The New Bloggers Dilemma (NBD)

In the fast paced world of blogging, just like nascar you build a following and hold on to them. If you don't you fall to the wayside and wither away. There are a lot of people who claim you should not promote your own website or submit your own stories to digg. The majority of those people have fallen to the wayside and are withering away. Promote your website, it is not SPAM, it is something you have worked hard to produce. Let quality determine if you succeed.
The new bloggers dilemma (NBD) is a catch 22. Those without exposure will not have a user base. However to get exposure you need a user base. You also need to provide quality content to retain a following. Again you need a following to ensure your content is quality. The last statement is a bit counterintuitive, so I will restate it. Having a consistent user base will offer contructive critisim on those thing which are good and bad, which will help create high quality posting and insights. This does not mean let everyone else hijack your site and opinions. It does however, allow you to gear your grammar, layout, and topics to those who use your site regularly. This in turn allows them to point others with the same interest to your site, which expands your user base.
The second NBD is what do you talk about. Talk about everything and anything, screw niche blogs. If you find one you love, great, one thats not over run with established persons, even better. But as a whole people have many interests and many subjects they know something about, talk about them. There is alot of expertise languishing in the minds of people who only write about one topic. IT WANTS TO BE FREE, so let it go!