I am considering writting a blog about a 4 year period in my life. Very personal, very funny (I think) and I think it will get quite a bit of traffic. 1) Should I write it as if it is happening here and now or as something that happened in the past? 2) How would I best generate some income from it? Thanks
1) If it were me, I'd write it from a current perspective. That allows you to reflect, review and add thoughts detached from feeling. 2) First things first, you'd have to build an audience and advertise it. You can't simply set up a blog and make money.
My advice would be 1 or 3 months into it and when your not making money and not getting a lot of traffic, to NOT give up. Eventually you will gain good readers and if it is funny, people who find it ill want to read the whole thing and share it. The best way to earn money from it is to get lots of visitors. It will take time. Use sites like pingoat to spread your blog, be active on technorati, link to other blog owners who are active on technorati. They will notice you linking to them from their technorati control panel and are likely to blog about you in exchange. Try to mention blogs that are of a similar size to you, though, cause a huge blog is unlikely to try to form a relationship with a new blog. Try google adsense for monetizing that traffic once you have it
I can't add much to the great advice above. You might also consider doing blogroll link exchanges with similar blogs if possible.
Try using Blog Explosion and Blog Mad if you have strong hooky content .. might get you some loyal readers