How to Find the Perfect Niche for Your Indie Films
This article is long. Quite long. In fact, when it comes to choosing a profitable niche audience for your micro-budget films, you’ve landed on the most comprehensive guide on the internet.
Make no mistake, if you want to succeed as an indie film entrepreneur, targeting profitable niches is the single most important skill for you to learn and master.
Getting your niche right is the 20% of efforts that drive 80% of results.
In other words, you could be a mediocre filmmaker and an amateur marketer, but if you follow through on what’s coming in this article, you’ll still be set up for financial success in our absurdly competitive media landscape.
For that reason, what’s coming is easily the most impactful piece of content on this website. Hell, it might be one of the most impactful in the entire indie filmmaking space.
That’s obviously a bold statement, and you might think I’m full of shit. But it’s not hyperbole.
If you take what I’m about to share and apply it, you’ll be able to build a sustainably profitable business around your indie films, no matter where in the world you live.
You’ll be that rare indie filmmaker who earns a comfortable, consistent living from their work—while everyone else is still spinning their wheels, waiting for some festival, distributor, or gatekeeper to pluck them from obscurity.
So if you’re committed to the path of indie film entrepreneurship, you’re in the right place. Finding the perfect niche is the foundation on which your business will be built, and we’re about to dig extraordinarily deep into that very topic.
Buckle up, amigo. 😎
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Why micro-budget filmmakers must niche down
In part one in this series, we went deep on why niching down is essential. But here’s a quick recap.
As indie filmmakers, we’re on the frontlines in a brutal war for consumer attention.
Our competition is not only the likes of Disney and Netflix, but also YouTube, Facebook, and every other billion-dollar company whose survival depends on attention.
Their strategy can be summed up pretty easily—create insane amounts of flashy, high-end content, make it all as broadly appealing as possible, and then spend insane amounts of money to reach the mass market. That’s the mega-corporation playbook for winning attention.
Obviously, that’s a game of resources, and as indie filmmakers, we can’t compete. We just don’t have the money or infrastructure to win mass market attention with similarly generic media.
However, when we focus on a niche audience, and create media specifically for this group of people, the underlying economics and consumer behavior change.
In fact, when you make this shift, competition from mega-corporations practically disappears.
For this specific group, they’re going to choose your film over the new Marvel movie every single time. Because your film is perfectly tailored to their interests and worldview.
Basically, choosing and serving a niche allows us to be the biggest, baddest fish in our own little lake, instead of being a tiny, inconsequential microbe in the vast ocean of commodity media.
That, in a nutshell, is why micro-budget filmmakers must target niche audiences. It’s the only viable way for us to survive in a media ecosystem dominated by the likes of Netflix and Disney.
Wait, so what's a "niche" anyway?
A niche, very simply, is a group of people who are bound together by one or more shared characteristics.
So in the niche of faith-based films, the shared characteristic is a unifying religious belief.
For my friend Mike Dion, the shared characteristic in his audience is a deep interest in the sport of bikepacking.
For films with LGBT characters and themes, the shared element is membership in (or support of) the LGBT community.
At its core, this entire topic of “choosing a niche” is all about deciding which shared characteristics to focus on.
So that’s the goal of this lesson.
We’re going to dive deep into how the niche media ecosystem works, the underlying psychology that drives it, and how to use this new model to your advantage.
Plus, we’re going to debunk the most common, yet destructive piece of advice that indie filmmakers get about niching down. (Hint: genre isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.)
By the end, you’ll know which shared characteristics create viable niches for micro-budget films, and which don’t.
And more than that, you’ll understand how to choose a niche that’s a perfect fit for your own films and interests.
The 4 categories of consumer media
Before we get into how to niche down, a quick but important detour.
We need to zoom out and look at the consumer media landscape as a whole. Once you see the big picture, you’ll also see that many indie filmmakers are putting their energy in the wrong place.
So here’s a new “meta model” of the media ecosystem for you to chew on.
When it comes to consumer media, there are four general categories that everything fits into.
Factual: Media that informs us about what’s true. (News and journalism, non-fiction storytelling, history, etc)
Entertainment: Media with a purpose to entertain, comfort, distract. (Movies, TV, music, sports, video games, etc)
Educational: Media that helps an audience solve a pain, reach a goal, or better their lives in some way. (Tutorials, inspirational media, etc).
Identity-Driven: Media with a purpose of reinforcing personal and group identities, and facilitating a sense of belonging.
Now, a quick note about this model.
The categories themselves aren’t rigid and static. There’s a TON of crossover between them.
For instance, most sports, though broadly classified as entertainment, have a huge identity-driven component. For millions of people, their team affiliations are a core part of who they are. (For me, it’s the Colorado Avalanche. Go Avs!)
“This model is not about creating precise categories for any individual piece of media. Instead, it’s about giving you a valuable new lens to view how your work fits into the broader media landscape.”
Then you’ve got the History Channel, which at one point leaned more towards actual… history (ie. factual media). But these days, it’s a reality show factory that’s heavily in the entertainment category. But hey, sometimes there’s still a little history sprinkled in for good measure.
This site falls pretty squarely into the educational category, but I have an identity-driven component as well. I explicitly target “entrepreneurial indie filmmakers” and cultivate a shared identity for these wonderful folks in the Freedom Fighters community.
And finally, for a more concerning example, most news these days tries to present itself as factual and objective. But in reality, the majority of it is identity-driven entertainment. Once you learn about “identity feedback loops” later in this article, you’ll understand just how dangerous this trend is.
Sidenote from Rob: I’ve spent the past two months disconnected from news, and holy shit, what a difference in quality of life. It’d be worth it just for the reduction in anxiety, but it’s also led to deeper focus and substantial gains in productivity (I mean, this article alone is like 9,000 words).
I’m increasingly convinced that most modern news is cancer for the soul, and I can’t recommend highly enough that you cut it out or greatly reduce how much you consume. At least give it a try and see how you feel. It might just give you a nice edge in your creative entrepreneurial endeavors, like it has for me.
Point is, this model isn’t about creating precise categories for any individual piece of media. Instead, it’s about giving you a valuable new lens to view how your work fits into the broader media landscape.
How this model applies to indie filmmakers (and why you’ve been lied to about the value of genre)
For the time being, let’s forget about factual and educational media.
The big shift—the “a-ha!” moment—comes when we focus on the entertainment and identity-driven categories.
“Even though we think we’re targeting a specific niche when we make genre films, we’re just playing in a slightly smaller sandbox that’s still completely dominated by Hollywood.”
As filmmakers, we’ve all been taught to see our films purely through the lens of entertainment. After all, most of us grew up immersed in Hollywood films, and see our work as a continuation of that culture.
And for creators of movie-based entertainment, “niching down” has almost always meant leaning into a specific genre.
That’s why we’re told that sci-fi movies are niche. That westerns are niche. That romantic comedies are niche.
Now, for the major studios, these broad genres absolutely are niche compared to their usual target audience of… everyone.
But for indie filmmakers, these genre categories are so big, so generic, and so saturated with high-budget media, that we don’t stand much chance of competing.
For instance, let’s imagine you make an indie romantic comedy for $50k, and it’s going head to head with a studio-backed romcom with a $50 million budget, starring Jennifer Lawrence.
(For this example to work, we have to pretend it’s 2010 or earlier, because frankly studios don’t make many romcoms anymore. If you’re curious as to why that shift happened, check out Ben Fritz’s eye-opening book, The Big Picture.)
Anyhow, back to our hypothetical example.
Technically, both of these films are going after the same “niche.”
And you might feel supremely confident about your chances of making money. After all, you targeted a specific niche, right?
Wrong.
In this case, your little indie doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell when it comes to winning the war for consumer attention. The Jennifer Lawrence studio movie is going to crush your soul.
For starters, audiences who dig romantic comedies would likely never even hear about your project, given you don’t have millions to spend on marketing.
And even if they did, they’d have zero reason to choose your film over the studio offering. Given two romantic comedies with similar stories, but drastically different budgets, which do you think the vast majority of folks will choose?
This is the problem with viewing our work purely as entertainment, and seeing genre as a useful for niching down.
Even though we think we’re targeting a specific niche when we make genre films, we’re just playing in a slightly smaller sandbox that’s still completely dominated by Hollywood.
When we set out to produce genre entertainment, we haven’t niched down at all. We’re still targeting mass market audiences, just in a slightly narrower form.
Basically, we’re still playing Hollywood’s game. And that game is rigged against indie filmmakers from the start.
Without Hollywood’s production and marketing resources, there’s just no way for us to compete and win the attention of the same consumers they’re targeting.
Point is, as indie filmmakers, we’ve been seriously misled about the value of genre.
Yes, it’s a wonderful creative tool. But when it comes to leveraging genre to reach and monetize niche audiences, it’s a losing proposition. Plain and simple.
Here’s the BIG shift that changes everything in this equation.
As micro-budget filmmakers, we need to shift from producing genre entertainment to identity-driven stories.
This doesn’t mean our work shouldn’t be entertaining. Of course it should.
What it means is that the underlying purpose of our work changes.
Instead of existing solely to occupy 90 minutes of someone’s time, only to be forgotten soon after, our films now exist to connect with audiences on the basis of identity.
And this is an extremely powerful thing, as you’re about to find out.
But before we get into the mechanics of identity, and how niches are created, I want you to consider this quote from Michael Gerber, from his seminal book, The E-Myth Revisited.
“The truth is, nobody’s interested in the commodity. People buy feelings. And as the world becomes more and more complex, and the commodities more varied, the feelings we want become more urgent, less rational, and more unconscious. How your business anticipates those feelings and satisfies them is your product.”
-Michael Gerber in E-Myth Revisited
I love this quote so freakin’ hard.
And as you move through the rest of this article, and see the immense emotional power of identity-driven media, it will make more and more sense.
But for now, here’s how I see this idea of commodification vs emotion playing out for filmmakers.
“If you seek to create mere entertainment, your film will be just another commodity in a world that’s overflowing with commodity movies. And you’ll stand no chance of winning consumer attention away from the likes of Disney.”
In a world with abundant commodity media, much of it free, targeting and creating for identity groups is what allows us to operate on that deeper level, and stand apart in the market.
If you seek to create mere entertainment, your film will be just another commodity in a world that’s overflowing with commodity movies. And you’ll stand no chance of winning consumer attention away from the likes of Disney.
But the identity model, as you’re about to learn, allows you to satisfy those deep, primal desires that Gerber is talking about in the quote.
When identity is the driver of your work, you’re automatically creating films that matters so much more than a generic movie ever could.
They matter more to you, because they’re aligned with your deepest interests and beliefs.
And they matter more to your audience for the same reason. They’re more relevant, and your stories will resonate with every fiber of their being.
As the rest of the media world invests more and more into creating commodity media to reach bigger, more generic audiences, there’s MASSIVE opportunity for anyone willing to niche down like this.
So now let’s dig deeper into this concept of identity, because when you understand what’s going on beneath the surface, a vast new world of possibility will open up for you.
Identity, the psychological key that unlocks profitable niche audiences
Let’s start with a definition. This one comes from the American Psychological Association.
Identity: An individual’s sense of self defined by (a) a set of physical, psychological, and interpersonal characteristics that is not wholly shared with any other person, and (b) a range of affiliations (e.g. ethnicity) and social roles. Identity involves a sense of continuity, or the feeling that one is the same person today that one was yesterday or last year (despite physical or other changes).
Basically, identity is about the individual characteristics we use to define ourselves. And once we’ve defined ourselves, that definition tends to stick around.
And it’s this last piece—the sense of continuity—that I want to go deeper on. Because there’s an underlying psychology mechanism here that is hugely relevant to anyone looking to find a niche for their films.
I’d like to introduce you to a concept I call “identity feedback loops.”
In biological/mechanical systems, a feedback loop occurs when the output strengthens the input.
Think of an electric guitar that gets too close to its amp.
The amp’s sound will resonate the strings, feed back through the guitar’s pickups, which in turns goes straight back to the amp. And so on.
Eventually it creates an uncontrollable sound that’s either total cacophony or super rad, depending on your musical dispositions. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Anyhoo…
With identity, there are two separate, but equally powerful forces that cause a feedback loop like this.
We consume media, products, and experiences that are in line with our identity. In other words, our identity drives many of our consumption and spending decisions.
We seek to surround ourselves with people who share that piece of our identity. Belonging is a core psychological need, and being part of a shared identity group is one of only a handful of ways to fulfill that need.
When you take both of these things together, it creates a powerful feedback loop.
When we consume things in line with our identity, that piece of our identity is reinforced. It becomes stronger.
The same thing happens when we surround ourselves (either physically or digitally) with other people who share our identity.
And the stronger our identity becomes, the more we feel the need to consume and associate in line with it.
Through these patterns of consumption and association, our identities tend to cement themselves into permanence over time.
Identity feedback loops, and how profitable niches are created
The implications of these feedback loops are staggering. They effect everything from our health, to our habits, to our politics, to our overall wellbeing.
“When you align your films (and ancillary products) with an identity group, you’re automatically creating what’s known in the startup world as “product/market fit.”
This is how you create media that’s hyper-relevant to a group of people, and that resonates so much that competition from generic Hollywood films and shows becomes irrelevant.”
But for now, let’s just focus on the business implications.
For starters, identity is one of the key levers that drives consumption and purchase decisions.
So when you align your films (and ancillary products) with an identity group, you’re automatically creating what’s known in the startup world as “product/market fit.”
This is how you create media that’s hyper-relevant to a group of people, and that resonates so much that competition from generic Hollywood films and shows becomes irrelevant.
Even if Hollywood outspends you by a factor of a million, if you have product/market fit, the audience will still choose to spend their time, attention, and money with you.
Not only that, but because of the self-reinforcing nature of identity feedback loops, there’s basically a never-ending demand for your films.
If you keep producing, your audience will keep consuming. This, of course, is one of the necessary foundations for a sustainable long-term business.
And since most identity-driven communities are fairly well connected (more about that in a moment), there’s much higher likelihood that if your films are good, they’ll spread via word of mouth, and continue to sell organically over time.
If you create a solid body of work within a niche, you could generate substantial residual income from those films and ancillary products for years to come—even if you’re not actively marketing, or even if you’ve left the niche entirely.
Pretty rad, huh? But it gets better.
Back in the day, before the internet, we were limited in who we could associate with.
Our interests might have been super weird, but if the people in our local communities didn’t share those interests, we couldn’t find that sense of belonging.
In many ways, this dynamic made culture rather boring and static. Mainstream culture was the culture, as many niche communities and cultures just didn’t have the connection or reach to gain any foothold.
But the internet has changed all of that.
These days, we’re all connected. And we all have the power to embrace the strangest, most “out there” aspects of our identities and still “find our people.”
There are no longer any physical barriers to associating with niche identity groups. With a few keystrokes and mouse clicks, you can find, join, and participate in communities, and consume media, that are deeply aligned with your interests.
When these two factors—our psychological need for connection and consumption, and the internet’s power to deliver those experiences—come together, we see the creation of hundreds of thousands of viable niches online. Hell, maybe even millions.
Anywhere identity groups congregate online to converse and consume media, that’s a potentially viable niche for us to insert ourselves into.
Basically, identity feedback loops when paired with the internet, create a perfect storm of circumstances that allow indie filmmakers to break free from the traditional film business and create for hungry niche audiences.
Rob’s personal example of identity feedback loops in action
Ok, so all of that lives pretty high up in the land of theory. Let’s look at a practical example from my own life.
I’m rather obsessed with jazz.
I don’t know why, exactly. But if I had to guess, it all goes back to my grandfather Carroll Hardy, who was a jazz DJ in Buffalo, NY back in the 70s. Listening to old recordings of his show, I just feel a sense that jazz is in my DNA.
Regardless of why, for the past 10 years, jazz has been a core part of who I am. A staple of my identity.
As you might guess, this drives so many of my purchase and association decisions.
I own, and have watched multiple times, all 19 hours of Ken Burns’ series on the history of jazz.
When Damian Chazelle’s film Whiplash hit theaters, I went and saw it three times. And of course, I own the blu-ray. (La La Land is fun as well, but a little vanilla for my hardcore jazz sensibilities.)
A few years back, there was an indie documentary about my favorite jazz musician, Bill Evans. You can bet your bottom dollar that I bought it without so much as a second thought.
There’s an amazing public jazz radio station in Denver called KUVO. Even though I don’t live in Denver anymore, I’m still a supporting member and listen daily.
Not to mention I follow hundreds of jazz musicians across social media, belong to dozens of facebook groups, newsletters, etc.
Hell, I’m also a guitarist. And I’ve spent ungodly amounts on jazz guitar lessons and beautiful archtop guitars.
Here’s the point. Because jazz is a core part of my identity, I have parted with an insane amount of money, time, and attention. And I feel great about it.
And I didn’t need to see dozens of ads to go see Whiplash or buy the Ken Burns series. This stuff was hyper relevant to me, so I actively sought it out.
This is the identity feedback loop working its magic.
But it’s not just jazz. I’m equally obsessed with marketing and entrepreneurship, guitar, personal development, fitness (and lately CrossFit), cooking, and of course, filmmaking!
Now imagine that you’re a filmmaker. If you wanted to make films around any of the above identity categories, I would automatically choose your work over standard Hollywood fare any day of the week.
Why? Because I want to consume things that are relevant to me. Stories that serve my underlying need to validate and reinforce my sense of self.
I’m willing to bet the same is true for you. And I can guarantee it’s true for the majority of people on this planet.
How to use identity to niche down
Ok, we’ve laid all of the necessary groundwork. Now let’s get into how to use personal and group identity to find niches for your films.
First things first, let’s look at a graphic I made about the elements of personal identity.
Click to enlarge :)
“In the old model, if you wanted to “niche down” as a filmmaker, you were limited to a small handful of genres. With the identity model, there are no such limits. The full range of psychological diversity in the human species is fair game.”
Pretty crazy just how many different ways we can define ourselves, huh?
What’s even crazier is this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are likely dozens more identity categories, and thousands more examples within each of these categories.
Point is, when it comes to identity-driven niches, you’re rarely at a loss for choice.
In the old model, if you wanted to “niche down” as a filmmaker, you were limited to a small handful of genres. With the identity model, there are no such limits. The full range of psychological diversity in the human species is fair game.
The art of “identity stacking,” or how to create infinite niche ideas
Once you start looking into the identity groups above, you’ll notice that many of them are incredibly broad, and likely have millions of people in them.
This presents a couple of problems.
Most obviously, the more people in a niche, the more competition there’s going to be for their attention.
Remember, the whole purpose of niching down is to break free from the brutal war for consumer attention, and win the attention of a smaller group of people through relevance.
But if the niche you choose is too big, you’re shooting yourself in the foot right out of the gate.
I can’t think of a better example than “faith based” films.
This is a HUGE niche, and it’s proven over the years to be far more profitable, more reliably, than any other type of film.
(That’s the power of tapping into under-served identity groups, especially those who feel disconnected from and alienated by a lot of what Hollywood puts out.)
But this niche is also so big that you, as a micro-budget filmmaker, don’t stand much chance of competing there, at least not directly. There are dozens of well-funded filmmakers and studios already dominating the space.
So the question becomes, how can you niche down even further?
That’s where a technique called “identity stacking” comes in.
This is exactly what it sounds like. Identity stacking is when you combine two or more identity groups, then focus on the crossover between them.
Here are a few examples.
Instead of focusing on the entire “faith based” niche, you could niche down to a specific subset of the faith, like Roman Catholics. Or you could be the purveyor of “faith-based horror films.”
Sidenote from Rob: Horror is probably the only genre that is an identity group unto itself. For horror fans, their love of horror is a core part of who they are. Can’t really say the same about dramas, comedies, thrillers, etc.
Or you could combine two categories—for example, social role + hobby. That’d give you possible niches like “mothers who love crafting,” “corporate workers who yearn for freedom,” or “Baby Boomers who dig CrossFit.”
Again, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Look back at the various elements of personal identity, and you’ll find unlimited ways to create combinations.
But that still leaves the question, how big of a niche should you target with your films?
Finding Your “Minimum Viable Audience”
As a general rule of thumb, the larger the group you’re trying to target, the more competition you’ll have, and the harder/more expensive it’ll be to gain traction.
“Horror is probably the only genre that is an identity group unto itself. For horror fans, their love of horror is a core part of who they are. Can’t really say the same about dramas, comedies, thrillers, etc.”
However, when you think not in terms of the biggest possible group you can reach, but instead the smallest viable one, great things can happen.
This is how you create an uncontested market for yourself, where you’re the dominant filmmaker, and competition is irrelevant.
It’s also how you build deeper relationships with customers, all while breaking free from the commoditization of media, and charging higher prices.
So your minimum viable audience, or MVA for short, is simply the smallest possible identity group you can serve with your films, while still being as profitable as you’d like.
In order to find your MVA number, you’ll have to do some thinking about the following questions.
How much money do you need on a yearly basis to feel secure, comfortable, and content? Basically, what’s your “enough” number, where all your needs are met, and you’re living a good life, at least financially speaking?
On average, how expensive are your films going to be, and how will you compensate your collaborators? Obviously, I’m biased towards keeping things on the micro-budget end of the spectrum, and paying collaborators up front. That model keeps the economics in your favor. However, if you want to make higher budget films, and compensate people on the backend, that’s going to impact how big of a niche you need to target.
How will you monetize your films, and how will you create secondary revenue streams around them? If you’re just throwing your films on Amazon Prime for streaming, you’re going to have to reach a metric fuck-ton of people to hit your financial targets. However, if you’re selling from your own platform, with multiple tiers of ancillary digital and physical products, you have to reach far fewer.
Based on everything above, how many people (roughly) do you need to buy your films on a yearly basis in order to hit your financial targets? How many sales do you have to make to create the films you want with proper budgets, while paying your collaborators well, paying yourself well, and having some leftover to invest back into your business?
Now, before you dive into any math, consider one more important factor. Not everyone in your chosen niche will convert to a paying customer.
In fact, it’s safe to assume that at any given time, roughly 1% of the people in the niche will buy your film.
When you take advantage of the marketing strategies I’ll be teaching in future lessons (especially around influencers and strategic partnerships), you’ll be able to push those conversion rates higher. But for now, it’s best to keep targets low, then overshoot expectations later.
That’s why, in order to find your minimum viable niche size, you need to multiply the number of sales you need by 100. This, at least in a rough sense, is how big your niche needs to be to support you financially.
Some easy math to help you find your MVA
Now, if you anything like me, digging too deep into these questions might make your head spin a bit. I’m straight-up allergic to math and spreadsheets and such. Ew.
However, you can ballpark your MVA with some simple back-of-napkin math. Here’s an example that’ll help you get a sense of your own numbers.
Let’s say you aim to take home $70K per year—enough for a nice middle class lifestyle, provided you don’t live in a super expensive area.
And your average micro-budget feature, which takes roughly a year to make, costs $25-30K, including paying your small team of collaborators and covering your marketing expenses.
So, based on those targets, your indie film business needs to bring in roughly $100K in yearly revenue (ideally a bit more to cover taxes, insurance, and whatnot).
On the commerce side, you’ll sell digital copies for 10 bucks a pop, and you’ll sell from your own platform, so as to keep the majority of that revenue.
Now, if that were your only source of revenue, the math would be super simple. You’d have to sell 10,000 copies of the film to hit your financial target.
However, you plan to sell ancillary products and services with and alongside the film. This reduces the number of people you need to reach.
So now, you’ll be able to generate the same revenue, but only have to sell 5,000 copies. The rest is covered by a couple hundred sales of your other products.
So, let’s say you need to make 5500 sales in total to hit your financial goals. That’s not too scary, right?
Assuming the conversion rate from niche size to paying customer is 1%, we’ll multiply that number by 100.
And voila! You’ve got 550,000.
That’s your minimum viable audience, or the smallest niche size you should target to hit your goals.
“If you’re making niche films for a specific audience, your past customers will absolutely want to buy every new film you make, or support your Kickstarter.”
Now, at this point you might be asking how on earth you can accurately measure niche size like this.
That’s something we’ll cover in the next installment in this series, which is all about conducting precise audience research ahead of time. So stay tuned for that.
You might also be thinking that 550,000 is a ton of people, like it’s an impossibly large number to target and reach.
But remember, compared to Hollywood, which is going after global markets of 4+ billion active consumers, it’s a drop in the ocean.
And of the nearly 8 billion people on earth, your identity-driven niche only has to account for a minuscule fraction of one percent of them.
Not to mention, because you’re targeting an identity group, these people are already congregating in specific, easily accessible places, which makes them so much easier to reach and communicate with.
Over time, as you build your audience, this math gets more favorable to you
The last thing to keep in mind here is that once you’ve built an email list or acquired a customer in your niche, it makes things significantly easier with future films.
If you’re selling from your own platform (instead of on iTunes and Amazon), you will not only make more money, but you’ll have your customer’s contact information.
I can’t stress how important this is.
You’ll be able to stay connected with your fans, keeping them in the loop and building deeper relationships with them.
And when you’ve got new films or products, or you’re running a crowdfunding campaign, you can simply share it with an audience of people who already know you, like you, and trust you.
If you’re making niche films for a specific audience, your past customers will absolutely want to buy every new film you make, or support your Kickstarter.
Remember identity feedback loops? Consuming one thing based on our identity is never enough. Identity-driven consumers have an insatiable appetite for more and more content.
And we go a step beyond that by building a long-term audience.
Not only are these people hungry for identity-driven content, but we’ve built a strong connection with them. The people in our audience like us and want us to succeed, so they’ll more than happily whip out their credit cards when given the chance.
This is how you create an unshakeable foundation for your indie film business.
Even if the economy goes into recession, and major studios start cutting back, you’ll still be able to make a living through your audience. That’s the power of what we’re doing here.
Positive vs negative identity, and your moral responsibility when creating identity-driven media
Ok, before we get into the final section of this, which is all about how to pick the perfect niche audience for your films, there are two more things we need to cover.
First is the distinction between positive and negative identity. I’m sure you can guess what that means.
Basically, positive identity traits are ones that make us feel good about ourselves, and elicit a sense of pride. For instance, I take great pride in my love of jazz. It’s a core part of who I am, and I feel great about it.
Negative identity, on the other hand, is all about identity traits and internalized stories that cause us to feel shame about who we are. Another personal example here might be how overweight I was for much of my life. That was absolutely part of my identity, but I hated that piece of myself.
As niche media creators, we want to tap into positive aspects of identity.
These are the identities that create positive feedback loops, and that allow us to tell stories that uplift people, and that elicit a sense of pride and belonging.
So just keep that in mind as you’re going through this whole process.
If you’re targeting an identity trait that causes internal discomfort or shame, you’re setting yourself up for a bad time. Plus it’s just a dick move.
Identity-driven media can heal the world or tear it apart
The final thing I want to leave you with is a sense of just how much power comes along with tapping into identity. And as the old saying goes, with great power comes great responsibility.
Identity feedback loops, along with increasing amounts of identity-driven media, are one of the psychological underpinnings for why the world feels so divided right now.
More and more people are finding their identities in “us vs them” and “good vs evil” worldviews. Such is the nature of our current political landscape.
Media outlets, largely driven by a broken advertising model, push content that reinforces the worst aspects of those identities. After all, that’s what drives the most clicks and views.
As a result of this ecosystem, we become more and more divided on the basis of identity, and we increasingly hate the other side of the aisle.
If we’re not careful, this shit will pull the world apart.
We’re inherently a tribal species. It’s in our DNA. And if we continue finding our identities in ideologies that emphasize the lack of humanity in “the other,” it ends nowhere besides violence.
“Identity feedback loops, along with increasing amounts of identity-driven media, are one of the psychological underpinnings for why the world feels so divided right now.”
I know that sounds dramatic, but I believe this is so important for you to consider if you go down the road of identity media.
Creating content that reinforces people’s sense of identity can be either healing or harmful towards the world.
As creators, it’s up to us to err heavily on the side of healing. If you’re targeting religious or political niches, I’m urging you to make common humanity a core tenet of your work, instead of common enemies.
It may be more profitable at this moment in time to go down the rabbit hole of being as divisive as possible. But we know where that road leads, and it ain’t pretty.
So please, if you decide to adopt this model for your work, do it responsibly, and in a way that heals our divisions instead of amplifying and agitating them.
Now, with all of that out of the way, it’s time to get to the main event.
The formula for the perfect niche audience
Alright, this is it. The moment the rubber meets the road.
It’s time to take everything you’ve learned, get your hands dirty, and make a few hypotheses about the niche you’ll be serving with your films.
I emphasize that they’re hypotheses, because it’s unwise to commit to any niche before you’ve done the research to validate it. That’s coming in the next installment in this series.
But for now, I’d like to introduce you to the formula for the perfect niche audience.
As you’ll notice from my fancy venn-diagram, the perfect niche audience is one that exists at the intersection of four distinct areas.
On the top row, there’s your personal identity, along with the films you’d like to make. At the intersection of these two factors are the niche hypotheses you’ll take into the research phase.
Then along the bottom, you’ve got financial viability, along with personal enjoyment. These are things you’ll find in the niche research process.
When you find a niche that lives at the intersection of all four factors, you’ve got yourself a winner. That’s the perfect audience to target with your films and build a long-term business around.
Now that you’ve got an overview of how the process works, let’s break down each of these steps a bit more.
First, you must pinpoint the elements of your own identity.
It’s important to start by pinpointing the various aspects of your personal identity. Doing so allows you to choose a niche that’s deeply aligned with your existing interests and worldview.
I can’t stress how important this is.
If you choose a niche because you think it’ll be super profitable, but you don’t really care about said niche, you’re setting yourself up for apathy, frustration, and burnout.
Niche marketing and audience building are a marathon, not a sprint. To reap the financial rewards of this methodology, you’ve gotta show up consistently for months and years on end.
Not only that, you’ve gotta consistently create content and interact with people in the niche. You need to build relationships, and immerse yourself in this specific culture.
If you’re apathetic about the topic and people you’re serving, you won’t be able to sustain energy and momentum.
If you’re clearly not a member of that identity group, your niche will intuitively sense it, and they’ll tune you out. Or worse, they’ll call you out as an imposter, which will completely undermine your chances of making money.
This is something that often happens in places like Reddit. When an outsider comes in with clearly commercial motives, the redditors pounce. And it can indeed be brutal.
However, when you choose a niche based on your own identity, then commit to serving that group over the long-term, amazing things sprout from that decision.
First, it’s more profitable. As we’ve talked about before, sticking with a single niche is both the easiest and most profitable path if your goal is to build a sustainable business around your films.
That means you don’t make one film for the niche, then bolt for another niche when you have a new project. It means you stick around, producing multiple films for these people over the course of a few years or more.
This is how you build an audience that you can sell to again and again. This is how you create true fans, that magical subset of your audience that will buy anything and everything you make.
You stick around, and you continue to serve.
Second, it’s just more enjoyable and fulfilling to start from your own identity and work from there.
Part of that is just how fun it is to create work around topics, ideas, and people you’re passionate about.
The other part is the deeply satisfying feeling that comes from connecting with and serving and community of people that you care about.
Serving people and being generous adds a certain psychological richness to life that just can’t be achieved any other way.
So yeah. Don’t skip this particular piece of the formula.
Anyhow, here are some questions to consider for digging into your own identity.
What are the roles, ideas, or causes that define you—the things that make you proud to be yourself?
What identity-driven communities do you already belong to where you feel like you truly belong?
What topics are you insanely invested in and curious about? Curious enough to spend the next few years of your life actively immersed in them?
If it were me, I’d set a timer for 10-20 minutes and do some “freewriting” on these questions. This is where you write at the speed of thought, not stopping to edit or think. Just keep writing, and see what comes up.
Once you’ve done that, you should have a nice big list of potential identity traits, interests, and topics. Now let’s move into the second piece of the puzzle.
Second, get specific about the types of films you want to make.
This next part of the process is about stepping back and thinking deeply about the films you’d like to make, both in terms of substance and style.
Your goal is to understand ahead of time what kinds of stories will fulfill you creatively, and sustain your interest and curiosity over multiple projects.
Because again, our goal isn’t to make a single film then move on to something completely different. To build the most profitable, efficient film business, we need to find a vein of gold and continue to mine it over multiple projects.
So here are some questions to get you thinking. Again, try doing some freewriting to dig deep into these.
What types of stories are you driven to tell? The kinds of stories you’d want to tell if there was no financial incentive whatsoever.
What topics/themes are you passionate about exploring through film or other types of media?
What kinds of characters do you want to see portrayed on screen?
What types of films would keep your interest over multiple years?
Again, I’m going to urge you not to skip this step.
When I first codified and taught this process last year, this step wasn’t part of it. The assumption was that there’d be plenty of overlap between your identity and the films you’d like to make.
However, that led to some issues and inefficiencies.
People would come up with a list of identity traits, then dive straight into niche research, only to realize later on that they’d found a profitable, enjoyable niche, but they had no desire to make films there.
For instance, one of my students was passionate about the health and fitness niche, and through his research, he knew it’d be a killer business. But he had no desire to make fitness-themed movies. So it was a bunch of wasted effort.
Sidenote: If health and fitness is your jam, and you’re interested in making films around it, here’s a great example of the kind of thing you could do. This short film is adapted from a viral blog post, and so far, the film version has over 10,000,000 views on YouTube. Not too shabby, eh?
Point is, you need to spend some time really thinking about the kinds of films you want to make, and the types of stories that will fulfill you creatively.
Only then, should you look for crossover with your identity traits. And only items from the crossover between your identity and the films you’d like to make should be taken into the research phase.
I know it all sounds a little tedious. But I swear it’s worth the effort.
This whole process is designed to find the perfect marriage between your existing interests and creative sensibilities, then pair it with an active niche.
When you work through the process, you’re virtually guaranteed to come out the other end with a niche that’ll allow you to build a profitable business, all while telling the stories you want to tell.
And in the end, that’s what it’s all about.
So please, don’t skip any of these steps. Because they’re all there for a reason, and that reason is making the lives of indie filmmakers better and easier. Pinky promise.
When it comes to niche audiences, substance matters so much more than style
In the questions above, you’ll notice there’s no emphasis on style. I’m not asking you what genre of films you’d like to make, or whether you’re more invested in features or series.
That’s 100% intentional.
“This strategy is applicable no matter what style of filmmaker you are. It works for narrative. It works for doc. It works for animation. It works for shorts, features, web series, podcasts, blogs, vlogs, and every other conceivable form of media.
If you get the substance right, you can play around with style and genre as much as you want, without losing the interest of your niche.”
When you do your brainstorming or freewriting, it’s far more important to think about the substance of the films you want to make, rather than the style.
Counterintuitive as it may seem, those style considerations (which are super important for mass market films) don’t matter much in the context of niche audiences.
At the end of the day, niche audiences want to consume stories about the topics/ideas they care about, not necessarily any specific genre or style of film.
That’s the huge, liberating mindset shift that comes with adopting this niche entrepreneurial approach.
Unlike the traditional film business, we no longer have to pigeonhole ourselves into specific genres or styles.
Instead, it’s all about the stories we tell, the characters in those stories, and how they jive with specific identity groups
Take my obsession with jazz that I talked about earlier.
Sure, Whiplash is a great drama. But I’d be equally invested in a comedy about jazz.
Hell, someone could make a black comedy horror film where a disgruntled jazz player goes on a killing spree, using an alto sax as his weapon of choice, and I would eat that shit up.
Another example is my friend Mike Dion, who has made his living these past 10 years with documentaries about the obscure sport of bikepacking.
Whenever I share Mike’s story, inevitably someone says, “well yeah, of course that works for him because he’s making documentaries. That would never work for narrative films.”
Thing is, the audience Mike’s built isn’t passionate about documentaries. They’re passionate about bikepacking.
If tomorrow Mike came out with an experimental animated web series about bikepacking, his audience might be a tad confused at first, but they would still eat it up.
They’re hungry for content that validates and reinforces that piece of their identity, and Mike could feed them that content in any number of different flavors, and they'd still be thrilled.
So yeah, these ideas are applicable no matter what style of filmmaker you are.
It works for narrative. It works for doc. It works for animation. It works for shorts, features, web series, podcasts, blogs, vlogs, and every other conceivable form of media.
If you get the substance right, you can play around with style and genre as much as you want, without losing the interest of your niche.
Finally, will this niche be profitable and enjoyable to serve over the long-term?
The third and fourth pieces of the perfect niche formula are where you test your hypotheses in the market. It’s all about research.
After all, one of the foundational rules of effective entrepreneurship is observing and listening to the market. That way, before you invest time and money into an idea, you know there’s a hungry, receptive market just waiting.
In other words, it doesn’t matter how cool your niche ideas are. Or how excited you are about them. They still haven’t been validated.
If you dive into the niche research process, and discover that there’s just no activity or demand, you have to go back to the drawing board.
This, my internet friend, is how you take a substantial amount of the risk out of the film business. You do your research, and make sure a niche is financially viable before ever committing to it.
Anyhow, there are two separate areas you need to validate in your research before committing a niche: financial viability and personal enjoyment.
I won’t get too deep into this here, because the next installment in this series will outline exactly how to do all of this, step by step.
But for now, a nice quick overview.
First, you research your niche to make sure it can support you financially.
Here are some of the questions you need to consider.
Does the niche have enough people in it to constitute your minimum viable audience?
Do people in the niche consume and share content (not just films, but articles, videos, podcasts, books, etc) based on their shared identity?
Are there other filmmakers already serving the niche?
Are there other types of content creators making a living in the niche?
Are there various organizations and influencers you could partner with that already reach a sizable portion of the audience?
Again, we’ll get way more in-depth on viability research in the next installment, but just thinking about those questions and digging into them puts you well ahead of the pack.
As for the second piece of the research process—finding out if your niche is enjoyable—it’s about simply spending time in the niche to see if it’s a good fit for you.
This means having conversations in niche communities, consuming content, following other creators. Generally just being an engaged participant in the niche for an extended period of time.
More than anything else, you’re just trying to judge whether spending time in this niche will enrich your quality of life or degrade it.
For instance, I can think of dozens of niches that would be insanely profitable at this moment in time—many of them political.
Personally, I would hate every waking second spent in those hyper-political, hyper partisan communities. And if my livelihood depended on being there day in and day out, I’d grow to resent my niche, along with my business as a whole.
That, my friend, is a recipe for a bummer of a life. And that’s why you validate ahead of time whether the niche is a good, enjoyable fit.
It doesn’t matter how profitable it could be. If you’ll hate being there, it’s a moot point.
Like I mentioned, building a business around your niche is a marathon, not a sprint.
And though I have zero interest in marathons, I assume they’re a hell of a lot more enjoyable when you actually like running and there’s great weather on race day.
When you validate ahead of time that your niche will be an enjoyable group to serve, and that you’ll enjoy producing media for these people, it’s the same idea.
You’re creating the circumstances and environment you need to succeed over the long term, and have a blast in the process.
Final thoughts and recap
Ok, it’s time to wrap this thing up.
Here’s a quick recap of all the big ideas we’ve covered today.
As indie filmmakers, we need to shift from producing genre-driven entertainment for the mass market, to producing identity-driven media for one specific niche.
Genre is a valuable creative tool, but it’s virtually worthless for niching down, because we’re still in a cutthroat competition with films and shows that have budgets 10,000x bigger than ours. That’s a losing proposition.
People make spending/consumption decisions based on their identity. They also seek out and associate with others based on their identity. These two actions reinforce those identity traits, resulting in identity feedback loops.
Identity feedback loops create tens of thousands of viable niches online. These niches are fueled by a deep psychological need to connect and belong, as well the eager consumption of identity-specific products and media.
Therefore, creating media specifically-tailored to one identity group is the best way to niche down and earn a living from your micro-budget films. That’s how we break free from Hollywood’s game, and instead play one we can win.
Your Minimum Viable Audience is the smallest possible niche that still enables you to hit your financial goals. Finding and focusing on your MVA allows you to niche down far enough that you’re the dominant player, and competition becomes irrelevant.
Identity stacking is the art of combining two or more identity groups, then focusing your attention on the crossover. It’s a valuable tool for finding unserved markets, and reaching your MVA.
The perfect niche audience is one that exists at the intersection of your identity, the films you want to make, and a niche that’s both financially viable and enjoyable to serve. You find these latter two factors during the research phase.
I realize this whole approach to finding audiences is completely antithetical to how we were all taught to think about the business of filmmaking.
But let’s be honest here. Playing the same game as Hollywood has rarely, if ever, worked for indie filmmakers. And these days, I can’t imagine a better recipe for endless frustration and financial failure.
In a world where attention is scarce and generic media is abundant, we need new approaches that actually give us a chance at earning and keeping some of that attention. Otherwise, we just don’t stand a chance of earning a living with our films.
And that’s where identity-driven niches and marketing come in.
This approach, though not for everyone, gives micro-budget filmmakers a fighting chance to build a legitimate, profitable, long-term business around the films they care most about.
For those of you brave enough to throw out everything you’ve been taught about the film business, and start fresh with an open mind and a new methodology, you will be rewarded.
Good luck, and godspeed.
-Rob Hardy
