Anyway, spend the effort and continue to update your blog, your persistent will determine whether you blog will be famous or sink. With a few posts, even people visited your blog but do not return in future, it will not continue to drive traffic. Create valuable content, be sincere, and persistent, you will get the rewards...

lol :D invisiblemikey

I can also cry tears of molten cake, which makes me special I guess...

...not really.

My blog has become my portfolio. I don't care to make money off of my blog because I mainly use it for "passion projects" that, considering my relative infancy as a writer of jokes for computers, would be hard to pitch elsewhere. I use this blog to write about all the things that don't have to fit another site's theme or subject matter. I make money writing by the guidelines of other sites, on their sites. Here, I can just do whatever I please.

@jessielansdel,
Wordpress.com team had work hard to add more features to this blogging platform. The user comment and notification are something I really appreciated and it make reading other blog's comment convenient. I do understand the feeling of acknowledge from other, so do I to other people blog. Thus, I will visit people blog and only leave comment if they created something I interested. Anyway, nice to meet you here. :)

@maidiebike,
I like photography, I enjoy it as a hobby. Sometime, I do want to turn my passion on it to something more value in my life. I not looking for making big buck from it, but I do hope people respect art/creativity come with cost, not free. Anyway, some people they just take it for granted where they request us to take photos for event, for FREE! If we request for paid, they will look at me with different facial respond. I think it fair that some blogger try to make money from their content, as long as they created the content and not shadow/copy from other. Last, I do took photos for enjoyment, and most important - memory!

May be we should start to put this into my blog - http://www.adfreeblog.org/
I know wordpress.com will generate ads on our post, if the user not login. Since the ads not from us, so, it should be fine we put the ad free logo there. :)

But there is some truth in it, sadly. Because we have to do it, we haven't got a lot of bargaining power... hehehehehe! Also, the arts are more ethereal than, say, plumbing - I've had people demand copies of my work as a matter of course, whereas I'm sure they'd never demand that a plumber would come and fix their loo for free! Many people don't ascribe value to creative work in the same way... People wouldn;t dream of stealing a car but a bit of copy or music seems to be a different matter in people's eyes. I think this goes some way to explaining why writer's end up with no cash.

For me, writing is what someone is 'called to do' - I don't necessarily mean in a religious sense (although if you have a faith then it no doubt helps to realte your calling in terms of your god). I'm a creative person and, as such, I literally start to have problems in my life if I'm not reflecting it through some kind of art. Youtube, wordpress, Flickr etc are brilliant platforms for that creativity to be placed. So, this is why I have to write - not for money or success, but because it is the way that I am framed.

Having said that, I believe that art is a two way process. I create not just for myself but for society. If it's just me in a room talking to mysefl then how am I contributing to the world ? If I were called to be a teacher but had no children to teach, then this would be a shocking waste of talent. I may have to write becuase it's who I am, but I also want who I am to be usefulo to others... With this in mind, I do see the success of my blog as reflecting the success of me as a creative person.

The money issue will all boil down to personal circumstances. If you can survive without it, then you're truly blessed. I'm blogging to develop my writing skills and have something to show people when I attempt to take things further - script writing, copy writing, whatever I can grab. I need money to eat like everyone else, at the moment, my personal circumstances dictate that I've got enough to feed my kids - so I'm not worried.

The above set out a kind of 'heirarchy of needs' for the creative. At the top is the need to create, over and above all else. Then comes the need for recognition - allowing for a raise in self esteem with the knowledge thet I am 'doing my bit'. Money, quite frankly, is at the bottom for me. And this is why writer's will nhever be paid well - we're suckers! lol

Sorry, I got rambling but wanted to add to the excellent discussion here. What do you all think ?

Honest, I don't spend much time on any person's blog if they throw in ads. Very distracting and slows down my computer.

As you can see, alot of forum members here, don't like their personal blogs with other people's ads.

monetization

Yeah, this is the word!

@maidiebike,
They make money from adsense and other ads services, where they could get around extra USD200 - 1000, base on click through rate and popularity on that month. Yes, they operate outside of US. By the way, most of time they register .com domain and use hosting in state. Blog content that they are writing like gadget review, gadget info sharing, latest and greatest of technology, or generic info like health and etc.
May be you get me wrong, I am not to promote monetization of blogging. Anyway, today the blogger still hold strong on users because they allow adsense and other ads service. I believe most of wordpress.com users are not prioritze on monetization, as it not able to do that, except you are very famous blogger.

Or do they actually use a blog platform a different type of business ..selling other stuff?

Chorwin, I'm genuinely not interested in making money because I have a full-time already which is not blogging at all.

I'm simply curious..you sound overly enthused about making money. Maybe your message might be better among a group of purely business folks.

Blogging = Money is very common.

Cince 2004, the Technorati State of the Blogsphere Survey has followed growth and trends in the blogosphere. This year's topics include: blogging and social media, bloggers and traditional media, traffic and analysis, brands and marketing in the blogosphere, bloggers' motivations and consequences, monetization, and changes within the blogosphere over 2011.

The backbone of the blogosphere, and representing 60% of the respondents to this survey, Hobbyists say that they “blog for fun” and do not report any income. Half of hobbyists prefer to express their “personal musings” when blogging. 60% indicate they spend less than three hours a week blogging, yet half of hobbyists respond individually to comments from readers. Because 72% blog to speak their minds, their main success metric is personal satisfaction (61%).
Read more: http://technorati.com/social-media/article/state-of-the-blogosphere-2011-introduction/#ixzz1qv2l964W

The option is to somehow make a blog so that people can only see it's contents by subscribing to it. That would mean a private blog.

@absurdoldbird,
You are on the right mindset on blogging. You create posts that you like to share, and you just don't mind whether you are creating something that people like or not, but you enjoy it. In the real world, you are like an artist, you draw, and you put your drawing in the gallery, you don't care whether people buy it, because you draw for your like. In reality, you need money to survive, to support your living, except you born in rich family.
Today, everyone become more individualistic, and humble is something rare. To be famous (I know you not looking for this), you still need to be special. Look at Lady Gaga, why you make so funny fashion? Sometime I did feel the world heading to crazy path, but this is fact and we riding on the turbulence/wave. We only can make sure our boat not overturn, but not other's boat.

I hate the 'what makes you so special' question, regardless of what it's referring to - because ultimately we are all special: we were brought into the world to be and that's what we are: people, individuals, be-ing. Our blogs can only represent that really.

How to make a blog 'special' and stand out? Just be yourself.