Well, here is my take on this topic, as a non-blogger(iow, consumer of sorts). Please excuse this not-that-well-written rant in advance.
What do people - in my opinion - search for:
#1 Help & advice on a specific topic (like, how to disassemble a vw golf 1.3 '87 petrol engine)
#2 Specific information (list of vw engines)
#9 Opinions (compatible with their views / controversial, ideally from people they like or hate, but most importantly, already know >> my-favorite-auto-blog : why vw golf I was the best golf ever manufactured || that-fiat-loving-morron : why vw golf I should be banned from the streets)
#999 Random opinions from people they never heard of (some-guy-on-the-internet : 10 best things about the vw golf I generation || some-other-random-guy : 10 most beutiful wordpress themes of 2017)
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When you start your blog, you are that random person. I red many great, well researched, well written articles but honestly, I have no idea where I found them nor by whom they were written. Two reasons why:
a) Subscribing to someone I don't know is a risk I'm unwilling to take. I hate spam as much as averyone else. I don't know what you'll do with my email address. I don't want to get notifications about your new cat. I don't want to participate in any of your surveys and I don't want to help you make your blog better. Sorry, a day has only 24h, every minute wasted is a minute of your life you _won't_ get back.
b) I have no easy way to find out if your blog is any good in the first place.
The problem with blogs as a format(incl. video blogs) is that you effectively surrended all the contextual synapses your information is generating - to a search engine. Context has sometimes more value than the actual information. If I red your well-written article about linux kernel hardening, I _do_ want to know your opinion about different security subsystems for example. But what does your blog provide to make this task easier - a calendar? That primitive, useless junk called a "tag cloud"? A href link to an "older" post? Most of you don't even include a list of the most popular or recent articles. You want us - consumers - in this day an age, to actually click through some calendars on your blog an spend - no, waste - our valuable time to search for contextualy related topics? Who else is better at deciding about the context of your information than you - the bloke who is writing it? Can't you be a little more creative and write a system that would actually present all the information you have published since 1985 in a natural, contextual way?
People produce valuable content daily, but they somehow forgot to care about the context. If your blog is unable to set your article into a braoder body of knowledge and relies solely on a search engine/social media, well, then you get what you ordered. Good luck paying for all kinds of trickery to get your page visits.