Well, when I lived in Nebraska, there was a startup that discovered me (one of the founders met a guy from the company where I worked at a restaurant). I had them as a client and then they hired me and moved me. Having the blog with online portfolio really helped - not to mention that I learned the technology side of web design from managing my blog.

When I was tired of CA, I moved to Chicago. I still love the Silicon Valley way of business though. Someone working at oDesk found me through a blog post around that time and then I started working with them as a client - remotely. They've been a great client, and having them didn't hurt in winning new clients.

I have the top hit on Google for "lump in mouth." The page gets about 25k hits a month, plus spun off into a forum, http://lumpinmouth.com I make some okay ad revenue from that.

I also have one of the top hits for "transfer itunes" from a blog post I wrote about a method for transferring songs, ratings, playlists from one computer to another. That also gets a lot of traffic, and I sell affiliate iPod utilities through a separate site I created. Additionally, I have been able to sign up direct advertisers.

Its funny when I think back to all of my friends who were confused when I started blogging "are you getting paid for it? Why are you doing this?" (you have to understand the Nebraska mentality) They couldn't understand doing something for pure enjoyment. Of course, I did end up getting paid.