Where there is still room
Crowding is the variable most niche advice skips, because it is the one that makes the advice sound discouraging. It should not. Being the fifth credible person in a moderately paid seam beats being the thousandth in a rich one.
- Women's healthA thin seam nobody has properly worked yet.CrowdingBarely workedEntryShallowAnnualNot broken out
- ADHD and neurodivergentNewly opened, unusually rich for its depth.CrowdingBarely workedEntryModerateAnnualNot broken out
- Financial coachingBounded above by regulation.CrowdingLightly workedEntryModerateAnnual$50,000 to $75,000
- Leadership coachingThe approach to the deep seam.CrowdingLightly workedEntryDeepAnnual$80,000 to $100,000
- Executive coachingThe deep seam. Hardest to reach, richest to work.CrowdingLightly workedEntryDeepestAnnual$96,000 to $98,000
- Career coachingWorked steadily, pays on urgency.CrowdingSteadily workedEntryModerateAnnual$49,000 to $72,000
- Relationship coachingDeeper than it looks, heavier to work.CrowdingSteadily workedEntryModerateAnnual$45,000 to $65,000
- Business coachingCrowded, but the buyer has a budget.CrowdingHeavily workedEntryDeepAnnual$80,000 to $110,000
- Life coachingThe surface seam: easy to reach, worked by everyone.CrowdingPicked overEntrySurfaceAnnual$47,000 to $72,000
- Health and wellnessBroad and shallow, and competing with software.CrowdingPicked overEntryShallowAnnual$52,000 to $77,000
The seams with room
Women's health, ADHD and neurodivergent, Financial coaching, Leadership coaching, Executive coaching are the least worked. Two of them have no published income band at all, and that absence is the opportunity rather than a warning: the surveys have not caught up because the niches are new.
The cost of an open seam is that you do the market education yourself. Nobody is searching for your category yet, so demand has to be built rather than captured. That is slower at the start and much more defensible afterwards.
The seams that are picked over
Business coaching and Life coaching and Health and wellness carry most of the profession. They are the easiest to enter, which is exactly why they are the hardest to earn in. Life coaching is the extreme case: the lowest barrier of any niche and the weakest measurable outcome, which is a difficult combination to price against.
None of this means avoid them. It means that inside a crowded seam, the specificity of your sub-niche is doing all the work. “Life coach” competes with everyone. “Coach for people leaving the military” competes with almost nobody, and is still life coaching.