How do I promote my blog?

This is a common question and one which is actually quite tough to answer. My first point is going to be that you need to grow your readership 'organically'. By this I mean don't go for one of those surf-exchange programs - they are pointless if you want to build up long-term readership. We are going to look at ways that will bring genuine readers to read your content.
The second point I am going to make is that before you think about promotion, for goodness sake have a blog that is worth reading otherwise you will be wasting your time dragging people in to read your bad content... Once you are happy that your blog is something that your potential readership will actually read, you are ready to start promoting:
1) SEO - people have written complete books on Search engine optimisation, but with just a few techniques, you can corner the market for your niche. Reading the articles on livewyre.NET on SEO techniques will equip you for basic optimisation which is probably covers 90% of total optimisation. For blogs, I would look to make sure that 'tags' are set within the blog template, and that all my titles are 'search engine friendly'. Look at this title for example 'How do I promote my blog' is a phrase that I anticipate may be typed into google frequently, and I stake my claim to that phrase by using it as a title. Beware of using titles such as 'search engine optimisation' because the competition for that phrase means that you will never get a result.
2) Links - backlinks are important, although I have seen that PageRank is not so important for Search engine results as it used to be...Links make up your PageRank and are helpful if not essential to get visitors. you can get free links from a number if directories, or you can canvass other sites to see if they will add your link in their sidebar or links page, but I get so many of these via email that I rarely even read them.. every so often though, if you are determined you may earn yourself a valuable link. I would not pay for links personally, but you may find that it is worthwhile.
3) Commenting - this is a free way of getting links from relevent web pages. Commenting on blogs within the same niche or on forums is a good way to get your link in front of people who may be interested in your site. Often news websites will also allow you to comment, but do remember not to waste your time on a site that does not allow your post your URL - many sites allow you to add your link and then link it to your name - so when someone reads the comment, they might click on your name and be taken straight to your site or a relevant article on your site. Even if the site is using 'no-follow- links to stop Google bots following links, you can still attract visitors by getting them to click on the link.
All-in-all, promotion can be hard work and building up visitors can take an awful long time - but in the long run, you should see your readership increase, and maybe even some of those readers will begin to read your RSS feed.

It is important (especially if people are reading your RSS), to keep fresh content on your blog, if you don't regularly update with new posts, your readership will drift away. You may define your own timeline by planning to update twice a day, daily or weekly -but whatever timescale you choose, your visitors will expect you to continue at that rate, so try to pick a pace that means you regularly update without making it too slavish a task. Work at your own pace, but once the pace is established, stick with it - and always have a post 'up your sleeve' for when you are running out of ideas. I sometimes post three or four posts and then date them so that they appear every few days so that I have some 'breathing space'. This is easy if you post several items in a mini-series (like this one... covering blog monetisation and promotion...) as you can write a large article and then split it up into smaller post-sized sections.