Listen, I'm kind of in the same boat as you and I've never ran a blog or had a "internet presence" either but hear me out anyway.
I don't mean to be completely discouraging but it seems like the internet is near a blogging glut. My instinct tells me that it seems like it'll peak pretty soon too.
I know this conflicts with Steve's "Abudance Model" of reality and I may be jumping the gun but I see many blogs about literally EVERYTHING, with many of them rarely offering good value. It's cool that everyone is expressing themselves (which is really the point) and blogging is a learning experience but many blogs seem to be authored by people who just started learning about the topics they post about.
The main opportunity, and there still is time left, is to find an area in blogging with weak competition, so that you can come in and dominate. The successful blogs are the ones that are obviously more knowledgable than everything else, not just "Web 2.0" shills. Did I just contradict my own argument there?
Anyway, if I were you, I'd become an expert in a field like Steve did (easier said than done, huh? Took him a years). Google "tim o'reilly", "web 2.0", "search engine optimization" get into there mindset, while remembering it's an insular view. They use many words that seem like buzz words and hype like, "monetize" and "Web 2.0", it reminds me of the year before "Web 1.0" collapsed.
And one last thing to remember. In this world...Tim O'Reilly is God.
