How Do I Make My Blog Big?

Here's the question:

"...I'm not all that sure about proper netiquette in advertising a blog. Would it just cheap and lazy of me to go on other people's blogs and give a plug for my own blog? Is it better to email bloggers like yourself and see who's interested in sharing my blog with others? Or is the more etiquettely [sic] correct thing to do just to let it grow by word-of-mouth alone?"

Blogging is a time-consuming endeavor where you are either getting post ideas everywhere you go or you hit a literary wall where nothing is coming out and the blog becomes a burden. This happens to everyone. I think Brian said it best on a facebook comment on one of my notes/posts:

The thing about getting big----or getting medium, in my case---is that with a larger readership comes greater pressure to keep it up. Three posts a week becomes a post a day becomes a post for breakfast, lunch, dinner, becomes . . . and so on.

Luckily, the style of my blog doesn't require that much creativity. People ask questions and I answer them. Sometimes, there's a huge blitz of unique and interesting emails and other times, I get a handful of questions that I can answer easily or refer them to a previous post.

A couple weeks ago, GI Korea laid out what it takes to be a successful blogger and I think it's the best advice I've seen on the topic. He really nailed it on the head. Read it because I can't add much to it.

The questioner provided his blog address to me and it looks like he found a niche for himself, so hopefully he'll keep it going and stick to that theme. Although he hasn't posted more than a couple times and it's been about three weeks since his last one, check it out for yourself: Smelly Billa.