>I also feel it takes a bit of nerve to think that you should be financially compensated for writing your personal blog //
Surely it depends on whether you're writing for your own benefit or the benefit of others. If you write to benefit - by the action, catharsis, etc., of writing - yourself then of course not but if you write to entertain, inform, etc. others then it seems reasonable that those who consume that writing to that end should get their costs covered in some way.
I guess we could have arms length government managed blogging platforms, that would enable people to blog, others to consume the beneficial ones and avoid commercial entities being involved in the system (I think if you look current free blogging platforms probably can be traced back to advertised commercial entities?).
It probably all depends on what sort of profit a blog is making. If they're actually paying themselves a living wage from their personal blog then arguably that shows it has value and that they should be socially allowed the opportunity to be paid (through the proxy of advertising) for that blog. I'd warrant from my experience that most blogs don't cover costs with the advertising they carry if you considered the act of writing them a commercial undertaking (eg UK min wage is ~£8 ph, so a blog writer would need to receive enough to cover ~£12ph to be covering wage cost alone; how many of the millions of blogs ever made do that?)?