Here are my 2 blogs, the first one is just new:

Dreamer: Starting out as a Writer
http://dreamer.onlinewriters.org

Help Finding Blog
http://helpfind.wordpress.com/

If you have not already done so I suggest you register for the free Google Analytics at http://www.google.com/analytics because then you can see things like graphs and numbers in reports on user increases, on which pages, from browsers or from other sources, what keywords were used, etc. And still, you can't ever know exactly for sure this caused that unless you are an electron moving in between the places directly. At Mahalo, yes, my user figures seemed to go up but I have only had Google Analytics on a short time. I don't have time to check page ranking but it must be getting better because the people seem to be increasing. The ranking on my member page for my number ranking for page revenue has been steadily overall increasing as has the revenue but I don't know if that was from my blog, or posting on other blogs, or posting in some other places like Reddit - you can see the example I gave on my 2nd blog pages How to Write a Science Fiction Novel really did hit number one in the new pages under howto as a keyword I think it was. Would all that be happening if I had not written my own blog and just posted on other peoples blogs? I don't know, I keep hearing people who seem to know what they are talking about that you need to have your pages linked to at least some blogs to give you a good page ranking. Something must be working. If the question really is, is it worth it for the time and effort? I would say that probably the time I put into my blogs will not directly ever be compensated with money because it was a lot - but I loved playing with it, and learning and it was fun. If it was just for money I would have stopped at the first version of theme, the first time some widgets worked, and not bothered with all the keywords and categories and the summaries of pages, and chatting up my blog everywhere I can, and learning to post to my blog from other places automatically. So, the short answer is, if it is just for the money, probably you need to do it but can be quick about it. But if you want your blog to represent something of an achievement that you can then use on your employment resume to offer to your next employer a really good job, then maybe you will get a payback for all the time you have spent. I would take the whole thing if I had to do it over again, but while I was doing it, the frustrations of learning and getting it to work almost made me give up and do a short job just for the money but I am glad now I persevered to a more expert kind of level because I like the results and enjoy writing on there now and then, it no longer takes that much time. Hope that helps.
P.S. when you make a Wordpress blog if you do they have a statistics feature inside it that is free and you can also see all kinds of data for that, but if you look in the Appearance section for the Widgets, you can add the Statistics widget as I did near the top right hand so that you can quickly eyeball it to see how many have seen it. But that number probably does not matter, one visit or none should be enough for a search engine to register your page as being mentioned on a blog. Good luck!
Source(s):
http://dreamer.onlinewriters.org
http://helpfind.wordpress.com/
http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-write-a-science-fiction-novel
http://www.google.com/analytics

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Setting up a blog solely for promoting your Mahalo pages will not help unless you have a good knowledge of SEO. Links to Mahalo pages are worth more for you effort if you bookmark them or join forums about the topic of your pages and promote it there. Also, you are better of writing some articles and submitting them to article directories, leaving links on your bio to your Mahalo pages. Some may think otherwise, but I have a blog that has been SEO optimized and it took a lot of work to reach where it is today. If you get a chance to get a really good topic for a Mahalo page and the "keywords" you use are not so competitive, then it will almost take care on itself.

Now If you are thinking of really developing a good blog, that will provide value to your readers and do a lot of SEO, then yes, it can help. Otherwise I think it is a waste of time and your precious effort, which you put somewhere else (as stated above) to promote your pages.
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