AL 001: Is Niching Down Overrated in 2026? (Welcome to AskLiz!)

AL 001: Is Niching Down Overrated in 2026? (Welcome to AskLiz!)

Liz Wilcox: What is up? My name is Liz Wilcox, and you are listening to AskLiz, the bite sized weekly-ish podcast episodes to answer your questions on online business, entrepreneurship, basically anything business, lifestyle design, and personal development.

And this might sound familiar to you. Pat, so, The Pat Flynn, right? He used to have a podcast called AskPat and they retired it after what, a thousand something episodes? Well, we are bringing it back for you and to you. And just like Pat, you know what? Guess what? I’m here for you. Each episode I’ll feature a question from you, whether you’re coming from our main SPI Podcast or SPI Community, my email marketing community, or someone who has recently discovered the SPI universe.

And to honor our founder today, and always, and the original AskPat show, just like he did before, anyone featured on this show is definitely getting a t-shirt because who doesn’t like free swag? So, this episode and the newish format is brought to you by you. Pat gets so many questions that he literally had to call in for backup.

And honestly, it is an absolute honor to be here. And a special shout out to Pat for choosing me, Liz Wilcox, of all the other digital marketers out there and all the other thousands of people he’s met over the years 18 years or so. Again, it’s just an absolute honor. I’m so happy to help out our fellow entrepreneurs trying to turn their ideas into income.

So let’s get into it. First, quick background on me, Liz Wilcox. You can check me out on episode 731 of the Smart Passive Income podcast where I’m talking about email marketing. That’s sort of my jam, my jazz. Nobody geeks out over electronic mail like Liz Wilcox, so you’re going to want to check that out.

And also you can learn more about my business history and how I turned a 9 offer into multiple six figures a year in episode 921.

I also own and have owned many businesses online. You name it, I’ve tried it. I’ve been a travel blogger, I’ve done ecommerce, taught email marketing, I’ve done copywriting, service providing, consulting, and I even co own a software company called List Gadget, where we help you, just with simple HTML code, gamify your emails.

But anyway, now let’s get into the question. I’m just going to read it this time because no one has been brave enough to send in a recording yet, so the link to be the first one to do that will be in the show notes, by the way.

So Carly asks, “Alright, Liz, here’s a question I’ve been noodling on. As the internet becomes more saturated, would you agree that the riches are still in the niches or is there room for you to be a generalist in your field or expertise?

Example. A copywriter versus a copywriter for naturopaths or a naturopath versus a naturopath for women with PCOS. My clients and I are both seeing easier growth with narrow niches, but I still hear the advice from some teachers that you don’t need to niche, you just need to have a really compelling offer that everyone loves.

As someone who has that, what are your thoughts?”

I love this question. I’m so glad it’s the first one that I’m answering. So Carly says, as someone who has that, what are your thoughts? So she’s talking about my email marketing membership is that $9 offer that Pat and I talk about in episode 921. A lot of people do think it’s a general offer, right?

It literally has the most general name, right? Email marketing membership, right? That’s pretty darn general. But I would argue that it’s actually kind of narrow, right? It’s a narrow niche because inside the membership, it’s just newsletter templates. Of course, if you come to the Q& As and things like that, I can talk about sales emails, I can talk about, you know, evergreen strategies, things like that, but the content, the thing that I sell is very narrow, newsletter templates, right?

Now, the audience is wide, I’ve got people like Carly, who is very B2C, business to consumer, she is a Ayurveda teacher. Shout out The Habit is the name of her business. And you know, I’ve got other people, I’ve got astrologers, I’ve got people like myself and Pat who want to help other entrepreneurs. I’ve got actually naturopaths in there.

I’ve got copywriters in there. I even have a nun. In my membership who sells children’s books and her profits go to her monastery to help with their local efforts, right? So you could say that it is quite wide and I always look at offers as the offer or your niche or whatever is either really shallow and wide or narrow and deep, right?

And so my offer, I would say, probably to Carly’s point, is very shallow newsletters and super wide, a lot of different kinds of people. But what I talk about is very narrow and deep. I only talk about email marketing. So that one offer, my email marketing membership, is very shallow and wide. But the content externally outside of the offer is very narrow and deep.

I go incredibly deep on email marketing and email marketing only. Other than AskPat, you know, this will be a new venture for me and for you, the listener, and for Pat, having somebody come in to win, win, win for all of us. When it comes to LizWilcox.com and what I’ve been doing the last six years, very narrow, email marketing only, I don’t talk about YouTube over there, I don’t talk about Instagram, I don’t talk about content creation, I don’t talk about social media, I only talk about email marketing, but within email, I talk a lot about all the things, deliverability, newsletters, sales emails, welcome sequences, engagement, gamifying your list, nurturing your list, growing your list, right?

All the things, all the things. So it’s very narrow and deep in that way. So to Carly’s original question, you know, Are the riches in the niches? I say yes, for sure. You’ve got to narrow down. You don’t, you know, clarity beats cleverness every time, right? You’ve got to narrow down. You want to be an expert in your field.

I always look at it like, and this is what I’m doing right now, coming in as the director of community for SPI and, you know, doing this Ask Liz thing, right, is for the last six years since 2019, so really almost seven years at the time of this recording, I’ve been a riches are in the niches, person. I’ve been extremely narrowed down, right, into email marketing.

And after nearly seven years, I finally feel like I’ve got a good grasp on that. I’ve got a good audience, a strong, loyal following of superfans as Pat would say, right? Shout out superfans and now I can become a more generalist. Now I’ve got, you know, someone like Pat saying, hey Liz, you’ve been in the game a long time and you’ve seen incredible success over the last 10 years doing A, B, C, and D.

How did you do that? What You know, can you open up, can you share with my audience, right? And so now I’m becoming more of a generalist where, yeah, okay, let’s talk about email, but let’s also talk about what Carly’s saying. Let’s talk about just business in general. Let’s talk about YouTube, right? I have a YouTube channel.

I’ve done that. Let’s talk about podcasting. I have a podcast with over 300 episodes, right? Let’s talk about more general things. So I think Where it’s really at right now and where it’s always been, it doesn’t matter if the internet is saturated like Carly said, is narrow down, become an expert in that one thing, and then if and when you build that audience of superfans and they start asking you more and more questions, then you can broaden, right?

So narrow down, and then you can broaden later. All right, Carly. All right, listener. I am so excited to be here for Ask Liz. Please, please, please, link is in the show notes for you to submit your question because number one, you want your question answered. Number two, you want some free swag in the form of a t shirt, right?

Anyway, I’m so glad to be here. Shout out to Pat for letting me come in and do this and to serve his audience and serve our audience in this way. I cannot wait to, to just see and hear all your beautiful voices and answer all your amazing questions. See you on the next episode.