If I have websites about a niche subject then I'm never gonna get high-ranking or a decent quantity of backlinks. Likewise there aren't many relevant blogs I can post comments to, and my technorati authority is nearly in the negative! Anything else I can do (other than find a new hobby!)?
Um, don't worry about the PR. The title should be "linking for niche websites". Social bookmarking (Digg, Reddit, Propeller, etc.) are good for picking up some really fast backlinks, and it doesn't really matter if the blogs you comment on are relative or not - a backlink is a backlink. And I'm sure there is someone else in your niche that would be happy with exchanging links with your site.
If your niche is too narrow, you can always expand your target audience slightly to widen your niche. If you choose to stay within a narrow niche, what you can do to enhance traffic really depends on the niche. Each niche is unique; what may be a clever solution for a travel site may be completely wrong for an anime site, and so on.
yeah dont worry about PR. its all about SERPS. keep targeting those long tail keywords and you should rank for those.
pinsanon, You wrote "...there aren't many relevant blogs..." Is your niche too narrow? I would think between 5,000 and 10,000 searches/month would be alright. Not higher unless you have huge resources to compete with the already established websites.
I can't really expand my niche as I blog about what I know/enjoy. I was getting about 500 hits a day (350ish unique) which I was pleased with, but have just signed up with Entrecard which is making the numbers artificially high for a short period. Hoping to pick up some relevant subscribers that way. Probably not but you never know!