I have no idea what I'm doing; Serial Blogging

Back in February, I stumbled on an old idea.

It's a very old idea, but the Idea came from how writers lived once upon a time. The writer I'm mostly thinking of is Charles Dickens. Dickens made his living as a writer, which even in his day was not the easiest of tasks and on top of that, Dickens had a pretty sizable family he supported with that writing to boot. How did he do it? I mean he was a popular author at the time, but pumping out those massive novels took time, so how did he support himself in between. The answer: many of his novels were released as serials, weekly or monthly installments rather than a whole book at once.

I thought that idea was fantastic, so I began formulating my own idea, and modernizing it. An online blog would be the perfect place to do this. After a month of planning and designing, I officially began the site towards the end of March. After five weeks, rolling out about a chapter a week, the writing is flowing but the interest is creeping along. I did not have high expectations. I am pleased with the steadily rising number of hits I do have, but...

There were two painfully large differences between my serial blog and Charles Dickens serials.  The first is money. I also attempt to support a family, and I do not get paid for the many hours I pump into this science fiction blog, nor do I know how to go about making money off it. Perhaps if I had an audience, I could garner funds, but this is also something I don't have a clue how to do.

The Militant Baker, http://www.themilitantbaker.com/ is an extremely popular blogger who not only has thousands of hits, but features an add feed on her site which is awesome and I as yet have no idea how to do. Even if I wanted to do something similar, how does one create a blogging audience? So far the only network I have attempted to use in expanding the site's audience is Facebook, which comes with it's own set of limitations. But it is where I am established in my own little community of friends and writers. How to go about branching out from there? Is it the people you know or the sites you post on? Is it just a matter of the right person stumbling across it and passing it along?

I feel another research project coming on...