I find that people who try and monetize their blogs fail on two points: the content and design. I'm not saying that people are not checking your blog out because they think your life is too boring by the way, I'm going towards the fact that a lot of people aren't putting in original ideas and are instead fetching articles from other sites or baying posts in bulk. As for the design, well, I'm finding that a lot of people are not experimenting with that they can do and are just using the basic themes pre-installed, or some very cheap looking thing with tables that they just throw together. Automated Blogs I'm sure many of you know that there are thousands of sites out there, many that are automatically made with some type of aggregator plugin that works with WordPress. What these people are hoping is that you have the dofollow plugin and automatically have comments posted without moderation so that they in return can get a backlink and increase their Google pagerank. You'll automatically know because it tends to look something like this: Buying content to use on your blogs There are definitely some people here that do it, we haven't looked closely at it before, but there was already an instance of it on Entrecard already (well, they copied) and that person quickly made themselves out without giving any excuse. The truth is that many people make a living on buying and selling content out to people and a lot of it was either bought separately in singles or in bulk. The people who tend to do this are cheap and don't pay attention to what they're buying and they get stuff that is either changed a tiny bit, or directly from other sites word for word. So, sometimes you never know if you're reading a blog that was just uploaded yesterday and already has 200 posts but the dates were changed so you think they were just blogging for many years. The design I work with beginner bloggers and the first thing I ask is, "do you have an idea of how you want your blog to look like?" because it is very important you have an idea of how you want your site to look like, never settle for the two standard WordPress designs that come pre-packaged in your setup. So many sites use them, especially on WordPress.com and people will surly enough notice them the moment they step on to your site. Now, I'm not saying that you should hire someone to make you something that costs fifty bucks, but you know, look around for some nice themes. Don't hesitate to take a hour or two, or even ask your buddies for help, it's important to be happy with what you're going to have to see on a daily basis. If you want, try out some widgets and see if they look good alongside your theme. I think everyone should one day at least having a go at making themes themselves though, it's a lot of fun and I don't think you need to worry about making it the best thing out there, be creative with it! I really like surfing around the internet and seeing blogs that have been wackily assembled, this Weezer fansite (http://www.weerez.com/news/) is my favorite and I have used it as one of my guides to make some of my own. Anything is possible though, I would totally love to see like a gingerbread house theme with like the windows on the side enclosing widgets, or even some Christmas lights extravaganza. You're not having to comply with anything because it's your blog, so it doesn't have to necessarily be valid HTML/XML/RSS or whatever, so for all means have fancy marquees all over the place! I myself don't mind simple sites though, not even if they're just CSS and a little border and background, I just personally don't want to see the same thing everywhere. My blog, well, that's how it started out, I just decided that it really needed more than just that though and added the nice background and header. The end Everyone has a different opinion of what a blog should be; every blog has a different audience. I know a lot of people have their blog for SEO purposes though, and though it's sad to admit, it's what's ruining the whole point of blogging. Your blog is nothing unless it gets visitors though, and if you can't get visitors, you're not going to be able to monetize your blog. I have another blog, it doesn't get many hits anymore, but I'm still making money with it, and I think if I didn't have a nice design that I've kept for the last year, the people I worked with would let me go. My design at my current blog is decent, but it's the content that makes it work. My conclusion is that you can survive with one or the other, but it's with both that make your blog survive and generate income for you.