Hi Lori,

One thing that confused me for some time was the difference between niche and target market. I have worked in the legal industry for 25 years, so if I were to choose a market to target that I'm familiar with, it would be sole practitioners. A good niche for me would be refining that target to bankruptcy attorneys because in this economy, that is a booming field in the legal industry. Within that very defined target market (bankruptcy sole practitioners) would be providing intake processing forms for new clients of theirs, sending out the necessary forms to the clients and processing them with the courts, and probably a couple of types of competitive analyses and website analyses weekly and monthly reports.

If you have worked in a certain field most of your adult life, that would be a good place to start with marketing your business. There are a few good reasons to serve a narrow market: branding, reputation and ease of operation.

As for finding your niche, if you are good at proofreading, maintaining websites for typos and adding content is something you could do on a monthly or quarterly basis for clients. Just an idea.

Congrats on taking classes. I'm learning a lot online as well and it's helping a lot.

To answer two of your specific questions: proofreading becomes editing when you assist writers/authors to write assertively, rather than passively, among other things. And ebooks will never be antiquated. A lot of companies need help with press releases, white papers, articles, newsletters and other "ghost writing" services.

Best of luck in pursuing your passion and following your dreams!

Sue