Blogging identity crisis

I created this blog to be able to have a little more freedom with my reviews then the quick blurbs on Amazon. The thing is, it's only useful if people read them. I set about looking for tips about growing an audience online and it seems like everything revolves around networking. See tip #4 at sociallysorted. Where does one network and build relationships? I'm not about to go plastering links all over everyone's comment sections in hope of grabbing traffic. No one would like that. Goinswriter mentions guest posting. I'd be happy to share my opinion on someone else's blog, but who's? A few places mention to discover your identity. Hey! I'm great at summarizing! Its... a... blog about.. getting out my opinion on stuff I like! Yeah, that's it! Lets go look for those blogs on Google.

And here's the wall I've so gracefully face-planted into. I can't for the life of me figure out what to search for and if I can't, who's ever going to see my results come up and/or what to say what I have to say next. There are Dad blogs, Man blogs, and Survival blogs and I'll have a subset of each of those here but marketing a little of everything is hardly an identity. It could always be narrowed down to Home Automation, or Toys but I'd almost argue my identity is that I love dabbling in a little bit of everything.

Tips? Anyone? *crickets* We'll put a pin in that one for now.

For the time being I'm going to go down the road suggested on BlogHer. Make a blog that looks the part of something that people will want to come back to. What do all the big sites have? Ads! Kind of a dirty word I agree, but I'm really not interested in monetizing anything, just getting traffic through so no annoying ads in the future. I'm thinking about going to friends with business' and asking if I can put some small linked pictures up for them. Their sponsorship of the site is just putting up with me. As michellerafter shows, it's all about the links(see what I did there? Links!)