Ive been blogging since early 2000. Ive started out with blogger using the free webspace provided by my ISP. At that time all I cared about was writing and figure out how I could use this new media. In the process I learned some basic html, first by copy and paste, and later the tags just kinda clued to my brain (Not very well though).
Ive been all over the bloguniverse with my writing style: VERY personal to just dumping links faster than I could hit that BlogThis button. Besides learning some html, I also improved my english. Reading this you wouldnt believe it could have been worse, but it was bad, very bad.
After almost 5 years with blogger I moved to Wordpress. A whole new universe, so to speak. A better system with more possibilities. It didnt improve my writing, but I did learn how to set up a mysql database, and started my interest inCSS (Which I still need to learn more about.)

The downside on Wordpress was that now I needed not only to pay my ISP but also for hosting. Not the biggest bill in the world, but it did make me set a new goal for my blogging, besides just enjoying it like I always has. I wanted to make the site pay for it self. Adsense was the first thing I added and thought was a good way to make the back.
The problem was that my blog didnt get enough visitors and clickthroughs. So after a few months I also added Adbrite, not to any help. So far in over a year with Adsense and Adbrite Ive “earned” 17 dollars. The only problem is that Adsense doesnt send a check before you’ve earned atleast $100 and Adbrite $20.

So I figured I better start adding my blog to all the blogsearchengines that popped up all over in the last couple of years. Finally something happened. I started to get less visitors. Thats correct, from something around 150 visitors per day, im now at something like 50.

So now I bet you sit in your chair thinking, WTF he wrote something about how to get more visitors.
But I actually think I got the answer. Hold on while I get another cup of coffee. There, ok, ready?
You have to write, not promote. You have to write about things that are interesting to you, not what you think others want to read about. You need to care, not to do it for the money. And the last one: Never forget that this is not only a media for knowledge, many people use it for entertainment.

I actually got some pretty good examples to why this is true.

Feel free to call me a total idiot, or share knowledge on this subject.