Reader-First Niche Selection
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- —
Nicholas Cole's method for choosing what to write about (or make videos about) when the goal is an external outcome. The default approach — decide what you want to say, then go hunt for someone to buy it — is inverted. You start at the reader: what do they need, what question do they have, and can you answer it? The niche is defined by the audience, not by your interests. The mechanism behind why this works is association through repetition: people connect a topic to a creator only because that creator produced book after book and video after video on the same subject. The framework also separates the money-maker from everything else, so you can keep every other interest without being confused about which one is supposed to pay.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
How to run it
- 1
Place yourself on the hobby-to-business spectrum
Score honestly from 0 to 10 how much this is a business versus a hobby. Both are legitimate — the freedom of the internet is that you can write whatever you want — but the score determines every decision that follows.
Pro tip Notice the gap: people in a paid course all say 10; people in a free workshop average 2-4.
- 2
Invert the starting question
Stop asking 'what do I want to write about, and who will buy it?' Start asking 'what does this person need, what answer are they looking for, and can I provide it?'
- 3
Define the niche by the reader, not by you
Your niche is about your reader, viewer or listener. A list of a hundred personal interests is not a niche — it is a shop trying to sell everything, competing with Amazon.
Pro tip Ask where there is a market you can actually serve, not where your curiosity happens to sit.
- 4
Repeat the same topic until the association forms
Audiences associate a topic with a person because that person educates them to. Publish book after book, video after video on the one subject until the association is automatic.
Watch out Every piece on a different topic resets the association you are trying to build.
- 5
Keep the other interests — without the expectations
You are not one-dimensional and you can do more than one thing. Publish the passion projects. Just do not expect them to deliver the same external outcome as the money-maker.
Pro tip Most people never need to know about your side work — that is fine and it is not a failure.
- 6
Name which one pays
Be unconfused about which thing you do because you want to, and which thing is your money maker. That clarity tells you exactly what to optimise to put food on the table, and buys freedom everywhere else.
Watch out If you want an external result, make decisions that unlock it — do not choose for yourself then complain about the market's response.
In the wild
In Cole's course, he asks the chat what Ryan Holiday's niche is. The whole room types the same single word: stoicism. He then asks the harder question — how do you know that? The answer is not that Holiday is inherently a stoicism person; it is that he wrote book after book after book and made video after video that said stoicism. The association was manufactured through repetition. Nobody would make that connection if every piece he produced covered a different topic.
→ The niche is revealed as an earned association built by repetition, not a personality trait you discover.
Cole recalls Aziz Ansari asking a major musician — one who releases work roughly once a decade and appears untouched by the industry's pressures — how he manages to do only what he wants, when he wants. The musician's answer was blunt: it's easy, I just make a lot less money. The trade is explicit rather than hidden, which is exactly the clarity the framework asks for.
→ Total creative freedom is available at a known, accepted price — reduced income.
Common mistakes
Writing for yourself, then blaming the market
People write only what they want, then ask why they are not going viral, where the money is, and why they have no followers. The freedom is real, but the external outcome was never being optimised for.
Making the niche about your interests
Productivity plus entrepreneurship plus personal development plus ninety-seven other passions is what five million other creators already do. The niche has to be about the reader.
Claiming 10/10 business intent, acting 3/10
Saying you are all-in on this as a business while still insisting on covering ten unrelated passions is the contradiction that stalls most creators.
From the transcript
“your Niche is not about you”
“the reason we associate stoicism with Ryan holiday is because he writes book after book after book”
“there is a spectrum between I'm doing this as a hobby and I'm doing this as a business”
From the episode
5 Skills to Level Up Your Life - Season 6 Roundup
Season 6 Roundup