The Next Great Thing blogs about cashing in on user generated content like CNN’s iReport and Voxant’s influence and cites Daryn Kagan’s website as an example…

But with all the hype centering around mainstream websites and their ad revenue potential, little attention is given to monetization opportunities available among the thousands of smaller, niche sites that populate the internet. On Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that while the top-100 websites receive half of online traffic, the other half goes to lesser-known sites that cater to specific demographics and interests. Now, companies such as Voxant.com are working to integrate this relatively untapped market into the growing sphere of online news content and ad revenue. The company seeds news from small sites to large ones (like AP in reverse). This automated crowdsourcing is raising the prospects—as well as profits—of some of the web’s up-and-coming news websites.

DarynKagan.com, a year-old website dedicated to users seeking “hopeful” news, is already reaping the benefits of its Voxant relationship. The site’s founder, former CNN anchor Daryn Kagan, tells NGT that her Voxant agreement enables her to contribute material to news organizations much larger than her own, including Associated Press and CBS News. “I post a DarynKagan.com story to my site and hundreds of websites embed that content,” Kagan says. And that’s precisely what Kagan wants: exposure. “Content on the internet is the exact opposite of old media – TV and radio – where it appears to be all about exclusivity,” she says. Kagan’s hope is that her work appears, “on as many websites as possible.”