I remember Chris Garret mentioning in the Hive that if you want to add on to your social networks or get with the IN crowd, that it's best to hang out at the watering holes where your audience is. Traffikd has published a great post which highlights 10 different niche social news sites that you should keep note of. These sites include:

Design Float - For Designers of course
Health Ranker - For health related content
Kritsy - A social site targeted towards women.

Be sure to check out their article for the rest of the list. As Traffikd mentions, don't submit content to these sites if it's not related. You are doing that social news site and yourself a dis-service.

Last but not least, I just discovered another gem where Traffikd has a list of 400 different Social Media/Networking sites all categorized for your submitting pleasure. If you happen to gain any measurable success using any of those sites listed, come back and let us know about them!

For the last couple of years I was spending my hobby time on building a blog in a rather narrow niche - a particular aspect of software development. As many other hobby writers I found it difficult to write regularly and would happily receive some assistance. I keep my site open for the readers and sometimes site visitors posted own articles, but it was never enough.

Therefore since about a year ago I am permanently looking for the freelancers on the topic. I posted ads on Performacning job market, another blogger job board, even contacted authors of the other blogs in the niche. This way I was able to find several writers including the good ones, but never I managed to get as much regular writing as I wanted.

Your skills are wanted

The reason is simple - there are not many writers in any specialized niche. When a person is a professional in his area, he is likely to earn his living from the day job activities and is rarely really interested in freelance writing (unless he is professional in freelance writing). He might like the idea of earning few extra bucks and becoming a known authority in the niche, but chances are that his interests will erode over time.

Certainly, there are excellent writers in any niche, but to get those you got to pay a lot. As a result I believe there are many mid-to-low budget bloggers all the time willing to get more writers on the board. These authors can be novices in blogging, might not commit to the strict schedules and still be very valuable - it is their specialized experience that makes their work attractive. For instance, when I manage to get an experience software developer writing on my blog, I am more than eager to provide him with blogging related advices and even to do the whole editorial part of work.

Got profession - got blogging money

The bottom line is simple. If you have skills in pretty much any area, you can easily earn extra $5-20 an hour by freelance writing in a relevant niche blog - the writer's skills are not important. If you want to explore the opportunity:

• advertise your willingness to write on the Performancing job market or some other blogging related job boards
• contact the authors of the blogs in your niche. Looks for the blogs that do some advertising, but are not exactly big sites with real journalists
• if you are a software developer, contact me at artem.marchenko@agilesoftwaredevelopment.com

Picture cortesy of e-magic @ Flickr

We're all familiar with the oversaturated niches. Anything mainstream American is oversaturated. Cell phones, gadgets, celebrity. Anything mainstream techie is also oversaturated. SEO, PHP, web development, blogging.

Some of the oversaturated niches still have room to squeeze out decent profits. But many of you might be looking for alternative niches to explore. And rather than wrecking your brain trying to think of that one under-represented main-stream product, it might be worth thinking outside of the box a bit.

Before I move on, let me just say one thing: there's a reason for niche oversaturation. Niches that are oversaturated have at least two things going for them. First, they have high advertiser representation. Second, they have a proven readership/client base. In other words, there is excess money being thrown around in these niches.

If you're going to explore some alternative niches, you need to be aware that some of the value in conquering these newer niches lies in longer-term equity. Sure, there can be immediate profits, but when you explore alternative niches, you are partially betting that these niches will grow, expand, and perhaps become mainstream (along with mainstream advertisers).

One very nice way to do alternative nicheing is to identify a mainstream niche and then throw an ethnic spin on it. Think celebrity is oversaturated? Why not become a major player in the Latino Celebrity market? Having trouble breaking into the soccer/futball market? Why not do a blog on Latino futball players.

By adding an ethnic angle to any niche, you increase the level of specificity and decrease your competition. If you play your cards right, you can have a much easier time breaking into a popular sub-market for a popular niche.