* Technical experts: People like Jon Skeet (C# StackOverflow guru) and Jacob Thornton (Bootstrap creator)

* Tangential experts: People like Patrick MacKenzie (blogged about his software small businesses) and Brennan Dunn (Double your freelancing, aimed largely at software professionals)

If I went technical, I'd probably choose the framework/language I use the most in my freelancing work and become a deep expert in that. The upside is it would achieve the goal of more inbound business. The downside is it would be a chore for me to be blogging about topics that haven't already been covered - language/framework niches are difficult to break into if you aren't the creator or early prominent member.

If I went tangential, I'd choose the topic of health and software development. There's clearly a market for this (see "The Healthy Programmer"[1]) and I think it's a niche I could dominate. I also would have no trouble creating blog posts, podcasts, and other material to develop this niche. The downside is I don't think this would achieve my goal of bringing in new business for software development - I could see this being a side project to build in addition to my freelance development, and it could become big if I put enough effort into it, but I don't see businesses needing health consultants for their development teams (who are also developers) as an immediate pressing need.

Does anyone have any insights into attempting these various approaches?

[1] https://pragprog.com/book/jkthp/the-healthy-programmer