to pay a premium for it. And that’s what our dream clients are going to be searching for – their dream photographer. Someone that specializes in the precise images that they need which will result in trust and being more willing to pay more for your work.

 

But how do you find your photography niche? 

Many people complicate this decision, but I actually have 3 steps to simplify this process. These steps can help you to find more clarity in narrowing down your perfect photography niche:

 

Step 1: Determine What You Love to Shoot

If you had 100% confidence, what would you most love to photograph? Do you have a couple of favorite types of shoots that when you book them (or think about booking them) you get most excited for? Are there certain kinds of shoots you dread booking? These are signs of work you shouldn’t be doing because it will burn you out and doesn’t serve you or your clients. 

Never get into a niche “just for the money” – this is a quick road to burn out!!

Now if you’re multi-passionate and you love multiple kinds of photography, that’s okay. For this part, simply make a list of your favorite things you LOVE shooting or would love to shoot.

 

Step 2: Find Who You Love Photographing

Think about who your dream clients are, or who are the people you most love working with?

If you’re established, think about your favorite past clients and see if you can find a common theme. Perhaps you’re a new photographer, this can be clients that share the same stage of life as you. Maybe you’re recently graduated, maybe you love capturing high school seniors, if you’re newly married, maybe you relate to newly engaged couples, and if you’re a mom, maybe you’d love to do maternity or newborn photography.

Write down the characteristics of who you would most love to work with to help you find your photography niche.

 

Step 3: Think of What Lifestyle you desire

This may not seem related to finding your photo niche, but it’s important to your long term success and happiness. You can reverse engineer your goals to determine what you want: How many shoots do you want to do per year? Is traveling something you’d like to do? Would you want to work weekends? Do you want to be on call or well booked in advance? All of these questions can factor into the niche you choose.

For example, with my niche of weddings, I work many weekends during the spring and fall months of the year. I absolutely love weddings, so for me, it’s worth giving up my weekends for the part of the year. But something like this may be non-negotiable for others.

 

I’m a firm believer that our business should be created around our life, not the other way around.  So take into account the lifestyle you want to live when determining your niche.

 

And Finally…

These questions above should get you clarity on the niche that would best align with what you love, the people you love, and your lifestyle. But if you want to do photography as a business, not just a hobby, there is one final thing I’ll ask you to consider:

 Is there a market & demand for my niche?

When it comes to finding a photography niche, many give advice to choose solely based on what you love. I agree that we should always lead with our hearts first. But if you base our niche solely on this, you risk getting stuck in the “Struggling Artist” category.

If you want to thrive making a living from photography, you can’t ignore the money side of things. If you want to build a profitable and SUSTAINABLE photography business, you need to focus on both passion and profitability. The ideal niche will be one that aligns your passion with profit so that you can create a living doing what you love.

One tip to see if there’s a demand with your niche, is to see if there is competition for it. We often think of competition as a bad thing, but it actually shows that there is a demand for what we want to offer.

 

I hope these steps helped you to find your photography niche and help you to start to build a name for yourself as a photographer and to make your business a profitable one. If you want more strategies and tips on growing a thriving photography business, check out the other videos on my YouTube Channel here >> YouTube channel

 

Happy Niching!

xo

Chelsea