With billions of pieces of content being added to the Internet each day, competing with large companies may seem like a near impossibility, but I, like many others, believe that curators are going to be a very important part of the web over the next few years.

It is already happening with a variety of different websites and people taking on the role of filtering content in a niche for followers too busy to keep track of the million different news sources. I don’t know about you, but I could use better content curators in the niches I follow, as I’m constantly overwhelmed by how fast things are moving and changing online.

The hardest part of being a content curator is building a brand. Many content curators are long standing community members, having build a business or becoming a subject matter expert long before they began organizing a piece of the web.

For a long time, I was a full time blogger working on WordPress related articles. I worked with the platform endlessly, and while I never became a good enough coder, my passion for writing, and my ability to read massive amounts of information in a short period of time led me to curate a great deal of content on BloggingPro.com.

Over the course of three years, I got to know the key players in the industry, got involved in podcasting, and was invited to speak at a few WordCamps. Through my work at curating and filtering content for people interested in WordPress, I was able to sustain a living, as well as engage in social activities that I enjoyed.

You probably have seen similar things on social sites, as your family, friends and contacts post interesting stories, images, videos and more. What they don’t realize though is that they are playing in a “rented” sandbox. Instead of building a brand or a business, they are allowing platform builders to leverage their good ideas and social talents for their own gain.

While there is a line between stealing content and curating it, I would recommend that anyone starting a blog today focus on bringing their audience the biggest and best news from their niche as one of their unique selling points online.

Your competitive edge could be as simple as working towards becoming the central place to find out everything in a niche.