Increase Blog Readership

The only effective way is to have original content thats interesting, then using word of mouth advertising (meaning you have original content that other users will want to share)

a common issue with some blogs is a user will rely entirely on giving random postings of their personal thoughts about some random thing, and when they are not doing that, they are heading to sites like tomshardware or pcper and writing about the article that the other site wrote about.

Or worst of all, someone does a blog post on their thoughts (or attempts to review) on a product based on a press release by a company. For blogs that do that, the only traffic they get is accidental traffic. For example, A new product comes out; I head to google and enter in the products name + review. I then end up at a site that some random person made and instead of a review, it is a fake review based on a press release. You know you spotted a fake review when you see crap like (making this up)

"I am excited about this new product, it is truly great. It has the all new patent pending Super Clarity Technology which allows me to convert the 1080p from my HDMI output, to a whopping 320p. Yes you herd right, 320p (320x240); you know what they say, once you go QVGA, you never go back. Overall I give this product a 11 out of 10, I will never have to suffer through another minute of 1920x1080 video" (link to press release at the end of blog post)

anyway, just focus on original content (I know, easier said than done) Also try to keep within an overall topic, (it is impossible to make a one size fits all website and any attempt to do so will drive people away)

I highly recommend Project Wonderful where you might be able to advertise for free on some websites, or very cheaply.