4 ms·

The Perils of Niching Down

24 points by nickwritesit 3y ago

jrflowers 3y ago
> …and [I] wrote the best guide on the internet for discovering a niche you love. I love superlative wording like this. It’s very “Alexander wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer” as goofy marketing fluff.
1attice 3y ago
This was a solid piece. It reminded me a lot of how fragile the 'creative loop' can actually be. My mother, who was in the nineties an ink-and-pencil graphic designer and cartoonist, was also a back-to-the-lander with a strong anti-technology streak. When she wasn't doodling, she was working on an enormous treadle loom in our basement. Here heroes were Quakers, Amish, and Hudderite artisans, and we lived deep in the countryside. When her employer mandated Adobe Illustrator, she quit. Being forced to use a machine that she hated on principle destroyed the pleasure that she had in her existing mastery of her light table, her compass, her letraset, etc. I was already a coder back then, and so of course, I had great teenage disdain for her ludditism. Yet as I get older, I can see her point, which I take to be friendly to the author of this piece. Namely, that what you do in pursuit of a creative career can obviate the point of pursuing a creative career, which, presumably, is to trade income and stability off against the satisfaction of self-expression. For AI reasons, I've been thinking about her predicament a lot again lately. GH Copilot, which I admire as a breakthrough achievement, nevertheless makes me feel uneasy, as though the thoughts are having themselves. Copilot makes me faster, but it also breaks the immersion, knocking me out of the coding flow-state that I experience as fundamental not only to my pre-copilot productivity, but my enjoyment of my job. Sure, choosing an appropriate variable name or building a simple GraphQL resolver might be rote work, but it was enjoyable rote work, like knitting. The market is beginning to put me in tension with my own career, as my mother experienced, and as the author of this piece also seems to experience. It wouldn't take much for some future iteration of Copilot to suck the marrow from my own coding practice, leaving me perpetually reviewing code rather than writing it. And where would that leave me? Certainly not in flow. And if I'm not in flow, why not just go into management, and have done? For different reasons, the author of this essay is experiencing a similar marrow-suck. It's not AI this time (or rather, for now,) but rather the banality of chasing the market. It sounds like there is something about the experience of data-informed creatorship that is draining, and drains you in proportion to the degree you adopt it. Three different causes, same effect: the 'fecund homeostasis' of the creative loop is broken by changing market conditions, for reasons idiosyncratic to each of the three situations. Financial success is thrown into tension with self-satisfaction. The market giveth, the market taketh away.
bill_walkter 3y ago
This seem less the perils of niching down but more not diversifying one’s identity.
chrisdbanks 3y ago
I think this is missing half the story. Niching down is a great way to differentiate in a crowded market and thus get started in the face of competition. The second part is to then expand our of that niche into adjacent areas, using the momentum you've gained through your differentiation. That's where the excitement and possibilities come. He's missed the second part of the journey.
asplake 3y ago
> Turns out, there's a stark difference between creating true fans around one narrow, rigid aspect of yourself, and creating true fans of a dynamic, evolving human. Niche strategy is great at the former, but the latter requires something else entirely. You are not your product. You are not your niche. You are what created those, and you can build on that. I'm finishing my fourth book and planning a fifth. Each is quite different and they are not in any sense a series, but each one beyond the first had the preceding as a springboard. I didn't plan it that way, but they’ve taken me on a fascinating journey. Adjacency is a wonderful thing.
nbernard 3y ago
There is more or less the same issue in academia. Once (hyper)-specialized on some micro-topic, it becomes quite hard (due to workload and pressure to publish) to switch to something else.
CM30 3y ago
This is a really interesting article, and one that quite a few creators I know can agree with. It's especially common to end up in this situation on sites like YouTube, since it's far easier to build a successful channel based on a specific topic than you as a creator/internet personality. Unfortunately, that platform does everything in its power to make broadening your subject matter a complete nightmare, and will force you to continually make content you don't care for if you want to keep succeeding there. If you're known as the 'Star Trek guy' or 'Marvel guy' or 'Legend of Zelda guy', then anything outside of that context is as good as dead on a channel devoted to it. YouTube sees your existing fanbase doesn't care as much for it, they think the video sucks, and basically kills it unless you can market it through third party means. So you either remain trapped, outwardly doing well while growing to loathe your subject matter of choice, or you have to quit and start anew, losing about 90% of your audience in the process. But I guess it works the same in other places too.

24 points by nickwritesit 3y ago

> …and [I] wrote the best guide on the internet for discovering a niche you love. I love superlative wording like this. It’s very “Alexander wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer” as goofy marketing fluff.

1attice 3y ago

This was a solid piece. It reminded me a lot of how fragile the 'creative loop' can actually be. My mother, who was in the nineties an ink-and-pencil graphic designer and cartoonist, was also a back-to-the-lander with a strong anti-technology streak. When she wasn't doodling, she was working on an enormous treadle loom in our basement. Here heroes were Quakers, Amish, and Hudderite artisans, and we lived deep in the countryside. When her employer mandated Adobe Illustrator, she quit. Being forced to use a machine that she hated on principle destroyed the pleasure that she had in her existing mastery of her light table, her compass, her letraset, etc. I was already a coder back then, and so of course, I had great teenage disdain for her ludditism. Yet as I get older, I can see her point, which I take to be friendly to the author of this piece. Namely, that what you do in pursuit of a creative career can obviate the point of pursuing a creative career, which, presumably, is to trade income and stability off against the satisfaction of self-expression. For AI reasons, I've been thinking about her predicament a lot again lately. GH Copilot, which I admire as a breakthrough achievement, nevertheless makes me feel uneasy, as though the thoughts are having themselves. Copilot makes me faster, but it also breaks the immersion, knocking me out of the coding flow-state that I experience as fundamental not only to my pre-copilot productivity, but my enjoyment of my job. Sure, choosing an appropriate variable name or building a simple GraphQL resolver might be rote work, but it was enjoyable rote work, like knitting. The market is beginning to put me in tension with my own career, as my mother experienced, and as the author of this piece also seems to experience. It wouldn't take much for some future iteration of Copilot to suck the marrow from my own coding practice, leaving me perpetually reviewing code rather than writing it. And where would that leave me? Certainly not in flow. And if I'm not in flow, why not just go into management, and have done? For different reasons, the author of this essay is experiencing a similar marrow-suck. It's not AI this time (or rather, for now,) but rather the banality of chasing the market. It sounds like there is something about the experience of data-informed creatorship that is draining, and drains you in proportion to the degree you adopt it. Three different causes, same effect: the 'fecund homeostasis' of the creative loop is broken by changing market conditions, for reasons idiosyncratic to each of the three situations. Financial success is thrown into tension with self-satisfaction. The market giveth, the market taketh away.

bill_walkter 3y ago

This seem less the perils of niching down but more not diversifying one’s identity.

chrisdbanks 3y ago

I think this is missing half the story. Niching down is a great way to differentiate in a crowded market and thus get started in the face of competition. The second part is to then expand our of that niche into adjacent areas, using the momentum you've gained through your differentiation. That's where the excitement and possibilities come. He's missed the second part of the journey.

asplake 3y ago

> Turns out, there's a stark difference between creating true fans around one narrow, rigid aspect of yourself, and creating true fans of a dynamic, evolving human. Niche strategy is great at the former, but the latter requires something else entirely. You are not your product. You are not your niche. You are what created those, and you can build on that. I'm finishing my fourth book and planning a fifth. Each is quite different and they are not in any sense a series, but each one beyond the first had the preceding as a springboard. I didn't plan it that way, but they’ve taken me on a fascinating journey. Adjacency is a wonderful thing.

nbernard 3y ago

There is more or less the same issue in academia. Once (hyper)-specialized on some micro-topic, it becomes quite hard (due to workload and pressure to publish) to switch to something else.

CM30 3y ago

This is a really interesting article, and one that quite a few creators I know can agree with. It's especially common to end up in this situation on sites like YouTube, since it's far easier to build a successful channel based on a specific topic than you as a creator/internet personality. Unfortunately, that platform does everything in its power to make broadening your subject matter a complete nightmare, and will force you to continually make content you don't care for if you want to keep succeeding there. If you're known as the 'Star Trek guy' or 'Marvel guy' or 'Legend of Zelda guy', then anything outside of that context is as good as dead on a channel devoted to it. YouTube sees your existing fanbase doesn't care as much for it, they think the video sucks, and basically kills it unless you can market it through third party means. So you either remain trapped, outwardly doing well while growing to loathe your subject matter of choice, or you have to quit and start anew, losing about 90% of your audience in the process. But I guess it works the same in other places too.