Whether you are trying to drive traffic to your website, sell goods and services, land a plum job, or impress your boss, being a thought leader on a niche topic is the best approach. If you have a passion or interest, why not become recognized as a thought leader and monetize your interest? Many will tell you simply to "start a blog". The problem is, 10,000 people a day are also starting blogs, literally.

These five techniques have far less competition, potentially large payoffs, and don't require you to come up with something clever or interesting to say every day or get yourself on a plane to travel the world, speaking.

Most importantly, don't require visitors to register for any of this. There's too much of that going around and it is a huge impediment to audience generation. Remember this is about exposure over a long period of time. More is better than less. If you are trying to collect opt-in e-mail addresses, make it just that, an option on a website for something like a newsletter (see bonus number 6 below), and not a requirement to learn.

"Easy" (from my headline) is relative. Writing a blog everyday is hard. These all require some brain muscle up front, but if successful, they begin run themselves and feed the traffic to you. The key to associating these channels with you, naturally, is to have "about" pages and "contact" pages that profile who you are and what you do, and what you are available for (speaking, writing, developing, creating, a job...etc.)

1. Build a social news site - That's right, build a Digglet for your area of expertise. You don't need 1 million visitors a day to make it a success. To get started, Pligg allows you to set up RSS feeds of your favorite sites directly into the submitted articles area where visitors can then vote on them. With a press release and a few posts into announcement forums like TechCrunch, and some blog mentions, after a few weeks I'm getting several hundred people a day visiting the site and growing. If you don't have the programming skills to install it on your host server and apply a layer of branding, go to Scriptlance and put in a bid for a programmer at between $100 and $150 dollars. You'll get plenty of takers to do the work for you.

2. Build a Wikipedia for your vertical - If you don't know about Wikiepedia, it's an online encyclopedia where the entries are submitted by users/editors. There is no central control and anyone can post an entry. Recent research has shown that Wikiepedia is surprisingly accurate and spam-free. Conservatives thought Wikipedia was too liberal, so they built their own. You can too, in your area of expertise. Like Pligg, there are many free, open source wiki platforms you can install on your host server. Twiki is a popular one. Have your visitors start building the best knowledge base in the world in your subject area and take all the credit.

3. Write an eBook - Make it free, don't require people to register and you'll double or triple the downloads. You'll want to promote yourself, your resources, your website, your e-mail, etc. throughout. This post is an excellent overview on how and why to write an eBook.

4. Do a live audio webinar series - Live thought leadership webinars are an excellent way to gain exposure. They key is to make it live and active, not passive and on-demand (like a podcast). Live webinars create a call to action and increase traffic dramatically over passive webinars. All you need is a phone and an Internet connection and you're live! You can always record it and make it available on-demand for those that can't attend live. Leverage peers in your area of expertise to participate in the webinar as a panel. They might might be thought leaders who will bring their audience with them to help you gain more exposure. Create it as a monthly or quarterly series so you can build an audience over time. Here, it would be acceptable to collect an e-mail address during or after the event so you can alert people about the next webinar.

5. Build a vertical social network like MySpace or Facebook - Again, you don't need 1 million visitors a day. Several dozen engaged participants can help feed an active community and draw others in. Until recently this was difficult. A new service has emerged, Ning, which appears to automate the process of setting up a social network. I'm not sure what or if they charge. It appears to be free for now.

And a bonus number 6...

6. Make a newsletter sign-up available on all the web pages you host - This is a standard best practice. It helps to get your branding in people's inboxes on a weekly basis so they don't forget about you. Make sure the sign up is high up on your page above the fold and not buried at the bottom. And don't ask for too much information. Aweber is a good hosted newsletter service for $25 month. There are free services out there, but I don't have any links that come to mind.

To publicize any of these channels there are many free or inexpensive avenues. Issue a press release, post into forums, ask influential bloggers to cover the new resource, optimize your pages for search engine keywords, and of course, Digg it. Traffic won't come over night, but if you do several things every day to promote your thought leadership channels, you'll begin to see results in 3-6 months. The payoffs in traffic, attention, offers (speaking, jobs, book, etc.), and money will surprise you. Oh, and if you feel like it, go ahead and start that blog, too.