So the Techcrunch’s of the world have bright futures and will likely be purchased for mad duckets in the future. But what about niche players?

We’re beginning to get some answers.

Real estate blog Curbed recently received $1.7 million in funding. Rumors have the site valued at $7 million. Not surprising, blog pioneer Gawker Media is behind much of the support. Although there’s a heavy focus on New York City, there are also sections devoted to Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Worth it? Ad rates for the site are a bit hard to find, but their BlogAds page gives some insight: One standard ad for 3 months goes for almost $14,000 total. With four ad sizes, the revenue opportunities start to add-up nicely. And according to Compete data, traffic is increasingly nicely for such revenue growth.

So, which industries might be next?

No doubt more real estate blogs will be targeted in light of this deal. And in a relatively inactive time in the market, it might be a good chance for some savvy acquisitions or buy-ins. Law seems like another niche that lends itself to investment. Politics is probably a good bet, and there has to be some micro-niche technology blogs that are worthy too.

But what about employment? It’s an industry that lags behind most others. HR loves to be first at being second. As a result, I’d expect employment-related blogs to be targeted at some point, but it might be after other industry’s have set the standard. Something I find particularly compelling is the fact that another blog property put money into Curbed. If an employment blog was to get capital, who would be behind it?

I’d bet on the job boards. In buying Recruiting.com, Jobster had the right idea to leverage a popular property to boost its own sales and brand awareness, although the execution was arguably flawed. Instead of building on the site from its original premise as a blog, it was turned into Digg for recruiting. The next job site to throw money behind an industry blog probably won’t make the same mistake.

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