I was taking Oscar the Wonder Dog for his afternoon walk, along the tarmac path, when it started to rain. So instead of going the long way around, I cut across the edge of the field. The track along the side of the field was very muddy, due to a combination of the number of people who had already used it, and our wet summer weather. The field itself, which has been harvested about a week, was not much better, with pools of water in places. However, between the track and the field itself there was a strip of long grass. It proved that walking along the long grass was actually the optimum strategy - the bottom of my jeans got a little wet, but at least I wasn't struggling through the mud on either side of me. Of course, Oscar loves mud, so this wasn't an issue for him... It occurred to me that this is actually a good metaphor for trying to build web communities, whether around a blog or a forum or whatever. If you go down the same track as everyone else, you will get stuck in the mud, unless you are very lucky. If you "walk through the long grass," you may not appear to be progressing as fast, and you may get a little wet, but ultimately you will get where you want to be without getting covered in mud. Niche websites, the equivalent of "walking through the long grass" give you a much better chance of building an audience, whether monetised or not, than yet another gaming or get-rich-quick website. Or maybe I just have an over-active imagination...